Wheel winners, and some fine short fiction

We have winners! I fired up my steam-powered, robotic prize picking monkey, Robo-Bobo and had him thrust his razor-sharp claws into the vast hat I use to store my contest entries. At first Robo-Bobo wouldn't release the winning entries, demanding increases in his rations of bananas and coal, but I distracted the poor devil with a firm blow from a two-by-four and liberated the winning names. Negotiating with unruly monkeys only encourages them.

And the winners are: Jeff Domer, Jr.! Edgar Mason! and Nathaniel Lee! All sent in 100 word or less short stories that I thought did the flash fiction genre proud. And, luckily, I have permission to share these stories:

ONE PUNCH
by Jeff Domer Jr.

It started with a punch. One punch too many from a bully named Red.

Revenge was on Nick’s mind. Not the revenge that brings a gun to school and makes a bully a martyr. The kind of revenge he wanted was the kind that took time and research.

Time, Nick thought to himself. Nick was close to knowing how to bend time back on it’s self. When he broke the mystery of time, he would go back. Red would not be remembered. Red would not be a martyr. Nicolas Knowbokov would make Red a nobody.

*

BINDINGS

by Edgar Mason

When the pages began to fall out of The Collected Short Fiction of William Faulkner, she knew it was over.

She undid every strap in the apartment. She untied all the laces onher shoes. She unbound her hair from its many braids.

Gently, she lowered his body down from where it had hung since the night he had decided he would die. She broke the webs the spiders hadcast over his eyes, and kissed him for the last time.

And then she left, with no more bindings on her – nor on him.

*

VERISIMILITUDE

by Nathaniel Lee

It's the small things that make a life. A chipped diamond ring foundon a table tells a story. A sprinkle of glass and tire marks at an intersection tell a different one. Or the receipts in a library copy of "The Prince": lifts for shoes, a power tie, strawberry yogurt, andTaco Bell. Stained.

It's these tiny details that count, that make someone real. I thinkas many as half the people in the city are my creations, now.

Oh, don't look at me like that. I know you don't believe me. I know everything about you.

My child.

*

I should also note that Nathaniel is something of a pro at this 100 word fiction. He posts a story daily at the site Mirrorshards.

You can find out more about Edgar Boyles at the site saturdayradio.blogspot.com.