Cracked Flash: Year 2, Week 9 Results!

Thanks for submitting such excellent stories all of August! I had a lot of fun reading them. Y'all are awesome.

Reminder: READ THE RULES. In particular: the rule which requires that the prompt be your first sentence(s). The pictures are optional, the prompt is not. Thanks!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Cracked Flash Fiction Competition is going on HIATUS for all of September! Why, you ask? Colleges are starting classes and both Si and Mars are moving (whee) so we anticipate we will have exactly 0 free time. :( But we'll be back in October!

And now, Y2W9 winners!

Honorable Mention

Bill Engleson (@billmelaterplea) with Armageddon with a Twist

Disclaimer: Si has much less poetry knowledge than Mars and isn't as good at analyzing them. This is a great poem! I really liked the clear structure and rhyme scheme, my favorite line was "a devils hound wagged old earth’s tail." loved the imagery there. I wasn't really sure about why there were two poems--I could see the connection, of course, but switching to the second poem broke the flow of the piece for me. I liked the imagery of the clown laughing until the end. Well done!

First Runner Up

Jeff Rowlands (@jeffnuggets) with A Question of Perspective

I love the way this story weaves the prompt in with the tale of two lovers who slowly grow apart, and the way that painting is tied to every aspect of the story. I love the multiple meanings of this line especially: "A picture he had treasured now consigned to the past." I would have liked to know more about why she changes--though, of course, it might just be that they slowly grow apart without any particular trigger. The ending is well done, excellent imagery of the empty drawers as a metaphor for their relationship as it ended. Great job!

Y2W9 Winner

Sian Brighal (@sian_ink) 

with Legacy

Beautiful story. I liked the poignant tone, the image of the crumbling moon, the excellent way you incorporated the prompt. My favorite like was this: "The unwise faith placed in progress had snapped, Damocles’ sword falling to smite those whose greed outweighed their caution and wisdom. " Great use of imagery and metaphor to set the scene. Actually if I tried to list all of my favorite lines I'd probably end up quoting the whole thing. This piece just flows, from the first sentance to the last. Even though there is no main character other than the hidden narrator, we still feel a connection. I really liked the way you incorporated the story--greedy, fatal mining of the moon's resources--with description here. Excellent job!

Legacy

The moon shone red. The end had come.

The unwise faith placed in progress had snapped, Damocles’ sword falling to smite those whose greed outweighed their caution and wisdom. Against the starry backdrop, the huddled masses whimpering on land could see streaking lights swarming away from the crimson moon. A few hours before, those lights had rested upon the silver disc, hidden in the moon’s reflected glare. Now, they scrambled like disillusioned moths away from a toxic lamp.

The news said it’d be only a matter of hours until the moon collapsed and fractured, her heart and bones mined out. The news reporter hadn’t elaborated: they all knew what would come next. Moonrocks the size of continents would hurtle towards them; the oceans would rage and boil away before the atmosphere and everything immolated.

Those ships and her crew were merely extending the extinction of…everything in their bid to survive. They’d hover like flies over the last carcass, and when it was picked clean, they’d waste and die to hang like desiccated insects in a long-forgotten orbit. And our legacy to the universe would be a broken-hearted moon, weeping debris