Here are stories by two of the prize winners of the Rising Stars Flash Fiction Contest.
The first, winner of the $250 Contest Prize in our prompt category, is by Abigail Bates, a 2020 graduate of UMass Boston living in Sandwich, Massachusetts. This is Abby’s first contest win.
***
Roger Harmon took a seat on the ground, digging his wing-tipped shoes into the warm sand to settle himself. The hems of his grey trousers were flecked with salty droplets. The cuffs of his coat sleeves bore dark rings where the sea had taken hold of them. The last feathered wisps of his hair swayed in a gentle sea-breeze. In his shaky fingers, he clutched a green clump of sea glass. The smooth glass was all that felt familiar in what had been a very strange day for Roger.
***
The second story, winner of a special $100 Judges’ Prize we created to recognize the runner-up in our freeform category, is by Esme Noelle DeVault, an attorney and poet living in Rhode Island with her husband, son, and dog Charlie. She was previously an English teacher and an academic reference librarian. She’s had poems published in Motherscope, Jonah Magazine, The Big Windows Review, and forthcoming in Inkling Literary Magazine and Kissing Dynamite: A Journal of Poetry.
The first time that jaundiced Count Olaf from the pretentiously abstract painting hanging in the foyer spoke to Miranda, she wasn’t all that surprised. She’d been getting a peculiar vibe from some of her household objects lately, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Not that anything else had spoken to her yet, but she could have sworn that one of her ceramic gargoyles had winked at her last week. Another time, when she was climbing the stairs after having binged an entire Netflix series one weekend alone, with too much Ben and Jerry’s and tequila, again, she thought she saw one of the plants wave at her. Tricks of the eye, she thought.
***
We are awaiting permission to publish the third story, “Library of Lives,” winner of the $250 Contest Prize in our freeform category, by Chris Watson.
The Rising Stars Flash Fiction Contest was co-sponsored by Christmas Lake Creative and Dale Thomas Vaughn.