FFF Competition Twenty-Five Judge’s Report by Eleanor Luke
27th January 2025
Imagine being handed a tray of glistening precious stones and asked to decide which one shines the brightest. It’s not an exaggeration to say that was how it felt to choose six stories from the longlist. It was a task made harder by knowing how it feels to be on the other side—wanting a judge to love your words as much as you do. The stories on the longlist are all jewels without exception and cover so many themes: loss, friendship, hope, rage, pining, politics, and rebirth. Even a shipwreck! Congratulations to everyone for putting your words out there. A massive and heartfelt thanks must also go to Ian Rushton and Free Flash Fiction for running this fabulous contest, giving me the chance to judge and offering a home to so many wonderful flash stories.
In the end, I had to find a way to narrow the longlist down and I opted for the stories that refused to be silenced. Calling me back to them, again and again.
‘The Bewitching Hour’: I love how this shortlisted story captures a moment in time. The narrators walk with their dog, Willow, in the countryside. We follow them through the fields and are treated to poetic descriptions, with phrases like ‘Serenaded by blackbirds, unseen in trees and hedgerow at our side, we tread across the flat grass path that winds around the landscape’. What seems like a simple walk, though, soon turns into an adventure when we realise the dog is leading her owner to a magical encounter, had many times before, with a deer. In the end, this is the story of the pursuit of one spellbinding moment in time. What a brilliant idea for a story!
‘The River’: I was captivated, on the first read, by the use of the pronoun ‘you’ in this shortlisted story. Against all expectations, the ‘you’ being addressed is not a person, but a thing: a river. Each time I reread the story, I became more aware of how its rhythm seemed to mimic the flow of a river. It starts as a gentle trickle, ‘waters tinkling and susurrating round ancient stones’. Then we have a sinister change of tone: ‘I know your murderous ways.’ I live very close to Valencia in Spain and after the devastating floods last year, this sentence honestly sent a chill down my spine. The story roars onwards describing the destructive power of water perfectly. But then, in the end, we are back with the narrator, on the banks of the river, dipping our sun-warmed toes in the bracing water and listening to a distant woodpecker. Bliss!
‘Life Had Been Grinding Along For An Ice-Age When One Night…’ In this shortlisted story, we are introduced to Claire, a woman pushed to the limit by life. She has become numb to her cheating husband, her nagging mother, and her egocentric sister. So numb, in fact, that she has simply turned into a frozen block of ice, impossible to defrost. I love how surreal this story feels and while the writer is cleverly using ice as a metaphor, part of you is left wondering whether this is actually happening. There are lovely touches of humour too. In the end, though, not only does Claire defrost a little but she breaks free from all of them with terrifying strength. I adore the ending which shows Claire as a new person: a treacherous iceberg ready to pulverise anyone who gets in her way!
‘Guarding the Broken Gate’: This highly commended story is a triumph of all that is left unsaid. We don’t need to know why the narrator left his father 25 years ago and never looked back. It’s enough to know he has his reasons which weigh as heavy as a ton of rocks. What we really care about is this moment. The journey he takes across land and sea to reunite with his father. We are rooting for him when he approaches the butter-coloured bungalow to find his dad guarding the broken gate. For the narrator, ‘Years concertina, the roadmap of his face so familiar. Every broken vein’ while his father, heartbreakingly, no longer recognises his son. That is until the narrator opens up the cheap kiddie umbrella he bought at the port. This triggers his father’s damaged memory reminding him that he is indeed a father and this is his son. ‘There’s a landslide inside me’ says the narrator and there was one inside me too! I love how this story strikes a careful balance between sentimentality and the reality of dementia. It’s a beautifully told tale of forgiveness and, above all, love. Congratulations!
‘Because Education Matters’: In the second highly commended story, we meet Jacqueline Robinson, a girl from a deprived background who doesn’t fit in at school. This piece immediately struck so many chords with me and brought home how awful school can be when you’re not popular. I love the way imperative verbs and the second-person singular viewpoint are used to such tremendous effect, almost like another voice that’s judging our protagonist. There are some killer descriptions of people: ‘the flapping-gowned headmistress’, ‘Isobel Jones, her perfect shiny bob cut so sharp it slices into your heart’. I was especially struck by the description of the protagonist’s heart-breaking yearning for her existence to be noticed by the stuck-up head-girl: ‘your heart heals, just a little bit, because you exist in her world’. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that line! Then we are taken back home to a comatose mother lying on the sofa, oblivious to her daughter’s plight. Thank goodness the story ends on a hint of optimism: Jacqueline gets her books out and we are brought full circle to the title of the story. Magnificent!
Finally, to the winning story, ‘Ghosts in the Holloway’. I was utterly won over by how beautifully written this story is. The author uses a skilful economy of words from the very first line telling us that the protagonist is grieving without needing to hammer it home: ‘summer’s ending brought shorter days, lazy sunrises and painful, precious anniversaries’. The piece is sprinkled with jewels without feeling overdone. But the absolute stars of the show are the indifferent ghosts she meets on her walk, with their ‘been there, done that expressions, the people whose stories had already been told’. I love the description of what they’re doing: smoking cigarettes, reading books, playing cards, feet up on the memorial bench. The ghosts quite simply come alive before our eyes. As she walks deeper into the woods with her dogs, ‘a nest of memories stirred, floating down around her like early falling leaves’ and at last she’s reunited with the man she lost – perhaps just a memory, or maybe another ghost - who reassures her he never left her at all. The stunning descriptions in this story together with the poignant way it deals with grief weave together to make this an absolutely deserving winner. Congratulations!
Eleanor Luke