Welp, we’re less than 24 hours away from a deranged circus clown taking over the White House. In spite the bleakness of world affairs at the moment, or perhaps because of it, we had a killer crop of imaginative doom-oriented flash fiction to sort through for this contest. We’re always gobsmacked by the creative dark and offbeat scenarios written about in our quarterly contests, and this one might’ve taken the cake for strange and surreal premises. Truly a joy to read them, and it’s always difficult to whittle them down to the ten stories that you’ll find in our Flash Doom mega-issue.  

We had quite a few close-but-no-cigars that were in the running right down to the final moments (and we encourage these stories to be submitted for consideration for our regular issues). Cannibals, surly sasquatch, jailhouse contagion, asteroids, diminishing body parts, boulder-hurling giants, electrified executions, alligators, ice dummies, gold towers, killer swimming pools, parasitic ladybug mutants? Yeah, we had all that and more, but as they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. 

Close-but-no-cigar mentions go to the following writers:

Michael Croban
Calvin Demmer
Dan Diehn
Benjamin Finateri
Wiebo Grobler
Emmaleene Leahy
Emily Livingstone
Erick Mancilla
Toni Marshall
Jamie Mason
Hannah Mathewson
Lee Melling 
Jonathan Ochoco
R.A. Roth
Aeryn Rudel
Allison Spector (2)
Christopher Stanley
Mike Sweeney
Michael Tanner
John Vurro

The Top 10 that you’ll find below will be published in our forthcoming Flash Doom mega-issue, which will run tomorrow on Trumpocalypse. They will also be included in our third-annual Prize Winners Anthology print issue this fall. You can check out our recently-released Prize Winners Anthology Vol. 2 here.

But you didn’t come here for my yammering. 

Honorable Mentions go to:

10th Place – “Starve” by Nicolas Poynter

9th Place – “In Dreams” by Sherry Morris

8th Place – “The Remnant Bloom” by James Guthrie

7th Place – “An Incident on Dover Street” by Aeryn Rudel

6th Place – “The Ballad of James Malloy” by GJ Hart

5th Place – “Right Number” by Aaron Housholder 

4th Place – “Wernicke 27X” by Christina Dalcher 

And now on to the really bomb stories.

3rd Place ($50)

“Burn”
by Rachel Cassidy

2nd Place ($100)

“One Last Decision”
by Bill Adler

1st Place ($200)

“The End Is Always”
by Philip Webb Gregg

Congrats to the winners and a huge thanks to everyone who participated in the Flash Doom contest. We literally couldn’t do this without you. Check back tomorrow for our Flash Doom mega-issue.