Tag: Tracy Fells

Themed Flash Winners Dec 2016

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Many thanks to everyone that entered the last themed flash competition of 2016; and also for your patience in waiting for the results, which after a lot of tooing and froing over which one should have the top spot and which one the runner-up, are:

Winner: Ticking by Gwenda Major

A whole new world very deftly created in so few words. We liked how the reader realised the truth long before the character did and how she would react when it dawned on her kept you reading with baited breath until the end.
Read It

 

Runner-Up: Lunacy by Tracy Fells

A great take on the theme, which had a real sense of exuberance running through it despite what appeared to be a story heading for a sad ending.

Read It

 

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Many congratulations, Gwenda and Tracy – great to see you both here on the winners’ podium again.

Don’t forget the themed flash competition has changed to quarterly for 2017 and the cash prizes, as well as the number of them, have increased. You can get details on the deadlines, themes and prizes here. But hurry up if you want to enter the first one as the deadline is in just 6 days!

For even bigger cash prizes and publication in the paperback and ebook anthology, the annual RW Flash Fiction Prize is being judged by Tania Hershman for 2017. Get all the info here.

Lunacy by Tracy Fells

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Jason made all the arrangements for our weekend away: booked the hotel, even got us a ground floor room with garden access so I could wheel myself outside. The tip of Scotland seemed a mammoth trek for a minibreak, but Jason reckoned it would be our best chance of seeing the Super Moon.

‘We’ll almost be able to touch it, Anna,’ he gushed. ‘And it’s in Scorpio –fortuitous for passions and ambitions.’

I kissed him fiercely and we made love before I grew too tired. He was my passion, even after ten years of marriage and no kids. His ambition was singular and simple, and sadly unattainable. My time with him had a shelf life, and the expiry date grew ever closer.

On Saturday night the moon flooded our bed with its silvery light. When I woke later the room had leached to black. The hotel was silent, only my breathing echoed in the stillness. Jason’s side of the bed was cold and empty. The satin curtains rustled; the door leading outside was ajar. He must have gone for a smoke, I reasoned and turned over to sleep onto morning.

Throughout Sunday Jason pushed me around the village. Everywhere was closed or shut up and yet he gushed like a little boy listing the new places we’d explore next year. This was lunacy – next year he’d be alone – but I joined in his game.

That night I woke again to find Jason gone. The curtains were drawn back to expose the giant moon. Shallow breaths echoed mine; I was no longer alone. My heart rate spiked as my eyes adjusted and the shadow on the rug solidified into an animal. It crouched low on four legs, as if watching its prey. It watched me. The creature was both man and beast, its eyes clearly human, set above a long, thin muzzle. Not a feral wolf, it came from a nightmare.

With a crescent talon the creature gently slit open my belly. In a dream state I felt no pain, as it devoured the inoperable tumour that had hijacked my womb and stolen my children.

When Monday dawned Jason lay beside me, twitching like a dreaming dog. Ravenous, I ran to breakfast. I didn’t need the wheelchair.

Over dinner, he recounted the folk legend that kept the villagers indoors at night. We both laughed like idiots and then ordered room service as we waited for the final Super Moon. My insidious cancer had planned to end both our lives.

‘How could I live without you?’ Jason whispered as we cuddled on the bed, watching the moon’s eerie glow extinguish the dark.

‘Now there are no endings.’ I laughed, feeling the blood pulse in my veins, hearing the beat of every heart in the building, sensing the wiry coarse hairs piercing my skin from within.

‘We will live forever,’ I said, kissing the end of his snout. The rest of my words slipped out like a growl.

 

About the author: Tracy Fells lives close to the South Downs in West Sussex. She has won awards for both fiction and drama. Her short stories have appeared in Firewords Quarterly, The Yellow Room and Popshot, online at Litro New York, Short Story Sunday and in anthologies such as Fugue, Rattle Tales and A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed.

Competition success includes short-listings for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Willesden Herald, Brighton Prize, Fish Short Story and Flash Fiction Prizes. Tracy completed her MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University in 2016 and is currently seeking representation for a crime mystery novel and her short story collection.

She shares a blog with The Literary Pig (http://tracyfells.blogspot.co.uk/) and tweets as @theliterarypig.

Positive Outcome by Tracy Fells

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Alex was the technician assigned to my doctoral project and the department’s running joke, since he seemed unlikely to ever submit his thesis. With his wayward curls and goatee, I thought him cute and consequently agreed to help with a research project he worked on outside the university’s remit.

‘Suzy, can you bring Camilla down to the basement?’ he asked over lunch.

Instantly nervous, I said, ‘You’re ready to test again? She won’t get hurt -Camilla’s my favourite.’

‘Yes. No. And being so tame she’ll be perfect.’ Alex grinned boyishly.

‘Camilla will be famous. The first time travelling rat.’

As agreed, I sneaked Camilla from the Bioinformatics unit in my rucksack, meeting Alex in his basement lab at six o’clock. He’d kitted out a glass tank with a water bottle, food and bedding for Camilla. I kissed her nose and she sniffed me back. Creamy white with a ginger beauty spot on her left rump, Camilla was a sweet natured rat who soon settled into her new home.

Alex planned to transpose a multicellular specimen twenty-four hours into the future. None of his test runs with fruit had worked, now he claimed a breakthrough. I watched as he downloaded the new algorithm, then connected his laptop to the main power unit: a kitchen blender with a potato and two lemons. Yes, it looked as ridiculous as it sounds, but his limitless enthusiasm had me hooked.

At nineteen hundred hours Alex let me flick the blender switch to full speed. Nothing happened. At the end of the wire, looped around her tail, Camilla satcleaning between her toes. Rubbing Alex’s back I tried to console him with positive affirmations. He pulled away, his shoulders deflated.

‘Let’s go for a drink. Come back tomorrow to check on Camilla.’ I smile tentatively. ‘Maybe there’s some sort of a delay …’

I drank alone. Alex refused to leave the basement, so I left him there.

The next evening I had a late tutorial and made it down to Alex’s lab just before seven. Camilla was dozing in her tank. With Alex absent I tried to decipher his whiteboard notes. When I turned back, a minute after seven, there were two white rats in the tank.

‘Alex!’ I screamed into my mobile. ‘Something amazing has happened.’

A high-pitched squeal made me stiffen, the plaintive cry of Camilla dying. The second rat stood over her, its mouth crimson. I had believed the two animals identical. As a scientist I should have observed the significant difference. The spot on the second rat’s rump had switched sides.

‘I did it,’ came a voice from the shadows.

Alex stepped into light.   Disappointingly, he’d lost the goatee. My head whirled. The experiment had not concluded as predicted, the hypothesis had not been met. Alex was right handed, yet he held something in his left. A scalpel. A streak of blood stained his collar.

‘What have you done?’ I said, my voice trembling to pose such a redundant question.

 

About the author: Tracy Fells lives close to the South Downs in West Sussex. She has won awards for both fiction and drama. Her short stories have appeared in Firewords Quarterly, The Yellow Room and Popshot, online at Litro New York, Short Story Sunday and in anthologies such as Fugue, Rattle Tales and A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed. Competition success includes short-listings for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Willesden Herald, Brighton Prize, Fish Short Story and Flash Fiction Prizes. Tracy completed her MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University in 2016 and is currently seeking representation for a crime mystery novel and her short story collection. She shares a blog with The Literary Pig (http://tracyfells.blogspot.co.uk/) and tweets as @theliterarypig.

 

Comp results: March 16 Themed Flash

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Once again, the stories submitted for the themed flash comp were of excellent quality and it never ceases to amaze me how our brains work so differently and how such a wide range of stories can come from the same prompt. Congratulations to this month’s winners, who have both appeared in previous anthologies of winners, and to the writers who made the shortlist.

 

Winner: White Noise by Shirley Golden

This apocalyptic tale grabbed me from the very first line and the language really conveyed the desperate world that these characters were living in without us having to be told. I like how the theme of belief is embedded throughout the story and that all of the characters are believing something different about themselves and what their chances are. Really atmospheric, so much characterisation achieved for a flash, and feels like it could be a much bigger story without it feeling incomplete.
Read It

 

Runner-up: Identity Crisis by Tracy Fells

What struck me about this is the way the main character’s belief changes throughout the story. The seemingly small actions and random thought processes that reveal so much about her state of mind. Really impressed with how Tracy has shown not told so much of the story and the open ending left me wanting to know more. It felt like it could be a new beginning.
Read It

 

The Shortlist

  • Identity Crisis by Tracy Fells
  • Life After Love by Marty Mayhew
  • Lost by Ani Popova
  • Shame by Deannie Day
  • The End is Nigh by Sally Lane
  • White Noise by Shirley Golden

 

Thanks to everyone that entered the competition. The next theme is DANGER and the deadline is 30th April 2016. Get writing and enter your stories here!

Other competitions open now with cash prizes, publication with innovative indie press, Urbane Publications, and  the chance to get your work in front of a top literary agent are:

Identity Crisis by Tracy Fells

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The slap of cold air mists my glasses. I take them off, as I don’t have anything to clear the lenses, yet without them the world remains fogged. It’s better this way, stumbling through the nightmare, faces and features blurred beyond recognition.

‘Here, use this,’ says the WPC offering a tissue. ‘Mine always do that, that’s why I’ve got my contacts in.’

I take the tissue and wipe the front and then the back of the lenses, then the front again. Now I’ve stopped I’m not sure I can move again. Perhaps I can stay here, on this spot, not knowing. Not knowing is believing.

The WPC takes my arm. She’s not going to let me stay. She wants this to be over, to tick the box. ‘You okay, Mrs Henshaw?’

I ignore this bloody stupid question.

My other bookend stands too close. Any body odour is masked by the overpowering stench of disinfectant. His white coat brushes against the bare skin of my arm where the hairs are raised. I should have worn a cardigan. I knew they were bringing me to this cold, hopeless place, but didn’t consider the practicalities. Always pack a woolly. Gran’s words are in my head. She never left the house without a spare cardy, brolly and one of those see-through plastic rain hats that tied under the chin.

The technician looks younger than my son. He scratches the stubble on his chin, then rubs his hands on his lab coat. Maybe this is his first time. Another day I would have smiled at him, murmured reassuring platitudes like any good mother. Today, I shrink from his contaminating fear.

In front of us stands the trolley. When the sheet slips from his face my world will collapse. I’ll sink to the floor, crumple and deflate with howling despair.

The WPC’s grip tightens as the technician steps forward. His hand is on the sheet.

What if I start to retch? I haven’t eaten since the police telephoned last night, my stomach is empty so I’ve nothing to throw-up. My eyes are stuck open, yet I can’t picture his face. I try to summon a memory, anything from his childhood, from our holidays in the caravan, from his graduation. I can hear his voice, ‘Stop nagging Mum.’ But the colour of his eyes, the shape of his nose have disappeared into the mist. What kind of mother forgets her child? What kind of mother lets her son fall off the radar, to live on the streets?

I wipe my glasses again, so I can see clearly.

Bowing my head, I breathe out my fear.

I understand why they called me. Age, height and hair colouring, all match.

IT’S NOT HIM.

I shake my head. This poor boy is not my son. I have a second chance. I can believe again.

In the corridor I sink to my knees. Hands touch the floor, as if in prayer, and I retch until my stomach hurts.