Year 1, Week 42: Results!

This is my favorite meme.

YO this is Si and it is time for CFFC Y1W42 WINNERS! Thanks to everyone for participating and let's get right to it!

Honorable Mention

Leara Morris-Clark's Party to the Crime

A fun little snippet of a story! I like how it's quickly established what the relationship between the main character and the teen (or so I assume) is. With a minimum of explanation the reader can see exactly what the situation is in this story--great "show not tell"! The ending amused me--"I am not very good at this adulting thing." (I sympathize!). I liked the balance of dialogue in this story. I would have liked to see more interaction between the characters, or had a bit more of a backstory/description woven into the piece. At the moment it is a bit abrupt--what is "You" like? Overall, great flash piece!

First Runner Up

Catherine Custard's Time

This was a very interesting take on Mother Nature. Usually we see her as a loving, necessary entity, here the piece points out some of the cruel dichotomies of the world brought about by her. There are some great lines here--" Even when you are happy your bounty is inequitable" for example. I don't think I've read a vengeful piece against Mother Nature before so this was quite original! We can feel the narrator's bitterness and anticipation of Mother Nature's demise. One suggestion I would make is to weave in these lines a little more clearly: " There is one on whom you depend. The Sun— he is your king, your lover. ". This was unexpected from the previous line: " You are queen but your reign will not last forever." Here I was expecting to see imagery of climate change, or even Time as you have later in the piece. I especially liked that the ultimate enemy here is Time, which will destroy all in the end. Great imagery and excellent piece!

Y1W41 Winner

Bill Engleson

with The Caller

Okay, I really loved this piece. Excellent job with the tension especially. I love how you start out with the frightening call, then while we wonder why the narrator received such a call we hear about how unexpected it is to them. The varying lengths of the paragraphs follow the tension of the story very well--great pacing. We can feel the narrator's confusion and fear. What had they done to deserve this? And finally the twist--it was a wrong number! One suggestion I have is to work with the lines following "it belonged to one of those wretched creatures burdened with a tonal deficit"--the tone here doesn't fit the rest of the piece, and I wondered why the narrator had such strong feelings against someone with this kind of voice. I like how you give just enough background for the reader, but we switch back to the suspenseful present quickly.  The sentence fragments do a great job building up suspense. Excellent story!

The Caller

“I see you. You don’t think I can but believe me, I do. There is nowhere you can hide.”

And then, click.

Even though the message was clear. I replayed it just to be sure I’d heard it right. The voice was unfamiliar. It had a high-pitched whine to it, muffled perhaps, or, more likely, it belonged to one of those wretched creatures burdened with a tonal deficit, inflicted from birth with a soprano screech, a castrato, perhaps, a shriek destined to shatter the simple pleasures of life by driving anyone within earshot away with their violently unpleasant, fingernail-on-blackboard lilt.

It screamed ME! ME! ME! Feed me! Love! Obey me!

The threat was beyond me.

I had lived, up to that moment, the most spotless of lives. I opened doors for old ladies, for old men, for strangers who were half a block down the street in the oft chance that they wanted to enter the building, any building I happened to be entering, and, occasionally, even buildings I had no intention of entering.

But beyond that, I had never, to my knowledge, interfered with anyone.

I lived an ascetic life. It was not necessarily by choice. Rather, my childhood was constrained. Home-schooled, a rural upbringing, a community nearly childless, a situation driven by economics.

I was surrounded by ancients, most uninterested in my uncomplicated ways.

Life as an adult followed much the same isolated pattern. I became a practical nurse and gravitated to the care of the elderly, nursing homes for the most part, homes increasingly occupied by the demented, elders unable to recall their lives.

I felt in good company.

But never had I been threatened like this.

My heart was racing.

And then…the phone rang again.

Time passed.

The same piercing voice.

“Oops, sorry. Wrong number again.”

 Congratulations, everyone! JOIN US ON SATURDAY FOR ANOTHER ROUND WITH MARS!