Flash-Fic-Month is into its third week, now, and we're thrilled at the level of dedication and hard work being put into all the submissions. Good work, all, and we're more than hal;fway there, now -- Keep On Ficcin'!

( If you don't know what Flash Fiction Month is, do please read our FAQ )



We've also chosen the winner of our Challenges for week two:

Our challenges this week were to 1/ write a story referencing McDonald's, 2/ write a story in the style of the 'noir' or 'hardboiled' genre, and 3/ write a drabble - a story of exactly 100 words.

Congrats go to ---


ThornyEnglishRose

for three fine submissions:

Mature Content

On the StreetsI was relaxing with an apple core when the girl dropped down into my bin.  She was as subtle and as graceful as a great Dane taking a swim with the ducks in St. James's Park.  She smelt of dirty water and rubble.  One of the riverbank crowd.  I couldn't see her too well, but I could tell she was skin and bones.  I tossed her the core.
'You look like you could do with it,' I said.
'Thanks.'  She started to nibble.  'I heard you were in need of a new partner.'
It was true that my last partner was dead.  He'd found a pack under a platform at Heathrow Terminal Four tube and, shall we say, loved more of the girls than he could handle.  But what she'd heard was wrong.
'I don't need a new partner,' I said.  'I'm quitting the business.'
She dropped the apple core and stared at me.  She twitched her nose and held her front paws in front of her chest like a pet dog begging for a lick of Hair'I'm worse off.  All you have to do is put that wig on.'
'I'm worse off.  You shave your legs anyway.  What's an extra bit of…?'
'Go on, say it.'
She hesitated.  'Facial hair.'
'See?'  She was triumphant.  'Your words are easier to say out loud, so that proves I'm worse off.  Hair loss.  Alopecia.  Baldness.  It's an illness, which makes it okay.  I'm just…'
'Unlucky.'
'A freak.'
'It affects a lot of women, actually.'
'Right.  But it's always kept secret.'
They glanced out of the window, and saw a bald man walking with his bearded friend.  Both women sighed.
Well done! An FFM commemorative mug will be flown to you on wings of prose and steel, very shortly.

Do please go give these stories a well-deserved read and, ThornyEnglishRose a hearty cheer.

Of course, this was a very difficult decision - and no, we're not just saying that. The overall quality of writing is very good, so picking out one story from another isn't easy! However, we must, but would like to give special mention to those stories which really caught our eye, and many cheers to everybody writing for FFM, also, for a fantastic effort.

FFM Week Two - Honourable Mentions

Special mention must go to:


The-Inkling

for these three very good submissions:

FFM: Fast food for the soulAl flipped over the front page of the newspaper, scanning over headlines with a disinterested expression before pausing on an article about the recent homeless problem. Seemed they had been disappearing from the streets in large numbers over recent months. Not that Al cared, they were just homeless people after all. Quickly growing bored, he flipped the page again and read a few more stories before settling on a column about celebrities who had had sex changes. He gave a little chuckle and leaned back into his plastic chair. This was the life.
He had been working at McDonald's for a grand total of two weeks, and already he considered it to be an inspired career move. To think he had once looked down on the people who worked in places like this. He had been so misguided. There were plenty of skills that could be put to use in a place like this, most of which he seemed to have.
It was about time to close up and he was the last person left, excepting Frank, who was currently banging away FFM: Day 11 ChallengeI had got the call just as I was making my way out of the office. 'Kid Jimmy is dead', they told me, and who was I to say different, though I had seen him just two hours back. So here I was, staring down at the body where it had been dumped at the back of the alley like old trash. Seemed a sorry way to end, especially for a good kid like him. But I was sorry to say that by now, I was used to it. People died, it was never a pretty or convenient thing.
Two bullets had done it, one to the heart and one to the head, and the blood had already started to go sticky by the time the clean up crew got there with their body bags and yellow tape. I gave the area around the body a quick sweep, trying to eye up all possible options, but nothing felt straight about this job, and when you've been around this game for as long as I have, you learn when to trust your feelings, and most importantly, when to get the hell out. Right now, I was having a 'get the hell out' kinda feeling. But this was Jimmy, a FFM: Day 13Little Red set down her little wicker basket and lit a cigarette while she waited for Wolf to arrive.
They had been meeting here like this since they were little more than kids. But lately both of them had grown tired of the secrecy. They were older now, and Wolf said he wanted to settle down, get a little cottage in the woods, have picnics.
Red wasn't so sure, but she loved Wolf, so she had agreed. They had it all worked out, and today they would make good their escape.
Red had a plan, and it was codenamed 'Granny'.

And to the following writers, many kudos for these great stories, which we very much enjoyed reading:


When It Doesn't Rayne It Pours     The undercity of Tor Prime was a maze of bent corridors and twisted morals. No minotaur stalked this labyrinth, unless you counted me: Jonathan Rayne, professional knuckle-duster. I'd been a detective in a former life, but collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bullets back. Now I just moonlight as a bounty hunter, and spend the time between cases blowing my pension and wasting my mind.
     Tonight's would-be stiff was another cardboard cut-out villain, all posturing and no substance. It didn't matter to me who he was or what he'd done because the pay was good. Word on the streets was two mutants holed up in an abandoned apartment complex in the third precinct knew his whereabouts, so I was on my way to pay them a visit.
     Mine wasn't going to be the most original approach to the problem, but it would get the job done. I knocked, but no one answered, so I showed myself in. I apologised for my ~ by Celareon


a sincere nightWhat a dreary night.
I enter the diner, hearing the wood of the door creak as I pass through it. The walls are smudged with dirt and grease and the checkerboard floors have that tinge of age on them. The place is empty. I sit down against a white wall in a corner as a waitress in a faded yellow dress approaches me.
"Hey there, Danny. The usual?" she says through the gum in her mouth.
I nod and smile at her. "Yeah."
Her lips turn up a bit as she walks away. She comes back a few moments later to set down a plate of spaghetti and a glass of amber liquid on my table.
"Here you go, doll. Just call me if you need me."
"Thanks."
She retreats to the backroom as I prod the dark red sauce of my pasta with my fork and begin eating in silence. Half-way through my meal, the door creaks and I hear heavy footsteps. I swallow down a mouthful of pasta when the footsteps stop near me. I glance up.
"Daniel Crenshaw, right?" The man's voice is gruff, low. He looks at me in the face and I immediately notic ~ by Vocable


FFM 8: The New RecipeRain beat at the old castle, whipped into sheets by a murderous wind.  Within, the lord sat down for dinner with a new friend.  The dining hall was of an exquisitely decadent design, bedecked in drapery of maroon and gold that had gone threadbare and gamey.  The dining table was much longer than necessary, spanning the length of the room, and easily capable of sitting fifty guests.  Tonight it sat two.
At one end, Count McDonald poured himself a glass of wine, swishing it gently in the goblet.  The candelabras cast shifting shadows and reflections upon him, turning his hair into a blazing red flame around a ghoulish white mask.  His minions bubbled at his side, murmuring amongst themselves.  In the corner behind him, a hideous purple brute of a creature sat on the floor, his face set into a mindless grimace.
At the opposite end, Carl made no such attempts for wine.  Thick bands of leather bound his wrists t~ by distortified


~ by RunningBear5858


McMasters"I can't even believe this," Mrs. Nesbitt spat as she tossed down the history textbook she'd been given to teach out of in the coming year.
"What's up with it?" asked Carrie, an English Major who was working in the school to pay off her student loan.
"'What's up with it' is the cover art, for one thing, and I don't even want to take a look at the contents," Mrs. Nesbitt answered disdainfully, pointing at the images of McDonalds through the years, from an old fashioned drive-in all the way up to the newest McHome food processors (because who should expect someone to leave his own home just to get some McDonalds?). It was disgusting.
"Oh, the McDonalds stuff on the covers?" Carrie asked dismissively. She would—she wasn't even twenty, and Mrs. Nesbitt was well into her sixties. Carrie had been born during the war, Mrs. Nesbitt remembered how things were before. Her leg still ached and her teeth set on edge whenever she remembered it.
"I've taught this book for years. The cover change~ by ElaineRose


07-08-10I am alive today because of McDonalds.
I don't mean that in an aliens-were-chasing-me-across-the-galaxy-and-some-nice-humans-hid-me-in-a-fast-food-restaurant kind of way. Or even an I-grew-up-in-the-real-ghetto-and-hid-from-the-guns-by-going-to-the-nice-neighborhood-MickeyD's.
I mean it in a my-parents-are-the-kind-of-people-who-have-proven-love-at-first-sight-exists-because-they-met-in-a-place-smelling-of-burnt-grease-and-sounding-of-screaming-children-and-looked-at-each-other-for-6-seconds-and-that-was-it. They were they. And they had me.
And if they had never both gone in that day or that fast food place hadn't have existed – well, neither would I.
That still doesn't mean I'm going to eat there though.~ by Puckpup


Kudos also to ALL our challengers. Links to their entries can be found here. -->  flash-fic-month.deviantart.com… <--- DO PLEASE READ THEM. You won't regret it!


And onward, to Week Three's challenges - more good reading next week.

Happy Flashing!