Monthly Micro Longlist – Jan 2023

Well done to everyone who sent in a story this month. We received 82 entries so the prize fund is £205. The first place winner gets £123 and second place £82. Congrats to the long listed writers of the following stories. No telling which is yours thought as it has to remain anonymous all the way through the judging rounds.

Longlist

  • A Nail-Biting Life
  • Angel Numbers
  • Bee-He Smells Honey
  • Hope In A Box
  • Hope Is Where The Heart Is
  • Hopeless Optimist
  • House of Dunes
  • In This House, We Don’t Burn Sage
  • Ingredients for a soufflé good enough to unite nations
  • Kyiv Christmas
  • Lucky and Safe
  • May Contain Traces
  • My Name is Hope
  • Nightingale Floor
  • Oh Emily, I Prayed
  • Omid
  • On Christmas Eve, A Glass Half Full Man Waits For His Estranged Daughter In Wetherspoons
  • Present Tense
  • The First Time Afterwards
  • The Hum of Maybes
  • The Myth of Pandors
  • Verity
  • When All Hope is Lost, Go and Speak to the Wind

The 2022 RW Prize Shortlists

Well done again to all who entered and especially those who made the longlists in each category. We now have our shortlists and all of these stories will be published in our final anthology later this year. It’s now over to our judges to make the final decision on who wins the cash prizes.

Micro Fiction Shortlist

  • A Woman Showed up at a Mario Kart Convention in a Wedding Dress
  • Another Man’s Treasure
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Buddleia Song
  • Catch
  • Manchester Fishing
  • Postcard From Portugal
  • Something Floral
  • Three Questions, One Answer
  • Watermark

Flash Fiction Shortlist

  • A Perfect Day for Banana Pudding
  • Beach Pick-Up
  • Find Shelter
  • I Never Intended to Visit the Circus
  • O Sole Mio
  • Swan Song
  • The Language of Dying Crows
  • The Lightship
  • The Matter with Shapes
  • The Sand Between her Toes

Short Story Shortlist

  • A Different Route to the Same Place
  • Even the Silence
  • Far Cry From Edgar
  • Hero of Electrification
  • Jane and Autumn
  • Rachel’s Mother
  • Salt Colonies
  • Superheroes and the World Turned Upside Down
  • Tat
  • The Ocean Is a Desert

Congratulations to all! Your stories will be published in our final Prize anthology later this year.

AMOK THEMED FLASH WINNERS!

Many thanks to our judge, Michael Conley, for picking this quarter’s winners from the excellent stories he was sent. Congratulations to our winners and to all who were shortlisted and longlisted in this round.

Judge’s Report

First of all, thank you to Retreat West for giving me the opportunity to judge these fantastic pieces.  

I’ve been at the disappointed end of enough shortlists to know that it’s never very much consolation when the judge says how difficult it was – but now at least I know it’s true!  I came back to all ten of these stories several times during the period I’d set myself to make the judgement, deliberately returning to them in different moods and different times of the day.   I found myself changing my mind about my top three quite often and I do feel that I saw the value in all of them – hopefully your appearance on the shortlist in the first place is enough to convince you to keep sending these out – I feel sure they all belong in print somewhere! 

I chose the theme of Amok because for a while it was the alternative working title of my own debut short story collection, Flare and Falter.  I was really interested to see what other writers would do with a theme that I tend to often explore myself.  I’ve always liked stories about chaos, where the normal rules of the world are suspended. The shortlisted entries interpreted the theme in different ways and I enjoyed the magic of Uniform, the strong sense of voice in Love Letter To Dr Burns, the passion of The Running, the bitter-sweetness of All At Sea, the bleakness of Twenty Golden Notebooks, the romance of Double Fisherman’s Knot and the surprising twist of My Procrastination.  Thank you for letting me read them.

First Place: Skimmed Milk by Emily Harrison

This piece jumped out to me the first time I sat down to read the entries, and remained with me each subsequent time.  I liked how subtly it related to the amok theme – all of the chaos had already happened, and this was all about aftermath, the hard business of taking responsibility, tidying up, making things as right as they can be.  The ending was a small ray of light out of the story’s dark murk: uplifting without being sentimental or trite.  Lennie’s choice felt inevitable but not predictable and I loved her for it. 

And the style too: spare and uncompromising.  That pigeon, ugh.  My favourite thing was the thread of metaphors running through the piece, showing us Lennie’s temptation to let loose and run amok herself – to make the easy choice of cruelty or indifference instead of compassion – ‘if Lennie had a barb wire mouth’, ‘if Lennie had a tar heart’, ‘if Lennie had dust for a spine’.  These little moments provided a structure for the piece but also kept reminding us of how hard it can be to do selfless things. Finally, I admired the restraint of not (fully) revealing what had happened to Lennie’s own daughter – this absence at the heart of the story gave it all the more power.  Congratulations on a brilliant story.


Runner Up: Alan, On His Birthday by Mikki Aronoff

I need to make sure this report isn’t longer than the story itself!  I loved the brevity – it was something that made the piece stand out from the others immediately, but it didn’t feel like a gimmick or like the story was unfinished.  I loved the direct engagement with ‘amok’ and the playfulness of your choice of beaver antagonists.  How did they get into the amusement park? Why did they run amok? What did that look like, exactly?  I love that you didn’t tell me.  The beavers were running amok and I believed you.  I loved the ending.  I love how inappropriately inadequate his mother’s reaction was to realising she’d swapped him.  Poor Alan, on his birthday. Or maybe not?


Runner-Up: Bulkheaded Dragons by Maria Thomas

This story crackled with energy.  The dragons in the sky managed to be believably real and also a metaphor, and I really enjoyed the lushness of the fantasy-genre descriptive language there.  The descriptions of Andy and Sophie felt like a natural extension of the dragon-weather, and I believed in the lust between them – such a difficult thing to do well, but you managed it through the heavy repetition and the simplicity of the verbs and adjectives.  The dragon-weather also worked as a backdrop for Danny’s murderous rage, which you picked up through the clever doubling of the basalt rock.  This was a really finely wrought piece which impressed me more each time I returned to it – the balance of the weather, the lovers and the murderer was like a finely-tuned machine.  


Well done to the winners!

The next and final deadline for this quarterly competition is 30th December and it’s an open theme – just send us your best! See all the info here.

2022 is the last year that we are running this competition. We are launching the WestWord journal and will open for submissions for the month of January 2023. The theme for this submission period is VISION. We want your best micros, flashes and short stories for our new publishing venture! Get all the submission info here.

Yellow Isn’t Really Her Colour

Jenna stands in front of the mirror; her body marked by a black Sharpie pen and knows things are going to be different next year. Lines where her belly fat creases and folds, rings around her double E boobs and the wedge of underarm fat. The part where her thighs rub together, the skin raw and shiny. She’d like to draw a circle around her moon face but its Sunday night and work tomorrow. 

Through the open window she can hear the drone of Asif’s computer monitors in the flat downstairs. The flicker of his screens reflected in the glass. He works 24/7 in  IT support for an airline. There will be an accident somewhere in the world he says, if he doesn’t respond. She wonders when he eats. 

Outside, Hackney High Street is alive with Christmas lights, Poundland tinsel and the smell of burnt meat. She thinks about Juicy Burger, the Turkey Flame Grilled Whopper, and the boy with the paper crown who always gives her an extra side. No she won’t fall into that trap tonight. 

Instead she scrolls through her Kendall Jenner Insta feed, new pics of her in a tight yellow bondage dress and killer heels, her body wrapped up like sausage skin. Jenna makes a mental note that yellow is the new black. Kendall’s abs look tight and toned. Her butt cheeks pert. Jenna’s already decided that she’ll treat herself to a copycat dress on Boohoo, with next-day postage she’ll be wearing it by tomorrow. 

She finds herself at the counter of the Shell petrol station. The light flickers amber, but it’s still gloomy inside. The guy behind the counter who smells of dope, never  looks up from his phone porn, so she pushes the family bags of crisps and tubes of Pringles into her carrier bag, adds a tub of Carte D’Or ice cream from the freezer. Jenna has a Shell Go+ rewards card but doesn’t own a car. 

On Monday morning, the girls at L.A. Wealth Management all look wrecked from the weekend and drink fizzy Berocca. The fake Christmas tree on her desk has fake presents underneath it. Jenna’s boss is out of the office so she takes a long mid-morning break sitting in the disabled toilet where she can spread her legs wide. She eats a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Salted Caramel, lets the soft chewy sweetness sit in her cheeks. There’s another bar waiting in the pocket of her handbag, and she licks at the melting chocolate, sucks the soft caramel. Afterwards Jenna pushes the wrappers into the flap of the sanitary bin. Makes a show of drinking black tea when she gets back to the office. 

There’s a message from Greta on her phone inviting her to stay for Christmas but she deletes it. Jenna and Greta were Guinea pig girls. They shared a love of the furry creatures and Curly Wurly’s. Best friends until Greta went to the local college for ‘A’ levels and got a boyfriend. After that Jenna spent all her time in her room, watching ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ on endless repeat and Kendall became the best friend she never had. They both love fashion, make up and Teen Vogue. When Kendall posts pics to Instagram, Jenna knows she posts them for her.

‘We’re all going out for Christmas drinks on Friday,’ Charlotte-from-accounts says. ‘Why don’t you come with us after work?’  Charlotte doesn’t say Jenna’s name because she’s unsure if its Jen, Jenny, or Gemma. 

Her boss lands in the office at ten to five and hands Jenna a thick wad of papers. Charlotte has already gone Christmas shopping and asked her to finish off her monthly report. Once the office is empty, Jenna can relax. The Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bars are in the bottom of her handbag: Caramel, Whole Nut, Popping Candy. But first she pops open days numbered 8-25 on the office chocolate advent calendar and pushes them into her mouth in one go. 

Its nearly nine when she gets home, and Asif is smoking in the courtyard. He hands  her a parcel. ‘You sure do like clothes,’ he says. ‘Something to wear for a party?’ Jenna doesn’t answer. She can’t wait to unwrap the yellow bondage dress, to drape it around her neck and photograph it in the mirror. She imagines Kendall blowing her a kiss as she steps out of a limo. Her toned stomach and lean legs. Afterwards Jenna hangs the dress up in the cramped spare room, the wardrobe doors heaving with dresses, tops and trousers, boob tubes and halter necks, all size 6. Kendall’s size.

At Christmas drinks, there aren’t enough chairs and Jenna perches on a stool at the end of the table near the kitchen extraction fan. The girl’s voices remind her of the high pitched squeals of Guinea pigs. It’s too late before Jenna realises that the girls have all ordered small plates and when her Spaghetti Carbonara and garlic bread arrives, they’ve all finished eating. The girls watch her as she pushes a forkful of food into her mouth, tries to swallow. The table erupts with shrieks of laughter. Charlotte says that they found the empty advent calendar and hundreds of chocolate wrappers stuffed in a filing cabinet at the office. That there must be a  . Dean from the post room polishes off her food after Jenna slips away. 

She can’t wait to get home, to draw lines with her Sharpie pen across her belly and thighs. She’ll step out of one body and into a new one in the New Year, which looks just like Kendall’s.

Asif is waiting outside the flat. His voice is soft when he says, ‘Hi Jenna, you look nice.’ She’s had a couple of glasses of wine and Jenna wants to tell him that yellow isn’t really her colour. That she’d really like him to come for Christmas dinner. 


This story was chosen for our Christmas countdown and the author wins a ticket to our next Flash Fest

About the author: Helen Kennedy is a Mancunian writer who is just completing her MA in Creative Writing in Oxford. Her flash and short fiction has been shortlisted for the Bristol Prize in 2022 and the Cambridge prize in 2021 as well as being featured in Flashflood 2022.

The Yew’s Embrace

There was a man dwelt by a churchyard, cradled within a thick-trunked yew. Dawn-fluttering roused him, as berry-smitten birds searched for red treasures and, at night, the wind sang lullabies across the wrinkled bark. The trunk warmed his winter shivers and the quiver of tiny needles cooled his summer brow.

His had been an angry life: berating ‘unworthy’ congregations, belittling the ‘close-fisted’ poor, sending the fear of God through the wretched meek. His red-edged eyes brimmed with spite; his plump cheeks swelled with pride; the tendons in his neck strained to keep his self-righteous head upon its shoulders.

When Christmas approached his forty-sixth year, he spurned its advances. Alms for the poor were gathered, but he couldn’t bear to look upon the grimy faces that clamoured for such meagre offerings.

At the churchyard gate, that Christmas Eve, he spied a young boy clipping a branch from the great yew’s coat.

“Hoi hoi! What devil’s work is here?”

The boy cowered – the branch really no more than a twig in his frost-touched fingers. “Begging your pardon, sir, it is a gift for my mother to hang at the hearth. I have nothing else to offer.”

Grabbing the branch, the man dashed the boy to the ground. “There! That’ll teach yer to steal from the Lord!”

But, as he raised his fist to beat the unresponsive child, he felt a sharp pain in his palm. Turning, he found the foliage had enveloped his hand, and now his arm itself sprouted needles. In confusion, he plucked the leaflets from his skin, but in their place, beads of blood formed bright red berries. 

When at last the boy revived, he found himself alone in the yew tree’s shadow.

The man still dwells by the churchyard – forever in the dark embrace of the tree. At Christmas, the children of the village cut small branches to hang above their hearths. They wonder at the rich red berries gleaming in the candlelight, and at the power and the danger they possess. 

And, later, when all candles are snuffed out, some say they hear weeping in the darkness.


This story was chosen for our Christmas countdown and the author wins 6 Retreat West ebooks

About the author: Jen Rowe is an actor, improviser and writer. She lives in Sussex with her husband and, as yet, no dog.

The 2022 RW Prize Longlists

Thanks so much to everyone who sent stories for our final annual prize. We’ve been busy reading the several hundred entries we received! Many congratulations to the writers of the following stories – no telling which is yours though as reading remains anonymous through the whole process.

In Submittable, we have to let people who have been long listed know individually so you may not get your notification in there until later today or tomorrow.

Micro Fiction Longlist

  • A Woman Showed Up at a Mario Kart Competition in a Wedding Dress
  • Another Man’s Treasure
  • Buddleia Song
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Bully
  • Catch
  • Constant Craving
  • Dearly Beloved
  • Dwindling Darling
  • Farewell to Anger
  • Iceberg
  • Manchester Fishing
  • Postcard from Portugal
  • Shortcut
  • Something Floral
  • The Worst, Times Two, Wouldn’t Have Happened
  • Three Questions, One Answer
  • Valentine
  • Warning Signs
  • Watermark
  • When is a Bargain not a Bargain?
  • Why, Mum?

Flash Fiction Longlist

  • A Face in the Crowd
  • A Fullstop in Time
  • A Perfect Day for Banana Pudding
  • Beach Pick-Up
  • Contamination
  • Damnation
  • Dead Man’s Shoes
  • Elegy for a Lost Cat
  • Find Shelter
  • For a Time, I
  • Gathering
  • Holding Out
  • Honeymoon
  • Honeysuckle and Bindweed
  • I Never Intended to Visit the Circus
  • In Situ
  • Insects Never Worry About the Way Home
  • Laundry
  • Learning How to Mind the Gap
  • Little Boys Have Need of Wings
  • Mr Pearl
  • O Sole Mio
  • Perfection
  • Proof
  • Recipe for Almond Burfi
  • Red is the Soundtrack to Her Life
  • Song-flight
  • Squeaky Clean Enlightenment
  • Surfaces
  • Swan Song
  • The Contortionist and Her Son
  • The Goalless Draw
  • The Hunter in the Flood
  • The Language of Dying Crows
  • The Lightship
  • The Matter with Shapes
  • The Milk Carton Girl
  • The Sand Between Her Toes
  • The Song of Me
  • The Ungirl
  • Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Monument to a Failed Relationship
  • Unfinished Business
  • We Should Never Have Had Him Neutered
  • Wild

Short Story Longlist

  • A Different Route to the Same Place
  • A Wild Horse on Leith Walk
  • All About My Mother
  • All Their Secrets
  • At the End
  • Brenda’s Caff
  • Cuterus Uterus
  • Even the Silence
  • Far Cry From Edgar
  • Hero of Electrification
  • High-Intensity Interval Training
  • In My Left Hand
  • Jane and Autumn
  • On Sea Glass and Selkies
  • One Last Evening at the Paradise Club
  • Patches
  • Pedigree
  • Rachel’s Mother
  • Reflections of a Mature Woman Who Took an Unfortunate Tumble
  • Salt Colonies
  • Superheroes and the World Turned Upside Down
  • Tat
  • The Mumbai Theme Tune
  • The Ocean is a Desert
  • The Selection
  • The Resident of Renfield Rectory
  • Unravelling
  • Young Blood


Good luck for the next round, everyone! We’ll have the shortlist in January.