FFF Competition Eighteen Judge’s Report by Emma Phillips
20th November 2023
I feel very honoured to have judged this brilliantly run competition for a second time and would like to thank Ian and the Free Flash Fiction team for the opportunity. I knew the calibre of entries would be high; it was a challenge to narrow the long-listed stories into the final five. I read and re-read each piece, creating ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ piles, with one or two stories hopping from one pile to the next as I worked towards my decision. So, congratulations to all the long-listed authors. It was close! I hope your words find a good home soon.
Most of the themes on the long list were bleak and many stories dealt with death. I wonder if the bleakness somehow reflects these uncertain times we live in? I would like to give a special mention to ‘Sitting Alone in Front of Dad’s Coffin Contemplating Family Dynamics Through Comic -book Sound Effects’ as it was a unique take on the theme and has stayed with me.
The first shortlisted piece ‘Abandonment Study’ begins ‘On the week I was born, my father disguised me as a beer belly and took to the stairs of the highest water slide in Wild Wild Wet.’ There are so many layers to this story, that even on multiple readings I’m not sure I uncovered them all, but I loved the imagery of pregnancy woven into the waterpark setting and the buildup of tension ‘He felt the drop and the tunnel sucking around him, but because he was a boy he said nothing.’ I enjoyed it more with each reading and the final image of the father with ‘his palms faced up in tidepools after dawn’ lingers.
The second shortlisted piece ‘Things I can’t Forget from Six Days That Summer’ also retains an air of mystery and packs a complex plot into a few words. It is a thriller in the flash fiction form and the author excels at giving details that disturb, from ‘the Norwich address I found in the bin’ to ‘the mouse-grey bruise on your milk-pale breast’ only to twist it with the last line ‘My letter of thanks from the investigating officer.” Oof, a masterclass in an unreliable narrator!
Highly Commended ‘Perfectly Portioned Victoria Sponge’ is a read without taking a breath story, beautifully structured around one moment prior to a horrific accident. The imagery ‘Later, you’ll glance at your palm across white cotton cloth, feeling atoms of cake beneath it’, carries the reader through a tragedy in circumstances that are totally relatable. This is what ultimately makes it so heartbreaking.
‘Fish Sands, 1984’ is another gut-punching story that I loved from first reading. The contrast of the two sisters playing in the ‘teeth-suck cold’ water, their linked hands ‘like underwater stars’ until the fateful moment when the older boys with ‘eyes flinted and full of secrets’ persuade the elder girl into a ‘game’ cleverly evokes the nostalgia of an era when childhood meant freedom to create your own boundaries, but also danger and risk. This is a story about the fragility of life and an imbalance of power. Like ‘Perfectly Portioned Victoria Sponge’ it also reminds us how quickly everything can change in a moment. Powerful stuff!
The winning piece ‘Annie Builds Walls’ is a beautifully written tale of grief that immediately caught my eye. Annie’s walls on the beach stand as literal and metaphoric barriers throughout the story, between life and death, then and now, constant reminders of her lost child. Annie builds walls ‘the colours of joy, the colours of toys’ and through these ‘timber posts’ the author reveals aspects of the tragedy: ‘She knows what the sea can swallow when you turn your back for a second’. The language is gorgeous, the walls beguiling. This is a story to read and read again.
Finally a huge Congratulations to all the winners, this really was a pleasure.
Emma Phillips
Click here to read the FFF Competition Seventeen winning story - Frontier by Emma Phillips