In October, the 2017 Best Small Fictions editors ran an online micro competition, in which entrants submitted their micros in Facebook and the editors read blind. We are delighted to publish the winning entries as a special feature in this month’s issue:

First: Late Night by Jonathan Cardew

Second: A chest full of spiders by Elisabeth Ingram Wallace

Honourable mention: Barbershop by Digby Beaumont

First: Late Night

Jonathan Cardew

She was cold, so we went outside. I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. I saw a star moving. Or was it a satellite? I saw through her jacket. I saw into her chest. I saw her heart beating: slower.

Jonathan Cardew‘s writing appears or is forthcoming in Passages North, Superstition Review, JMWW, SmokeLong Quarterly, People Holding and Atticus Review, among others. He’s the fiction editor for Connotation Press, contributing books reviewer for Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and interviews editor for (b)OINK. He’s been a finalist in Best Small Fictions, the Wigleaf Top 50, the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Vella Chapbook Prize, and he won a travel toothbrush once at a boules competition in northern Brittany. Originally from the UK, he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Second: A chest full of spiders

Elisabeth Ingram Wallace

She likes to have a cold glass of vodka and watch the sun set. She likes the way it flings colours off the trees. The way it sets people, still. Mid-piss, mid-sneeze. Eyes spidered shut, chests full of air. Magic Hour. She orbits, whirlwinded. Cracks open some more sky.

Elisabeth Ingram Wallace lives in Glasgow, and is a 2017 Scottish Book Trust ‘New Writers Award‘ winner. Her work has won a Dewar Arts Award and a Bath Flash Fiction prize, and has been short-listed for Writing the Future 2017, the world’s biggest sci-fi short story prize. Her stories are published or forthcoming in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies, New Writing Scotland and b(OINK). www.elisabethingramwallace.com

Honourable Mention: Barbershop

Digby Beaumont

“I want my hair cut like a boy’s.” She tucks a stray lock behind her ear. Her look through the mirror feels like she’s reaching for my hand. I point my Kodak. We’re thirteen. Soon she’ll be gone forever. For now, she bows her head as the first strands fall.

Digby Beaumont‘s flash fiction has been published widely in print and online journals, including Literary Orphans, r.kv.r.y quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Blue Five Notebook, KYSO Flash, Jellyfish Review, Flash Frontier, Change Seven and 100-Word Story. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. He has made a living as a nonfiction author for many years, with numerous publications, and is currently working on a flash collection and a short film project.