Kiel Basford Wins Flash Fiction Contest, Published Here

By Jaime Felber

A month ago, Dan's Papers started accepting entries for a flash fiction writing competition. The goal was to offer budding writers the chance to express their creative talent, and grant one writer the reward of having his or her work published. The catch to this competition was the word limit - 500 words is a challenging size for a captivating story. But that's exactly what makes flash fiction so popular and so poignant: its ability to pack a punch in a short space. The style has been perpetuated by writers for generations - examples include Hemingway's famous six-word "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," and Richard Morgan's "K.I.A. Baghdad, Aged 18 - Closed Casket."

In addition to the word limit, subject matter presents another challenge. In order to evoke reader reaction in a short amount of time, flash fiction topics tend to be unsettling in their nature. As is clear from Morgan and Hemingway's work, death is a popular diving board for writers in this style. However, as is important with every style of writing, a sense of perspective and balance is needed. It's a difficult combination to master in any form, but especially when limited by the boundaries of flash fiction.

Thank you to everybody who submitted stories. We had a plethora of high-caliber pieces to choose from. Selecting a winner was difficult, and works by Joel Maler and Evelyn Konrad were closely considered before we finally chose our winner, Kiel Basford. Basford's story, "Fecundity," best embodied the essence of flash fiction. The name of Basford's piece was an early indication of a clearly creative imagination.

"Fecundity" by Kiel Basford

The decision for minor surgery was made shortly after viewing the X-rays, which I thought to be unnecessary. Muscle irritation, I said, or perhaps an allergic reaction to something - have you eaten any exotic foods lately? Have you traveled to a third world nation? No? If it will make you feel better we'll have some X-rays done. She said that it would, that she had read somewhere that tumors are often misdiagnosed as simple muscle irritation. Well, I said, we'll have the X-rays done to stay on the safe side, but I doubt there's anything to worry about.

Osteosarcoma, I thought, peering into the cavernous and spindly gnarled recesses encroaching on the bones in her lower spine and pelvis. But then, what are all these segmented lines? I consulted the other doctors on the floor, one a fellow oncologist who stared blankly at the X-ray. He said it didn't look like any osteosarcoma he'd ever seen.

Some minor investigative surgery, I told her. There's an abnormality in the bones where your pain is that wasn't fully revealed by the X-rays. Will I ever have kids? she asked me. I opened my mouth to tell her that the area of concern was far removed from her reproductive organs, but the childish panic in her suddenly provocative honey-sweet countenance caught me in a moment of shameless dropped-jaw lechery. Of course, I managed to say, and that she shouldn't worry until there was something to worry about. The next time I would see her would be behind the safety of a paper mask, after the anesthesiologist had done his job.

Nothing went smoothly. We had to move from the normal operating room with its serene sterility to a less-than-pristine unused delivery room. It wouldn't have been a problem had the surgery been as minor as I had planned, but the first and only intended incision revealed the anomaly in her bones to be not something more complex or complicated or difficult to handle, but something entirely chaotic.

As the knife passed over her back and left to ridges of skin rising like the waters of the Red Sea before Moses, a swarm of gluttonous termites poured out.

At least a hundred, ravenous, flowed over her milky skin, onto the operating table, my knife, my hand. They bit. They're biting me, I yelled, They're eating me. The nurse gasped, hand on her heart, as if to pledge her loyalty to the termites, spreading, cancerous. They're eating me. I felt one, vile, under my glove and wrenched my hand back forth, losing the knife. It landed, like a lawn dart, in the patient's unconscious buttock. The anesthesiologist, who ran out without my noticing, ran back in with a rolled up newspaper and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, pounding them with a chronicle of human misery while drowning them, filling their germ-ridden guts with the alcohol. An hour later, termite guts were everywhere. During the commotion someone had knocked into the gas, causing it to leak, which killed the patient. Her face, serene, shattered. Foul termites. They flowed forth, slowly, like so much promised milk and honey.

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