I

Bread and Salt

by Alyssa Jordan

II

Dad

Jo Withers

III

The Scuttler

by Emily Livingstone

IV

Blessing the Pets

by M.K. Foster

V

A Bone to Pick

by Margret Wiggins

VI

Descent

Jiksun Cheung

VII

We Don’t Go Out After Dark

by Amanda Dawson

VIII

He Doesn’t Talk About It

by Adrian Scanlan

IX

Hewn Oak

by Daniel Scamell

X.i

1802

by Rachel Abbey McCafferty

X.ii

What a Glorious Feeling

by Sara Brenes Akerman

Flash Monster is now closed.

Check back on October 29th at 9am PST for results!

Slackers rejoice!

Procrastinator Special keeps late entries open until Oct. 17th.

“The real world is where the monsters are.”

– Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

Submit to Flash Monster

In a year of once-abstract horrors made manifest, fictional monsters serve as much more than escapism. The allegories basically write themselves, so you should have no trouble with your Flash Monster 2020 entry.  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 some past Flash Monster issues here, here, here, and here.

The top three entries will win cash money.

$300 for Flash Monster 2020 winner

$150 for 2nd place

$75 for 3rd place

We also give mad respect 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 2020

Follow these guidelines, and your best nightmare could come true.  – All submissions must absolutely be under 1,000 words, and we tend to look more kindly on 750 or fewer because… TRANSMOGRIFYING SQUIRREL! – All contest submissions will be read blind, so we won’t be playing favorites. Sorry, Mom! – Please paste your entry into the corresponding field. Do not list your name anywhere or we’ll assume you won’t be able to accurately recite the words that break the curse. – Costs $8 $10 to enter during Procrastinator Special (Sorry, no refunds.) – We reserve the right to extend deadlines if necessary (and you can expect our usual Procrastinator’s Special with corresponding increase in entry 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 – Submissions must be previously unpublished work, and you will retain copyright (duh).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. – Contest deadline is end of day (PST) Monday, October 12 2020 final deadline is Saturday, October 17th, 2020. Winners announced on October 29th, and we’ll unleash the Flash Monster 2020 mega-issue by 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…

Shock us with your submission.

Submit to Flash Monster