First Campaign Challenge

by
If you are here following the bread crumbs from Rachael’s post on her blog today, thank you for visiting and I appreciate the attention. I’m posting my flash fiction piece for the first challenge here and I hope that you guys do the same because Rachael has a lot of nice prizes.  I was really excited to get the opportunity to help her with the campaign and when she contacted me by email, I started work right away organizing the 300 or so people that signed up to judge (wow what a turnout).  Plus Rachael is an amazing organizer. She had a whole google docs thing setup (if you haven’t used it, I recommend it highly because it’s like a word processor & spreadsheet that you don’t have to pay for that anyone with a password can use).

Basically, our process for notifying judges is just going to be to go down the list that Rachael and I created this weekend and shoot off an email every ten signups on Rachael’s blog…so one judge per ten people for round one.  Each judge will be responsible for visiting each of these ten blogs and making a decision on the flash fiction piece.  Five of the ten that they deem worthy shall go on to round two. Think of this as a kind of “tournament” style competition.

At round two, new judges will be called upon to narrow the selection for round three (the semi-finals).  From the semi-finalists we hope to find ten finalists and one grand prize winner.  Basically every person that makes it to the finals will get a prize but the best will go to the grand prize winner.

MY FLASH FICTION ENTRY WITH ADDED DIFFICULTY ELEMENTS:

The door swung open and the UPS man entered. 

I set down my coffee cup; the side of it read “Piss me off and face the consequences.”

I asked, “How many today?”

“Just the one.” He passed me the signature capture pad and I signed using the stylus.

“Can you spell that out for me?” he asked.

“M-A-R-I-A  F-E-N-W-A-Y” I said, enunciating each letter.

He typed it out and then tucked the brown pad under one arm.  I stared at his ass when he walked out.  The UPS guys were always in such good shape.  My partner walked in and put a folder on my desk.  “Pictures from the crime scene.  You might want to take a look and see if we missed anything.”

I nodded and took a sip of coffee.  I turned my attention to the box sitting on my desk and grabbed a pair of scissors.  I cut the tape and popped the lid open. Inside, I found a cooler.  Who the hell sends a person a cooler?

“Go stop that UPS guy,” I told Bill.  “Go now!”

He ran for the door.  I opened the box and found a human head inside.

The door swung shut.

It is exactly 200 words, uses both “the door swung open” and “the door swung shut” elements of the flash fiction piece (upped for difficulty as I think challenges are fun).

Happy Labor Day!

Leave a Comment