IMPORTANT NEWS:
Creating Reality has enjoyed bringing you poetry, haiku and flash fiction competitions over the past four years but sadly there won’t be any more for the time being. Although we will still award our annual art prize at the Royal Society of British Artists annual exhibition and continue helping writers and artists where we can, we have chosen to refocus. As we are a non-profit organisation we have relied on our volunteers to keep Creating Reality going and thank everyone who has helped out for their time and efforts.

CREATING REALITY ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE RESULTS OF THEIR FINAL FLASH FICTION COMPETITION

 

FIRST PLACE – The Decision by Sally Coates

Flash! Flash! Flash!
Your heart on a screen.
A tiny light flickering and its decision made.
‘She’s fifteen years old for Christ’s sake’, my father’s voice booms as my mother begs and pleads my case.
I cover my head with the pillow and feel hot hands on cold flesh, tearing, fumbling, clumsy in the half light of the bus shelter. My head spinning with alcopop and the dog end of a spliff. He’s in before I can say no entry so I let him carry on. I don’t feel a thing.
‘Seven weeks’, says the sonographers, her voice cold and clinical.
‘What do you want to do?’ says the nurse.
Flash! Flash! Flash! says your heart.
‘I’m keeping it’, I say.
Your hearts given me no choice.

Sally Coates lives in Sussex with her husband and three children. She recently returned to education and is studying for an English degree. She writes poetry and short stories but this is the first time she has entered a Flash Fiction competition.

 

SECOND PLACE – Mugs by Tania Hershman

They meet in pottery class. Her coffee mugs are misshapen, clumsy. His espresso cups are identical, boring. He envies her creativity; she craves his perfection.
After class, they walk to the bus stop. Shy, hands in pockets.
“Do you...?”
“Yes?”
“I mean... are you...?”
“Am I...?
“Hungry?” They laugh, relieved.

The air is warm with tomato sauce. They order gnocchi, spinach ravioli.
“My mother wanted a boy, made me wear trousers when everyone else was in frilly dresses,” she says, after two glasses of house red.
“My brother shut me in the wardrobe for hours,” he says, looking down at the plastic flowered tablecloth. She shifts her hand so her fingertips touch his, just for a second.
At the end of the final class, they show off their work, then carry heavy bags towards the bus stop.
“Hang on,” he says. He steers her past and along, to a dark alley beside the bank. Nervous, she follows. Putting down the bag, he gets out a parcel and unwraps the newspaper. Then, sudden as lightning, he throws it at the wall.
Bang! A thousand tiny white splinters.
She stares, amazed, then laughs. Laughs and laughs until she cries. He grins, watches as she scrambles to unwrap one of hers and then, like a bowler, swings her arm and flings.
Thud! A shower of clay handles and coloured chunks.
He throws another, and then she, and they take turns until there is only one left of each.
“Please,” she says. She takes his smooth espresso cup, cradling it. He holds her clumsy mug to his heart. They stand in a pool of pottery pieces in a dark alley, looking at one another, in a city of a thousand sighs and lonely souls.

Tania Hershman is a science journalist originally from London and now living in Jerusalem. She is working on a collection of science-inspired short stories, two of which were broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and several others published or forthcoming in online and print journals and anthologies including Route's Wonderwall and Ideas Above Our Station anthologies, The Hiss Quarterly, the Steel City Review, the Orphan Leaf Review, Front&Centre, Transmission and Spoiled Ink. She won Creating Reality's 2nd Flash 300 competiton and was awarded 2nd prize in the Entelechy Journal's 2006 Biofiction competition. Her website is www.taniahershman.com and her blog is http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com.

 

THIRD PLACE – Broken Glass by Lesley Mace

She’d had the empty bottle since before she met Stephen: Smirnoff Vodka, Red Label. In the bright muddle of her book-strewn flat she’d saved loose change in it.
Now they were married it had a different purpose – she kept her anger in it.
‘Books belong on shelves’, he said.
‘That skirt’s too conspicuous’, he said.
‘Children? Not yet’, he said.
As a child her anger had been discouraged.
‘Behave yourself’, they said.
‘Don’t scream at me’, they said.
‘Go to your room’, they said.
Stephen thinned his lips and punished her with silence if she ‘talked back’.
In its hiding place under the sink, the bottle received the fury of her retorts for three years; her writing gouged onto paper-slips that were mashed into tiny balls and posted into its tight mouth.
There were two litres of anger in the bottle when she smashed it on the worktop and attacked him with the jagged end. His blood dripped onto broken glass.
I’m sorry’, she said.

Lesley has written over fifty short stories since she began writing in December 2002. She types out her stories to the counterpoint bubbling of her home-made wines as they ferment. Last year she completed her novel Fathoming Shadows and is seeking representation from an agent. Lesley is an Escalator Award winner and was funded to finish her book by Arts Council England. Lesley coordinates the writers’ group, ‘The Stortford Scribblers’, in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire.

 

HIGHLY COMMENDED
Justice Served by Melanie Filmer
To Darken Nature by Charlotte Unsworth
Daydream by Theresa Hind
Seeing is Believing by Paul Cuddihy

 

EMAIL:
We have experienced severe problems with spam here at Creating Reality, receiving over 10,000 each day! This has brought our email system to its knees in recent weeks so if you have tried to contact us by email and not had a reply please accept our sincere apologies.

We can now only be contacted on milly *at*creatingreality.co.uk