Holly Brown was awarded first place in the 2020 ACCC Flash Fiction Contest at an awards celebration held Mar. 5 at the Arts Center in Victoria. Her story The Astrophysicists Wife, links one drop of water and the laws of physics to a tragic outcome.

Walter Treat won second place for First To Go, an imagining of the beginning of the end of the world.

Third place in the adult category went to Letha Woods. Her story, Milestones, is about a woman triumphantly beating the odds after suffering a horrific accident.

Izzy Sanders won first place honors in the contest’s inaugural Young Adult category. Her story, Invisible Scars, is about a girl struggling to survive a drug overdose.

Second place went to Linnea Barto for Before the Fall: Eve’s Story, a re-imagining of the Garden of Eden story.

Twelve writers entered the contest this year, and all were invited to join the winners in reading their stories at the celebration. The ACCC thanks everyone who entered the contest. Our judge this year is a language arts teacher and himself a writer who sent a note with his selections saying he “enjoyed the level of quality in the pieces and it was a hard choice selecting finalists.”

Holly and Letha requested that their stories not be published online at this time. Here, then, are the other winning tales.

FIRST TO GO
By Walter Treat

A plane glided over the frozen ocean like a vulture searching for carrion. With glossy-black camouflage, a soaring altitude of 50,000 feet, and a velocity of six hundred miles per hour, any observers below would have had difficulty spotting it—not that many would have been looking, there on the thin winter ice. Even if some sky gazing polar explorer had the luck to spot the bomber, what would they do? Murmansk lay only a few minutes south, and after the plane reached the city, any efforts to stop it would be fruitless, no matter how many fighters Moscow scrambled into the sky.

The crew, meanwhile, moved like automatons. Following memorized procedures, they groped at the instruments. Shadowy careerist bureaucrats had shielded them from knowing the intricacies of the geopolitical quarrel choking the world; all they knew was that they’d been given the nuclear scythe and told to reap the 300,000 souls of the far-north Russian port.

They emerged over the snow-covered mainland, by a sparkling river still clear of ice. The crewmen saw the bright red and sky-blue roofs of the city below, and one of them pressed a button. The bomb bay doors slid open, and the sudden loss of aerodynamism shook the plane. The crewman, then, pressed the button to release the bombs, and they began to plummet. The pilot sighed. Now, his plane bereft of fuel, he would have to decide where to crash-land.

The bombs, meanwhile, spiraled down through the atmosphere. Some clever engineers at a secretive government laboratory once fitted together the explosive lenses and electrical detonators and arming controls, now so brilliantly activated—and yet never seen to its victims as more than a piece of falling machinery.

The bombs went off about five thousand feet above the ground; they burst at altitude to maximize the affected area. A flash of light leapt outwards, blinding onlookers and igniting fires on every dark surface. A fireball roared through the streets, vaporizing entire buildings. A great mass of air, heated to impossible temperatures, shot upwards, forming a mushroom cloud and flinging cancer-riddled fallout into the stratosphere. From this cloud came the shock wave, which at close distances crushed concrete buildings like pop cans under a freight train. Further away, it shattered windows into shards of glass that sliced open those investigating the flash of light.

The fallout would continue to descend and poison the residents in the days to come, but, otherwise, the weapon had finished its work. The city of Murmansk lay crushed in a bed of rubble, burning, with 60,000 of its inhabitants dead and another 90,000 injured. Those who escaped the atomic reaper had the most horrific wounds—melted skin, roasted eyeballs, and teeth and nails worming their way out of the body.
The survivors huddled together and tried to evacuate south as the fiery maelstroms ignited by the bomb turned the city into a funeral pyre. Most traveled by foot, and they all prayed that assistance would be sent to them—many were too weak to walk much further—but no help ever came. Murmansk, being the remotest of the Russian cities worth attacking, was the first to fall. But all the other Russian metropolises also fell under the same atomic fist. And likewise, too, the great cities of America and China and the whole world died, in an inferno whose instigator would go unknown forever. Thus, the death of Murmansk became not just an ending of one city, but the first act in the beginning of the end of the whole world.

INVISIBLE SCARS
By Izzy Sanders

He yelled at me with sharp words. His screaming rang through the house as it did my own ears.

Scars. A permanent mark of pain.

“You’re so stupid! How could I live with such an idiot!”

Invisible. The description of something general society can’t seem to find.

“You’re just a waste of space! My life would be better if you died!”

I pulled my knees closer to my tight chest which held my now barely beating heart and lungs that I wished would cease to work. I couldn’t cry, but I had the tears to. My room was dark and the weight of the air seemed so heavy, too heavy.

“You should be ashamed of yourself! You haven’t accomplished anything except for ruining my life!” I tear away from his burning words and sprint down the hall. I know that teardrops are flowing down my face like runny paint on a canvas. I keep going. I grab the orange bottle labeled ‘My Pills’ from my bathroom counter before I slam and lock, the only thing between him and I.

Harsh remarks repeated in my mind. They hurt me. I didn’t want to live with him, with that reality. I had such agony and no one even saw it. No one fought for me so why should I have fought for myself?

“You can’t hide your ugly face in there forever! There’s a better place for you. A garbage pile ‘cause that’s where all broken and useless things go! Maybe you’ll find some of your friends. Wait, you don’t have any!” I wish my door was thicker so I would be spared the disgusting things he has to say about me. I open the top of the container and pour the glossy pills onto my palm. Without hesitation, my hand moves to my mouth and my head tilts back. I swallow hard.

I could feel sweat coat my skin as I felt my breath slip from my body along with my strength. I grabbed a hold of my shelf and pulled myself up. I couldn’t die on the floor. But, the moment I got to my feet, my legs gave out and I fell on my back. That’s when I realized it. I didn’t want to live. But I didn’t want to die.

Gulp. I take another handful of the shiny tablets that will soon end my life. And then I repeat. I finally empty the bottle and lean my back against the wall. I look around my room. Purple light looms through the entire room and compliments the glowing stars stuck to my ceiling. I remember being so excited when I was younger after I hung them. I just wanted to go to bed right away so I could see them light up. Some things never change. Now, I can sleep and see the stars forever. I pull my knees closer to my tight chest which holds my now barely beating heart and lungs that I wish would cease to work.

I didn’t want to die. It was true that I didn’t want to live with it anymore but I was not ready to die. I started to panic and my breathing grew heavier. I could almost feel my body shutting down and all I wanted to do was live for once. But now I couldn’t. I dragged the garbage can over and stuck my fingers so far down my throat I feared they wouldn’t come up. The liquid from my stomach slid up and out of my mouth. I’m alive. I survived and- thud.

BEFORE THE FALL: EVE’S STORY
By Linnea Barto

The first thing I knew was Light. Light opened my eyes for the first time. Light surrounded me, enveloped me. Light formed me. This Light is not the sun. He is a being; living, fearsome and good. This was my beginning. I was formed by the Light of the World, created to be a human, a being made in His image.

When my feet were set on the ground of Eden, Light melted the sparkling mist to reveal another human. This human was like me, made in the image of the Light of the World, but we were not identical. The Light woke him from a deep sleep. In the dazzling brightness, Adam saw me for the first time. Joy quivered through him, and he laughed in delight, telling anyone willing to listen that he had finally found one made for him.

Then he gave me my name. He called me Woman because I was formed from his rib, taken out of Man. We became the first husband and wife.

Everything was perfect. No sin, no pain, no death. Until that day. The day to go down in history as the Fall. The day when death entered our perfect world. How I wish to return to those first days when all was good, true and right.

Adam was keeping the Garden, his job given to him by the Light. In those painless days, it was an easy job. I was gathering fruit when a serpent took notice and joined me.

He asked if the Light had told me that I may not eat any fruit in the Garden. I replied that He had told my husband that we might eat any fruit, except of the tree in the center of the Garden, lest we die. The serpent said that if I ate of that tree, I would not die, but I would become like the Light. He told me that I would know good and evil. I already knew good but had no notion of evil. I wish I were still so innocent.

I walked to the tree. Its leaves glistened; its perfect fruit sparkled. Only a moment did I pause. I would be disobeying the Light. But the fruit looked so delightful. How could something so beautiful, made by the Light, be bad?

I touched it. I ran my fingers over the silky skin. I ate.

It was as delicious as promised. I had to share. So I handed the fruit to Adam, compelling him to eat it. He knew what it was, but he ate.

Then came the realization. We saw that we were naked and had sinned. We knew evil. We were ashamed.

We hid from the Light, trying to cover our shame with leaves. But the leaves could hide nothing when the Light came to find us. He asked Adam where we were. All was known.

Man, woman and serpent were cursed, and through us, the world. Man was to toil in thorns. Woman, to have pain in childbirth. We both would die. The Light did not delight in cursing us; we brought it upon ourselves by dishonoring Him, for He is holy.

But though the Maker cursed us, He did not leave us hopeless. When He cursed the serpent, He promised that though the serpent would torment humanity, one of my offspring would crush the serpent, forever defeating evil.

This is my story, our story. You would have done no differently. But amidst all this evil and pain, hope still shines. The Light will keep His promise.

Flash Fiction Contest Coordinator
Jim Kane
jkanefabulousfiction@gmail.com
952-448-4526