The winners of the 2024 Flash Fiction Competition were as follows:

 

1st prize - 'Tim' by Terry Kerins

​

I’d always longed for a sibling and then at the age of fifty-two, I became a sister.

 

Mum and Dad never said a word about him. I find out about Tim in their will. He will be provided for until he dies.

 

The carer in the residential unit says: ‘Severely brain-damaged; he doesn’t interact’.

The sign on his door reads: Tim. Allergic to strawberries. Medication whole, in yogurt. Strawberry allergy: like me.

 

I open the door. Tim stares at the wall. He has my father’s grey eyes, like the sea in winter.

I tip his arm, ‘Hello brother’.

​

2nd prize - 'Hedgerow Memory' by Becky Willis

 

Flashes of yellow stopped me. Joan passed, shaking her lowered head at the sparse winter hedge and cursing the council for not insisting on a thicker shield between her home and the ring road traffic.

But I'm blessing whoever thought to plant rowans at all, whose berries have drawn an irruption of beauties. And I'm seven again, clutching  at my Dad's swinging binoculars' case to keep up with his quick strides along the icy Norfolk lane. He's reading excitedly from his bird book, 'pinky buff; red on wings, as if dipped in wax; tail, yellow-tipped... Waxwings!'

‘Welcome, waxwings!' 

​

​

3rd prize - 'Dressed by Success' by Matthew Shepherd

​

Stubbled chin, cap tipped to block out oppressive sunlight, chewing gum. Stomach pressed against a lavishly overpriced cotton t-shirt flaunting an embroidered logo screaming ‘I can afford what you cannot’. Such small things matter to Jamal. So soft are the soles of the brand new trainers he barely senses the pavement.

Their comfort unsettles Jamal’s memory. It is barely ten months since he laced a pair of real shoes for the first time. How quickly life turned in an alien land. A tear wells as he laments where he has come from and who he left behind.