24 HOUR FLASH FICTION 2021 WINNER
Theme: Ruthless Ambition
Prize: £100
Finalists:
Meg Anderson
Anita Goodfellow
Kylie Cork
Raeesah Chandlay
Joe Clegg
Susan Wigmore
Anne Baillie
Joelle Simpson
Kathryn Clover
Sharon Pinner
Dexter Canete
Rhonda Zappelli
Linda Veenman
Sean Moore
Emil Cholich
Patrick Heffernan
Deryn Pittar
Heidi Mitchell
Robert Ellis
Rani Elvira
Valeria Yarusova
Julie Meier
Rachel McLean
Lily Elborn
Linda Flynn
Meg Fargher
Dhevalence Moodley
Ella Nightingale
Mary-Louise McGuinness
Sarah Lucaci
Lance Gose
Lorraine Thomson
Ali Perez
Maria Dean
Shabnam Younus
Joyce Bingham
James Hancock
Raaina Aranmolate
Connor Thornley
Molly Andrew
Kay Reeves
Jo Bland
Colleen Hogan
Nicole McLachlin
Edward White
Lisa VanGalen
Nelly Schulman
Elaine Cohen
Chris Kok
and the winner is…
Katrina Moinet
Going for Gold
CLAP Clap clap
The force of ten thousand hands unites behind Hannah’s pin-sharp posture. Poised, she claps; ghost-dust rises. The arena drops into weighted silence as ten thousand eyes narrow to a single point. Curved calves quiver, heels flushed, toes grip. A super-charged cloud of now-or-never suspends above her shiny forehead and immaculate lady-made face: each unbearable atom of her being loaded.
Maxine’s throat constricts as her daughter somersaults from springboard to high bar; done umpteen times, at umpteen events but never here, never on such a prestigious stage.
swing
Maxine’s jaw clenches. Brick-teeth grind behind a blank smile. Her stomach lurches as Hannah attempts the big Salto. Keep your protein bullet-shake down, she prays.
swing
Maxine has held her breath Hannah’s whole fourteen-year-old life, from baby-feet patter to trials, try-outs, amateur try-harder late-nights, training, gaining medals, injuries, recoveries, every professional drama to right here, right now.
swing
She’s spoilt Hannah, she knows. Stolen her own child’s childhood, hidden ambition inside lullabies, joyless Christmases passed over for moving up the seeding, super-food feeding her über-specimen, ligaments taut, tendons strengthened through repeated tension.
swing
Who needs hazy, lazy summer days, anyway? Climbing trees (injury risk), making mud pies (fruitless energy waste), dolly-playtime (useless role-play). Her daughter needs skills, not friendships.
swing fly land
Nailed!
A flawless routine, gold a hair’s breadth from Maxine’s fingertips.
Hannah skips, down the steps…
…slips, rolls her ankle.
Just like they’d agreed.
Cameras zoom in: Maxine clutches her injured daughter, distraught. Hannah’s face, fear and disgrace. Maxine had insisted, ‘People don’t just want a winner anymore, they want more, they want a story.’ Maxine would deliver a social-media frenzy, weeks of tweets, nurtured hype, Hannah’s heroic recovery.
Fame’s a fickle thing, brings strange feeling to the surface.
She won silver, in the end.
About our winner…
Katrina Moinet writes short fiction and poetry that explores female experiences, personal and political. She won the 2021 Globe Soup Short Story prize with 'Nowhere Else I need to be' and has been shortlisted for Staunch International Short Story and Flash Fiction prizes. Her work is included in Nation.Cymru Culture section and the 2021 Poetry Marathon Anthology. Katrina's completing a creative writing Masters jointly at Bangor University and The Open University. She lives on Anglesey with her husband and daughter. Follow her on Twitter @KMoinetwrites