Kill your darlings.

I

What We Find in the Guts of the Bodies
that the River Gives Us

by Philip Webb Gregg

II

What I Am Now

by Alex Sobel

III

Animal Control

by S.E. Casey

 

IV

Grief and Gravity

by Barlow Adams

V

Bird’s Eye View

by Kathryn Burkett

VI

Philosophy of Black Holes and Time Warps

by R.Gene Turchin

VII

Mama Always Said

by Roni Slye

VIII

Baa Baa Black Sheep

by Tyler Dunning

IX

Incandescence 

by Tom Weller

X

This House a Home

by Levi Krain

 

Apparently, you folks are a little morbid. We were thrilled to see so many unique angles taken on this contest’s death theme. Although, with such a strong turnout and such compelling writing, that made for cutthroat competition.

We saw entries pour in from 40 states here in the U.S. (get your act together, Wyoming, et al.) as well as from writers living in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and Wales.

With such fierce competition, just making the shortlist required clearing quite a few hurdles. The following writers had stories that made it through several rounds of cuts, but didn’t quite squeak into the Top 10.

 

Close-but-no-cigar shout-outs go to:

Christopher Allen
Kristopher Armstrong
K.B. Carle
Spencer Chou
Nathan Coley
Joan Cooper
John Cornelius
Dwight Curtis
Tracy Davidson
Alex Ebel
Myles Ehrlich
Jeremy Goun
Ann Graham
Wiebo Grobler
June Guralnick
Timothy Johnson
Gaynor Jones
Sam Jowett
Robert Kaye
Raki Kopernik
Rick Krizman
Jose Medina
MJ McGinn
Chris Milam
Lawrence Morgan
James Murphy
Matt Paczkowski
Robert Penner
Erin Perry Willis
Jon Ross
R.A. Roth
Aeryn Rudel
Ryan Stone
Kaleb Tutt

 

The Top 10 that you’ll find below will be published in our forthcoming Killer Flash mega-issue, which will drop on Friday. They will also be included in our fourth-annual Prize Winners Anthology print issue, to be published in Fall 2018. 

Now check this out:

10th Place – “This House a Home” by Levi Krain

9th Place – “Incandescence” by Tom Weller

8th Place – “Baa Baa Black Sheep” by Tyler Dunning

7th Place – “Mama Always Said” by Roni Slye

6th Place – “Philosophy of Black Holes and Time Warps” by R.Gene Turchin

5th Place – “Bird’s Eye View” by Kathryn Burkett

4th Place – “Grief and Gravity” by Barlow Adams

 

And now on to those stories that really took our breath away.

 

 

3rd Place ($50)

“Animal Control”
by S.E. Casey

 

2nd Place ($100)

“What I Am Now”
by Alex Sobel

 

1st Place ($200)

“What We Find in the Guts of the Bodies
that the River Gives Us”
by Philip Webb Gregg

 

Congrats to the winners and a huge thanks to everyone who participated in our Killer Flash contest! It was a joy to read your work, and we couldn’t host these contests without you. Check back soon for the Killer Flash mega-issue. 

Killer Flash
is now closed

Results posted Tuesday, May 1st, 2018

Not dead yet!

Slackers rejoice! Procrastinator’s Special keeps the contest open for a couple bucks extra.

Final deadline April 26th at 11:59pm (PST)

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

– William Faulkner

Time to get morbid. In our latest quarterly flash fiction contest, we’re asking writers to submit stories that involve some form of death. Sounds straightforward enough, but keep in mind we don’t want to see a dozen stories featuring the same axe murderer archetype or the anguish of putting down your rabid dog. We’re looking for subtle over explicit, nuance over nastiness. That said, feel free to go as dark as the inside of a coffin on a moonless night. 

And while we want to see some form of death in each entry, the way it manifests is completely open-ended. Get creative with it. Murder is great if it’s unique and compelling. Suicide is pretty tricky, but certainly on the table. Animal attacks? Go for it. Paranormal entities dragging a soul to hell? Sure, give it a whirl. Cannibalistic cult sacrifices? Now you’re cooking. Destruction of nature? The fall of an alien civilization? The slow death of the American Dream? Heady stuff.

Go as literal or metaphorical with the death as you want. Make it the central focus of the story or an event that’s merely implied. Go crushingly bleak with it, or add some levity and laugh right in Death’s stupid face. There really are no rules about how to implement an element of death in your entry; the lone requirement is that its grim specter must be included in some way.

That said, we’re not interested in torture porn, so explicit gore or shock value alone isn’t going to cut it with us. You got to go deeper than that.

Submit to Killer Flash

 

The top three entries will win cold, hard cash.

$200 for Killer Flash winner

$100 for 2nd place

$50 for 3rd place

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

Submit to Killer Flash

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

– All submissions must absolutely be under 1,000 words, and we tend to look more kindly on 750 or fewer because…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 $6 to enter during the early-bird period and $7 after that $9 to submit during the 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 our 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 March 5th. Soft deadline is 11:59PM PST  on April 20th, 2018. Procrastinator’s Special final deadline is April 26th, 2018. Winners announced by May 1st, 2018, and we’ll release the Killer Flash mega-issue shortly thereafter.

– And, most importantly, this is a KILLER FLASH contest, so something’s gotta die. 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…

Knock ’em dead.

Submit to Killer Flash