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#345 Gone in a Flash

If you’re an avid follower of Prompts, you likely already know that the Reedsy Literary Prize — our new, longer-form contest for stories between 2,000 and 5,000 words — is officially live. But if you’re more keen on shorter forms of storytelling, keep reading!

For our contest this week, we’re drawing inspiration from the art of flash fiction. Our official contest guidelines are still 1,000 to 3,000 words per story, but we’d like to challenge you to write as concisely as you can, whenever possible! See how much impact you can make by using fewer words, and making every single sentence count.

🥇 Winner

Windows to the Soul

Winner of Weekly Contest #345 🏆

I ring the doorbell, my suitcase hunkered beside me on the footpath, a black, sullen thing. After a few moments, the door swings open. Jane, my eldest, looks surprised to see me. “Mam,” she says. “What are you doing here?” No how lovely to see you or I’ve missed you. She hasn’t come to see me once since she left, years ago. She eyes my suitcase on the pavement. “I’ve come to stay,” I say simply. “Stay?” she says, not understanding. “With me?” I nod. “For the weekend?” she says. I shake my head. “For as long as you’ll have me.” We look at ...

99 likes 71 comments 71
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⭐️ Shortlisted

The #944 to Tabriz

Shortlisted for Contest #345 ⭐️

As the train departed Isfahan station, Amir reached into his suitcase and felt it. Pulling it out, he carefully examined the colorful shard of ceramic between his fingers, remembering its history.That morning, his apartment shuddered; dust and plaster raining down from the ceiling. He decided to leave before it was too late. As he hastily packed his suitcase, the yellow fragment glimmered on the floor and he plucked it up, a memento of the home he had lived in for seventeen years.The American bombings were unlike anything he had ever witness...

25 likes 28 comments 28
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Scarf Pipes

Shortlisted for Contest #345 ⭐️

James, on another sleepless night, sat up in bed beside his relatively healthy wife of forty years, and noticed, to his disappointment, that she was still breathing. There he was, ruminating again, knowing exactly what he’d do once she was gone. Sometimes, if he placed his head back on his pillow and focused on slowing his breath, envisioning himself once she had passed, it calmed him back down, lullabying him into sleep. He'd dream of doing tasks inside his own home, carefree and weightless almost without her. And he’d fantasize about publi...

20 likes 19 comments 19
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This week's prompts

Write about someone who must fit their whole life in one suitcase.

– 86 stories

Set your story in/on a car, plane, or train.

– 60 stories

Write a story in which something doesn’t go according to plan.

– 57 stories

Include a number or time in your story’s title.

– 59 stories

Write a story that doesn’t include any dialogue at all.

– 88 stories

Stories

Windows to the Soul

Winner of Weekly Contest #345 🏆

I ring the doorbell, my suitcase hunkered beside me on the footpath, a black, sullen thing. After a few moments, the door swings open. Jane, my eldest, looks surprised to see me. “Mam,” she says. “What are you doing here?” No how lovely to see you or I’ve missed you. She hasn’t come to see me once since she left, years ago. She eyes my suitcase on the pavement. “I’ve come to stay,” I say simply. “Stay?” she says, not understanding. “With me?” I nod. “For the weekend?” she says. I shake my head. “For as long as you’ll have me.” We look at ...

99 likes 71 comments 71
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The Whisper

Weekly Contest #345

I had gotten so used to boarding flights first from traveling with young kids, I’d forgotten the exhaustive wait for the eventual Group 8 to make it to our seats. At least, after all that eager fidgeting while the other groups ushered in, I still had my window seat waiting for me. Even if I had to slide past someone who was long overdue for a diet, but still stubborn enough not to get out of my way. I’d hoisted my carry-on up into the overhead compartment and tucked my Celine bag under the seat in front of me. Already wishing I had brought ...

39 likes 18 comments 18
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The Totality Paradox

Weekly Contest #345

-Mon Apr 8, 2024, at 2:04 PM--New version of iOS upgrade is available--Would you like to schedule the upgrade tonight? --YES/NO- ... To be honest, I didn’t care either way as long as the phone worked. I had way too many things to juggle in life. Can’t my phone just automatically do so without asking me every few months? I cannot micromanage everything. Without much thought, I agreed to the upgrade and went about my workday... After being obligated to sit in meetings, put out fires, get my Ducks in a row, and delegating tasks to a burnt-out s...

38 likes 27 comments 27
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Limits

Weekly Contest #345

There was no way to tell night from day. Somewhere along the journey, he knew he’d lost track. From the window of the ship, at what he called night, he watched the stars. They spiraled and twisted, roiled and blurred—familiar gleams pushing back the dark as they revolved around rings of some distant planet. Some distant moon. He spent countless hours watching them dance, but always kept, in the back of his mind, a truth. A truth he sealed, closed tight like the doors of the ship he had welded shut: The stars didn’t move, only he did. ‘Is ...

32 likes 13 comments 13
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Little Boy

Weekly Contest #345

Content note: This story depicts the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, including severe injuries and civilian casualties. Hiroshima, Japan — August 6, 1945 — Late MorningThe girl’s shadow still wore a ribbon.It was burned into the stone steps as if she had stepped out of herself and left the outline behind—head tilted, arm half-raised, frozen mid-greeting. Not a silhouette in charcoal. Not a stain. A shadow that had become permanent.Aiko forced herself to look at it.“Don’t,” Dr. Morita said, quiet enough to feel like a confession...

31 likes 54 comments 54
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Making Headway

Weekly Contest #345

Making Headway The highway traffic began as a slow inconvenience and thickened into a kind of punishment. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes stretched along the sprawling asphalt, a metallic river gone solid. Engines idled. Brake lights burned red without purpose. Someone leaned on their horn as if sheer noise might shove hundreds of vehicles forward. Somewhere further than the eye could see, something had gone very wrong. David gripped the steering wheel as if he might otherwise float away. He sat next to his brooding fifteen-year-old son in ...

30 likes 25 comments 25
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The Queue

Weekly Contest #345

Nobody remembered when the line had started.It stretched past the shuttered bakery, the school with the broken fence, the hill where an old water tower still wore its faded advertisement for a soda nobody made anymore. Beyond that, the road bent and the line bent with it, disappearing into a distance that nobody talked about. The line moved. Not always, not quickly, but it moved.Mara joined it on a Tuesday, or what she believed was a Tuesday. Canvas bag, resoled shoes, eyes on her feet. The man in front of her carried a sleeping child, adjus...

30 likes 22 comments 22
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Starting The Engine

Weekly Contest #345

CW: this story mentions the death of a child. This isn’t happening. After eighteen months of being a ghost in my own life, the one train I need has been cancelled. I can’t afford another failure. Not today, when the stakes are finally real. I stand beneath the station board, watching the crisp white text flicker above the black. The 7.54 is gone, replaced by a void. A shortage of crew, apparently. Just my luck that the universe chooses this morning to run out of people. Did somebody decide to pull a sickie at the last minute? If only I’d li...

26 likes 29 comments 29
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The #944 to Tabriz

Shortlisted for Contest #345 ⭐️

As the train departed Isfahan station, Amir reached into his suitcase and felt it. Pulling it out, he carefully examined the colorful shard of ceramic between his fingers, remembering its history.That morning, his apartment shuddered; dust and plaster raining down from the ceiling. He decided to leave before it was too late. As he hastily packed his suitcase, the yellow fragment glimmered on the floor and he plucked it up, a memento of the home he had lived in for seventeen years.The American bombings were unlike anything he had ever witness...

25 likes 28 comments 28
Read story

2:71 a.m.

Weekly Contest #345

The Surreal Guide to Parenting – Chapter 4: The Impossible Hours When attempting to put an infant down for sleep in the early morning hours, it is recommended, though within the caregiver’s discretion, to go just a little insane. Not all the way insane, of course. You are still a parent with responsibilities. But micro-doses of insanity can do wonders when faced with a situation outside the realms of reason. Because you will already be well past the point of a logical solution. If the stages of grief were applicable to this battle between yo...

24 likes 9 comments 9
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Consumption

Weekly Contest #345

I don’t know if I should tell you this, but there is something living under the house. There was never any doubt when the land was purchased; this place was cursed. Stolen, colonized, then stolen again, and sold. We knew this place was built on decades of bad blood, but it was the only home we qualified for. We needed a change.The house was barely hanging together, built of old, rotted wood, and had clearly weathered many storms. The price to flip was too good to pass up, even with its history, and we were sold on it long before we pulled u...

21 likes 6 comments 6
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1 Hour For A Lifetime

Weekly Contest #345

Everyone in town knew about the hour, but not when or who decided, or why it came to be. Just once a year, on the same night the leaves finally let go, time loosened its grip for sixty minutes.During the hour, you could hear the unsaid.Not spoken aloud. Not exactly. It arrived as a pressure behind the eyes, a warmth in the chest, a voice that wasn’t a voice but still carried meaning as a whisper carried on the wind.Most people avoided it. They stayed indoors. Put on music. Drank themselves stupid. The unsaid had a habit of arriving uninvited...

20 likes 12 comments 12
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What Hides In The Darkess

Weekly Contest #345

I know I shouldn’t have. The temptation, the need, it overwhelmed every lesson I had been taught.“Young One, dark power flows through your veins. One day you shall be its master, like me, but for now you must show caution.” Mother had warned me.“You must be careful what you say.” She had been so clear.“You must be careful what you do.” She had spelled it out, and at the time, I had paid attention, as much as any young girl did.“And you must NEVER-” So why didn’t-“-EVER-” -I just-“-speak to the darkness.” -LISTEN?!Fear gripped my heart.I had ...

20 likes 7 comments 7
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Scarf Pipes

Shortlisted for Contest #345 ⭐️

James, on another sleepless night, sat up in bed beside his relatively healthy wife of forty years, and noticed, to his disappointment, that she was still breathing. There he was, ruminating again, knowing exactly what he’d do once she was gone. Sometimes, if he placed his head back on his pillow and focused on slowing his breath, envisioning himself once she had passed, it calmed him back down, lullabying him into sleep. He'd dream of doing tasks inside his own home, carefree and weightless almost without her. And he’d fantasize about publi...

20 likes 19 comments 19
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Are You for Real?

Weekly Contest #345

Every Monday to Friday the train goes through the small station. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it briefly stops. On Tuesdays and Thursdays it inexplicably does not. I have never thought to ask why.For several weeks now, there has been a woman standing on the platform with a small dog on a lead. Well, it would be, I suppose. At a station. She always wears the same clothes: a Barbour jacket with a sky blue scarf knotted around her neck. Skinny jeans. Tan leather ankle boots.Perhaps she changes clothes in the afternoons.She has long hair t...

19 likes 18 comments 18
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