The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition . . . & Our Next Contest

We have now published TWO of the two honorable mention stories in our summer supernatural sudden fiction contest. Scroll down to give it a read. Between now and July 31, we’ll publish the other honorable mention and the winning story.

Then, on August 1, we start accepting submission to our full length story contest—the fall 2023 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award. Click here for guidelines.

HONORABLE MENTION, Summer 2023

The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY KATHRYN PRATT RUSSELL

When my husband took me to one of his regular pickup places, I was surprised. I’d thought it would be a college bar where they played Benatar to appeal to Gen Z vintage fans who liked to think that middle-class young people still borrowed cigarettes. Instead, it was a coffee bar, with a grungy restroom for all genders. One of the workers, not so much a barista as just the counter girl, looked at him full in the face as she sidled by us, then halfheartedly wiped down a faux marble table. I knew she was one of them, the conquests, if you could call them that. I felt like I was making headway in solving a puzzle: why was such a normal man, average in facial features, height, and even sexual prowess (as I understood it, anyway) able to recruit large numbers of women as willing bed partners?

She was young and attractive, that was true, but she seemed less than confident, completely focused on surreptitiously tracking his movements as he waited for his order. She was lurking over behind the espresso machine now, biding her time, and obviously he must have told her that he had a woman who had failed to satisfy his needs, but was still paying for the apartment he lived in with her.

Where did they do it then? Mattresses in storerooms, desks in closed offices (although there weren’t many of his girls who were old enough and advanced enough in work to have a key to the office). He hadn’t come right out and told me the details—he had just informed me that it was time that we went polyamorous. In fact, I was the one who needed to accept the news, because he had already been seeing others for several years. [continue reading…]

The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition—Now Closed

Our next contest? The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition for short stories of up to 10,000 words. OPENS AUGUST 1. 

Our contest for stories—supernatural or magic realism—of between 250 and 1,000 words will be open to submissions until July 15. To read more, and/or to submit a piece, have a look at our guidelines page. And be sure to have a look at the stories written by our past winners and honorable mentions.