Always a Bridesmaid
The results are in for NYC Midnight’s 2025 Microfiction Challenge, and yours truly is not one of the top ten finishers or the five honorable mentions.
The question that can drive me nuts, if I let it, is where exactly did I finish? 16th or 125th? Would it matter? Is there solace in a narrow defeat, knowing how close you came? Or does that only pique the agony? It's a dangerous question for the ego, and no answer can satisfy me, really, but I can’t help but wonder, all the same. In the end, I am proud to have advanced through the first two rounds, from a starting field of about 3,200 participants this year, and I’m sure I will sign on for another try next year.
Feedback is offered on each piece submitted, for which I am grateful. In the final round, five readers offered their input on my work. I will absorb this as best I can and try to let it guide me in my writing. Or, as former Spartan coach Mark Dantonio once suggested, I will treat the feedback like chewing gum—whether good or bad, chew on it, taste the flavor, and spit it out. While I still crave feedback, energized by fresh notes and what I can learn about myself and the craft, it strikes me that notes from five readers may be too much. Stark contradictions emerge from that amount of input. Meanwhile, I am becoming more discerning in which feedback I take to heart, whether that is me growing as a writer or just becoming more disillusioned, I am not sure. If there is one thing of which I am certain, it will be a painfully long time before I can look back with any clarity about whether or not I am getting any better at this goofy obsession.
I will spare you my final round story from last year’s competition (2024) that didn’t cut the mustard. Now that the requisite ten days have passed since this year’s contest results were revealed, I am free to share my latest entries. Here are the prompts and submissions from this year’s challenge.
Round 1 – Genre: Ghost Story / Action: Recovering / Word (to be used as is): Muse
Eternal Flame
Flame jumped over flame, vying for the top of the house. Brilliant vengeance roared, scaring away the stars that had watched him light the fire, while smoke gave chase—lithe spirits skipping to heaven.
He had waited for this moment when the home would be empty, unsure if he could have lived with the eternal burn of taking from them exactly what they had taken from him.
He peered from behind a nearby weeping willow. “Is that better, love?”
“Yes,” answered his muse, voice as clear as the day he lost her.
The incandescent heat flicked at his cheek, where the memory of her last kiss was forever seared, the one she planted before she drove away—to the wrong intersection at the wrong time.
Neighbors fled from the spotlight scorching a hole in the center of their street, scattering off stage. While he prayed for a new role. Prayed this strike of the match had been the last step to recovery. That this blaze would cauterize the gaping wound in his soul. That the scar tissue around his heart could be scraped off like soot, swept away like ash. As if a thing can be unburnt.
He closed his eyes and searched for relief, but the pulsing glow of retribution pressed through his eyelids.
“Is it over?”
His muse leaned closer, wrapped her arms around him from behind, and kissed his cheek.
“I want to be done,” he whispered.
“Then burn it all down. For me, love.”
Round 2 – Genre: Horror / Action: Sketching / Word: Lean
Goldilocks
He sets up at the edge of the park—easel, two chairs, a blanket underneath. Behind, a quiet street with an even quieter alley where he parked. In front, across the narrow walkway, statues of Goldilocks and three grizzly bears watch him work.
A steady trickle of foot traffic—just enough to offer a new customer as he finishes the previous piece.
Always the fairer sex who sits in the chair behind the easel to face their flaws. He draws doe eyes or exaggerated dimples, a billowing bouffant, at worst, while tracking the true imperfections. Day five and every one of them is too lean, too large, too angular, too pale, too comfortable. Until the sun winks from behind baby bear’s bronze shoulder, twilight draws its purple blinds on another day, and she sits in the chair. Alone. And he knows that she is the one; the last customer before he finds a new park in a new city with a new corner where the traffic is just right.
He sketches her earnestly—large dark eyes for admiration, not caricature.
You’re so talented, she coos. You should do my birthday party.
He’s wrapping up for the day, but he has a business card in his van, if only she can help him carry his things?
Of course she will.
As amber streetlights bloom over a quiet street with a quieter alley, behind a forgotten corner of the park, the timing is just right.
Final Round – Genre: Open / Action: Repairing / Word: Fast
Flush
How long before you give in and get a new toilet? Countless videos of how to install the thing in the first place—which you’ve reset at least twice in the last fifteen years—an endless scroll of videos on how to replace the fill valve—which you could do blindfolded with accumulated spare parts by now—but type when to give up and you’ll find nothing but more advice on how to stop it from running.
Sleeves rolled up, hands plunged into the water, the clasp on the handle chain pinches you, again. Bite your lip. No cussing. No tears. Same rules apply as in the kitchen six months ago when your wife confessed about the extra work trips. Giving into the pain doesn’t repair the plumbing. Just have to find the right video about why the flapper won’t close, even though you thought you fixed it three times already. With three different flappers.
How far would you really get with a new toilet before something needed repair? Maybe there are no easy fixes.
“C’mon, Greg. We’re going to be late,” she says from the kitchen, arms crossed.
“You should go without me. I’m close to figuring this out.”
“Then it wouldn’t be couples therapy, would it?”
Rest the porcelain lid back on the tank. Take the damp towel from your shoulder and spread it over top. Your hand hovers, then flushes. The water still runs too fast, but it’s time to turn off the light and walk away.