Flash Monster 2018

This is Halloween.

 

I

Ursa Major

by Jen Corrigan

II

The Lamppost Huggers

by Christopher Stanley

III

Our Immortal Night

by Neil Clark

 

IV

Indoors

by Travis Dahlke

V

I’ve Seen the Other Shadow in the City

by Emma Miller

VI

Manticore

by Stuart Airey

VII

Ink

by Alpheus Williams

VIII

Sawdust 

by James Turner

IX

Morkus

by Justin Eells

X

The Scaredy Men

by S.E. Casey

Flash Monster entries are now closed.

Results posted at 12 noon (PST) on October 30th.

 

“Monsters are the patron saints
of imperfection.”

– Guillermo del Toro

Submit to Flash Monster

It’s that time of year again. Time to head back to the lab and cook us up something sinister. The Flash Monster contest is the theme that started it all back in 2014, and we’re anticipating that this year’s crop of abominations against god and nature will be the most horrific yet. 

Now the theme for this one is pretty self-explanatory. But we’d also like to point out that you can go as literal or figurative with your monster as you want. We like literary approaches, but we also dig genre and pulpy takes as well.  Art house or grindhouse. Subvert the usual monster tropes or create something nobody’s ever seen before. 

You can check out past Flash Monster issues (located under the Contests tab) for inspiration, but to get the creative juices flowing, here are some totally serious jumping-off points:

  • Vampiric garlic
  • Sewer-dwelling billionaires
  • Doppelgänger poltergeists
  • Druid squids
  • Soul-swallowing cubicles
  • Cannibal Annabelles
  • Passive-aggressive piranhas
  • Extraterrestrial exorcists
  • Soup that slurps you
  • Were-clowns
  • Mute banshees
  • Boots made for stalking
  • Fire-hydrant hydras
  • Succubus drivers
  • Sentient, licentious lint
  • Tarantula nuns
  • Minotaur mummies
  • The sulking dead
  • Go-go-dancing golems
  • Leprous leprechaun leeches
  • Changelings that people secretly prefer to your own shitty kid
  • Tornado goblins

 

The top three entries will win cold, hard cash.

$200 for Flash Monster 2018 winner

$100 for 2nd place

$50 for 3rd place

We also give mad props to 4th-10th place,
publishing them in our Flash Monster mega-issue
and in a future print anthology, with contributor copy included.

Submit to Flash Monster 2018

Follow these guidelines, and you could have some extra coin in your pocket, and some bragging rights as the Flash Monster 2018 winner.

– All submissions must absolutely be under 1,000 words, and we tend to look more kindly on 750 or fewer because…THREE-HEADED SQUIRREL!

– All contest submissions will be read blind, so we won’t be playing favorites. Sorry, Mom.

– Please paste your submission into the corresponding field. Do not list your name anywhere in your submission or we’ll assume that you don’t know how to read.

– Costs $7 $9 to enter during Procrastinator’s Special. (Sorry, no refunds.)

– We reserve the right to extend deadlines if necessary (and you can expect our usual week-ish Procrastinator’s Special—with corresponding increase in submission fee for you slackers).

– Submissions must be previously unpublished work, and you will retain copyright (duh). By entering this contest you give us permission to publish your work—if selected for our Top 10—both online and in a future print anthology.

– No limit on how many entries you can submit, but you must submit them one at a time. Don’t just mash them all in there.

– Early Bird deadline is September 12th, 2018.  Final contest deadline is end of day (PST) Friday, October 26th, 2018. Winners announced on October 30th, and we’ll unleash the Flash Monster 2018 mega-issue on Halloween!

– And, most importantly, this is a FLASH MONSTER contest, so you must include some sort of literal or figurative monster. But again, this can be in any form imaginable.

 

So that means you can go all…

or all…

or all…

or all…

or even all…

Creep us out.

Submit to Flash Monster