Flash Fiction Contest Second Place Winning Entry

Second Place – George Bowden, Third on a Match

Marlboro. Barton lit up another and passed the lighter to Thomas.

Crazy. Smokin’ a Lucky Strike. Chest exploded before he exhaled.

The last whisps from Charlie’s Camel blurred the setting sun.

“Hunter, you waiting for an invitation?” His sergeant, a bulldog who relished the scars of too many fights, growled, “Get your butt over here, or I’m gonna kick it to the goddammed Yalu River.”

Charlie joined his squad; with oversized fatigues and dirty faces, they looked like a grenade-toting Boy Scout troop.

The sergeant pointed to a North Korean prisoner, “Hunter, you guard this asshole.”

The sergeant nodded down the hill toward a slum of three tin-topped shacks and looked at the other Marines. “You boys have work to do. And I promise -- there’s no mama-san waiting for you down there.

“Don’t worry. If you don’t come back, we’ll pick up your bodies in the morning.” Fuckin’ lunatic. Charlie knew he’d be a dead man if the thought reached his lips.

The Marines found the prisoner in a gully. They saw his hands in the air, then watched him stand up, as timid as a zit-faced boy asking a gun-toting prom queen for a dance.

He’s maybe a little older than me. Tall for a Korean. Probably the son of a hooker who took a sailor’s last five yen.

Charlie motioned him toward a downed tree in the brush. He sat on a stump, facing the prisoner.

“That sergeant is a lunatic,” Charlie complained, confident his words were meaningless to the prisoner.

“He enlisted with a high school friend right after Pearl Harbor. Lost it at Iwo Jima when he found his buddy gutted in a cave. Grabbed a flamethrower. Took out three machine guns before the medics caught him, Shot him up with morphine, took him back to the beach.

The prisoner drew random patterns in the dirt.

Charlie pulled an Emma’s Diner menu from his pocket and held it up to the dimming sunlight. He scanned the Black Knights’ football schedule on the back and traced his finger across the calendar.

“We’re playing Forestburg tonight. District champs. We can take ‘em. What am I doing here? My senior year, and I’m stuck in Korea. I go from running over linebackers to running from snipers. A good season this year, and I’d be playing at UVA or West Virginia next year.”

The prisoner chuckled. “Our backs at USC are twice your size. You wouldn’t stand a chance playing college ball.”

Charlie jumped on the comment as it if was a fumble.

“Are you kidding me? I’d blow through … what the hell?”

The prisoner laughed as if he’d just said checkmate. “I was a freshman at USC last year.

The Japanese ruled Korea for decades. A few years ago, they started sending my friends to Tokyo to work in the mines. My parents sent me to live with an uncle in the United States. When the war started, I came back to Pyongyang to find my parents. Two soldiers grabbed me on the street; I ended up in a uniform. Name is Chan-woo. In the States, ‘Johnny W.’”

Charlie shook his head and smiled as if he’d lost his last dollar in a rigged shell game.

“So,” Charlie asked, “USC going to the Rose Bowl this year?”

“I wish. The Golden Bears will be back there again.”

They parried until almost dawn. Elizabeth Taylor or Jayne Mansfield … Sugar Ray against Marciano … Rosemary Clooney or Doris Day … Yankees vs. Phillies … Mitchum or Lancaster … ’49 Mercury convertible or the new Cadillac V-8?

In the dusk, they walked down the hill and stopped for a smoke next to one of the burntout shacks, its embers a warm break from the morning’s finger-numbing chill.

The sergeant walked another prisoner past them, his .45 at the prisoner’s ear, nudging him toward the remaining shack. They disappeared around the corner. “Boom!”

The sergeant stepped back onto the trail, holstering his pistol.

“Gotta smoke, Hunter?”

“I’m out,” Charlie mumbled.

The sergeant stopped, “He was trying to escape.”

“Yeah, with a .45 at the back of his head.”

“Grow up, boy. This ain’t the senior prom and that gook there ain’t your cruisin’ buddy. You keep your mouth shut and take him to headquarters … Or it’ll look like both of you were trying to run.”

Johnny W. looked away, up the hill overlooking the shacks. A quick glint caught his eye. He smiled and pulled three Camels from his shirt pocket and lit one for himself. He handed two cigarettes and the Zippo lighter to Charlie. Charlie lit one and exhaled. Johnny W. nodded, and Charlie passed the Zippo and the last cigarette to his sergeant.

The sergeant placed the cigarette in his mouth, opened the lighter and rolled the flint wheel. The Camel flared.

Charlie stared stone-faced into the sergeant’s eyes. He pulled the bolt back on his M-1, checked the clip and snapped the bolt shut. The sergeant dropped his hand to his pistol.

Charlie spat, “You fuckin’ lun…” – A sharp crack echoed from the top of the hill. The sergeant’s body slammed to the ground, the cigarette smoldering in the blood pooling next to him.

The sniper’s next shot pinged the dirt next to Charlie’s heel. Johnny W. pushed him behind the shack. Johnny W. knew the rules about snipers. Leaning against the wall, he smiled at

Charlie, “Guess that sergeant was unlucky number three.”

Flash Fiction Contest First Place Winning Entry

First Place – BJ Condike “Seeing Pink”

I hate doctors.

They act as if they’re more important than everyone else. They get mad if you’re late for an appointment but they’re never on time themselves. You describe the source of your pain and they poke it and ask if it hurts. They stick their fingers in places where fingers should not go. They’re vague with diagnoses, and often get them wrong altogether. I griped to myself about these things as I waited for my 1:30 appointment with Dr. Parker. By 2:30 I was still waiting and knew my afternoon was shot. I’d have to call my boss and tell her I wouldn’t be in until tomorrow, putting me behind in my accounts. She disliked my frequent absences and groused about my being a hypochondriac.

I felt overdressed in the waiting room as the only one in a suitcoat and tie. But I had come from work, and it was our office dress code.

“The doctor will see you now, Mr. Thomas.”

After another wait, Dr. Parker strode into the examining room.

“So, how are we feeling today?”

We shook hands. Her hand was cold and thin like her demeanor.

“That’s what you’re here to tell me, right?”

Dr. Parker sat and put on a serious face.

“I have the results of your tests,” she said as she leafed through a file folder. “Your case is unusual. You presented with chronic complaints of periodic dizzy spells and of seeing spots before your eyes. Pink spots.” She looked up. “Are you still having those symptoms?”

“Yes,” I said. “I have dizzy spells and see pink spots. Almost every day. Not as much on weekends, but pretty much all the time.”

“Hmm.” She examined a sheet with columns of numbers. “The results of your blood work revealed the presence of blastoma cells. They’re not always a problem, but together with your symptoms they indicate a rare condition called Reichenfruiters Interplanetary Microblastoma.”

That’s not what she said, but it began with a German name, followed by a lot of syllables I couldn’t follow, and ended with “blastoma.”

“And…? What does that mean, exactly?”

“It’s serious, Mr. Thomas. The disease has progressed to where it’s untreatable. You have six months to live.”

The words didn’t register. I must have zoned out, because I heard her speaking again.

“Mr. Thomas? Mr. Thomas! Have you been listening to me?”

“What? No. Look, there must be some mistake. I’m only fifty-three. Except for the dizzy spells I feel fine. I go to the gym. I run half-marathons. I do yoga, for crying out loud!”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but there’s no mistake.”

I paced around the small room. “This is wrong. I take vitamins! I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. I’m a vegan! Why did I do all that if I was going to get sick anyway? This is not supposed to happen!”

“I wish things were different.”

“Wait! What if you’re wrong? How come I’ve never heard of this Reichen-whatever thing before?”

“Your condition is known as an orphan disease. It has so few cases that drug companies don’t study it. There’s no profit in curing orphan diseases. The government’s the same way.”

“I don’t believe this. You must be mistaken. I need a second opinion.”

She nodded. “You’re right. You do. I needed one also, so I reached out to two of the best-known experts in the field, and they’ve confirmed my diagnosis. Look at these.”

She handed me two pages with fancy letterheads. Both physicians confirmed Dr. Parker’s diagnosis.

“You’ll feel great right up until the end,” she said. “Then…” She shrugged and patted my shoulder.

I left the doctor’s office deflated and depressed. I was alone and without family and with no one to talk to. Even so, by the next day I had made decisions about my abbreviated future.

The first thing I did was visit my firm’s personnel department. I resigned without notice and cashed out my 401k. I wheedled my attorney’s secretary into arranging an immediate appointment with him. That afternoon I executed a durable power of attorney authorizing my accountant to manage my money for me until the end. I had the accountant put my bungalow on the market and told him to sell or donate all my possessions except for my phone and a few clothes.

The following day I visited a travel agent and booked a six-month trip around the world, first class. I also arranged and paid for my funeral.

On my trip I traveled to 86 countries on all seven continents. I viewed breathtaking vistas of cities and oceans and mountains. I broke from my old habits and gorged on exquisite cuisine and drank the finest wines.

On the way home and with two weeks left I stopped at Saville Row in London to buy the suit I’d be buried in. The tailor was a diminutive fellow named Wilson Reeves. He wore a conservative three-piece suit and had a pencil behind one ear and a tape measure draped around his neck.

“You selected a fine wool gabardine, Mr. Thomas,” he said. “Let me take your measure, and we’ll have this ready for you on Thursday as requested.”

I played mannequin as he stretched out his tape, calling the measurements out loud as an assistant wrote them in a tattered notebook.

“Waist, 34. Inseam 36.” He examined my midsection with a critical eye. “I’d say you carry left, is that correct?”

Only a tailor would notice. I simply nodded.

He continued. “Chest, 42. Neck seventeen. Arm 34—”

“Wait. I have a sixteen-inch neck, not seventeen.”

Wilson Reeves frowned and re-measured. “It’s seventeen, Mr. Thomas. You need a seventeen-inch neck.” “

But I’ve always worn a sixteen. I’ve been wearing a sixteen since college.”

“You can wear the smaller size if you like, but it’s not good for you. If you persist, you’ll develop periodic dizzy spells and see spots before your eyes. Pink spots.”

I hate doctors.

Flash Fiction Contest Winners!

Congratulations to the 2024 Flash Fiction Contest winners. More to follow in our newsletter.

• First Place – BJ Condike “Seeing Pink”

• Second Place – George Bowden “Third on a Match”

• Third Place – D. Kay Valentine “Dragon vs. Toddler”

• Honorable Mention – Katie Moriarty “Beyond the Wall”