The University Center for Writing-based Learning was excited to sponsor its second Flash Fiction Contest. The DePaul community, including the students, alumni, faculty, and staff, were invited to submit a story celebrating the theme of transformation with a maximum word count of 350. The Outreach team was excited to see how writers interpreted the theme and incorporated it into their stories. After a long discussion, a first and second place winner were selected.
First Place
“Blasphemous Thirst” by Grace Weber
On today’s unending hunt, I found myself reminiscent by the sun’s view as I stood with my barefoot granite skin pressed into the snow that fell to the mountain’s peak. Although I’ve been undead for a century now, the sun reinvigorates my final mortal moment of laying in the morgue with nothing but a white linen and lamp above my skeleton frame.
It’s no surprise my doctor mistook the faint heartbeat inside an 88 pound woman as nonexistent. Unable to stir from underneath the linen, I mustered the energy to flutter my eyelids to the examiner in which I was met with a perplexed grimace in return. His ruby eyes met mine as he placed his frigid fingers beneath my jaw. Unsure if I had just arrived in Hell for the blasphemous act of starvation, I made a final attempt at repentance and whispered to the ghoul, “please don’t let me die.” He gave a slow nod, then his glacial lips met my clavicle before my screech could consume the atmosphere.
I awoke in a nearby forest surrounded by snow wearing nothing but the hospital gown I’d graced death in. “Peculiar,” I thought. The temperature matched my unrecognizable, crystalline skin. Slowly, I took a deep breath, one breath too much. The intoxicating aroma of iron sweltered beneath my tongue as a burning insatiability gripped the insides of my throat. Blindsided by animalistic hunger, my legs glided to the nearest beating pulse. Without thinking, I’d manage to lift the portly hiker’s neck to my mouth and pressed my lips into his jugular. Perhaps if I knew my final request was contingent on perpetual, ravenous hunger—I never would have spoken. Unlike my brief time as a human, I am now forced to capitulate with the demand to satiate my body’s cries for substance. I cannot fall any further, for there is no afterlife for my kind.
Second Place
“Ever Blurring Past” by Steve Bogdaniec
I met him in boiling mid-September, Freshman Gym, with Mrs. Jenkins scowling down clumsy volleyball, trying not to faint while two bees chased thirty of us dressed in white and blue. Since then, he’s been in and out of marriages, has a kid he’s ok with not seeing very often, multiple careers, chunky, half-bald, half-brown wisps, polos to work, loose tees everywhere else. But in that gym, he was a longhaired demon thunder god, lean and all instinct, never stopping, his black and red Chicago Bulls wristband and short navy shorts ever blurring past.
The Outreach team would like to thank everyone who participated. Be on the lookout for the next Flash Fiction contest!