Flash Villain 2025 is now closed.

Check back at noon Pacific
on Monday, May 19th, 2025 for results.

Procrastinators Rejoice!

Slacker Special keeps late entries open
until Thursday, May 15th.

“I firmly believe that a story
is only as good as the villain.”

– Clive Barker

Submit to Flash Villain

There’s villainy afoot these days. When real-world malevolence erupts in a torrent of sludge, we like to ride that wave into the depths of fictional depravity. After all, in storytelling, beneficence is overrated. So, for this contest, we’re looking for malice and ill-intent.

Give us misunderstood antiheros or characters rotten to their cores. You can go as literal or figurative with your villain as you want. Keep them lurking in the shadows or tell the story from their perspective. Defy archetypal expectations or fully immerse yourself in the trappings of the dark side.

Evil can subtle and nuanced, or your can try beating us over the head with it. Everyday villainy or crossing the line into cartoonish supervillainy. Your villain could take the form of a person, an animal, a seemingly inanimate object, a supernatural entity, a corrupt system, an undigested bit of beef, you name it. The only thematic requirement is that there is some sort of antagonistic force at work within your story.

With all the vile shenanigans making headlines these days, we’re less likely to look kindly on political satire or stories involving real public figures, unless you really knock those out of the park. Also, while your villains and antiheroes can certainly do monstrous things, we don’t want to see too many actual monsters in this contest, as we run a whole contest on that theme each fall. 

We like literary-adjacent approaches, but we also dig full-on genre and pulpy takes as well. Arthouse or grindhouse. The sweet spot is often somewhere in the middle. If you want to take a peek at what kind of villainous flash fiction floated out boats when we first ran a contest on this theme back in 2021, you can do so here. 

The top three entries will win cash money (USD).

$300 for Flash Villain 2025 winner

$200 for 2nd place

$100 for 3rd place

We also give mad respect to 4th-10th place,
publishing them in our Flash Villain 2025 mega-issue.

Submit to Flash Villain

And now for the rules…

Follow these guidelines and your entry could take over the world.

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

– All contest submissions will be read with identity concealed, so we won’t be playing favorites. 

– We don’t like opening attachments, so please paste your entry into the corresponding field. Do not list your name anywhere or we’ll assume you don’t know to read.

– Costs $8 to enter during our Early-Bird period and $10 after that $13 to enter during Slacker Special. (Sorry, no refunds.) 

– We reserve the right to extend deadlines if necessary (and you can expect our usual Slacker Special).

– 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) 

– 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 period runs until March 10th, 2025. Contest soft deadline is end of day (PST) Monday, May 5th, 2025.  Contest final deadline is end of day (Pacific) Thursday, May 15th, 2025. Winners announced on May 19th and we’ll unleash the Flash Villain 2025 mega-issue shortly thereafter.

– And, most importantly, this is a FLASH VILLAIN contest, so you must include some sort of antihero, villain, malevolent force, or malicious act. But again, this can be in almost any form imaginable.

So that means you can do something like this…

or this…

or this…

or this…

or even this…

Submit to Flash Villain