Winner (s) of the "Cooling Off" Hint Fiction Contest (20 words)
The prompt was to write an intimate-feeling 20-word story involving the emotional effect of weather changing, as in the season moving from summer to Fall, and to include the word “leaf”.
There were so many beautiful stories posted! Please read them all! I’m so amazed by what writers can do in 20 words!
It felt impossible to choose one winner. And yet, “After the Adultery of August” by Karen Walker stunned me with it’s clear, emotionally potent beginning, middle, and end.
Winner
After the adultery of August
by Karen Walker
Head in my lap, a new red leaf turns summer's page, pages for me as, blazing, I read to him.
4 Honourable Mentions:
The Yellow Leaf Flutters to Earth
Slowly, as if convinced it was leaving something precious behind, something it would recognize if it ever saw it again. - Cheryl Snell
*
Kingfishers
We still see them - those gem-like blue dots, before the leaves of our sycamores, before we vanish in their shade. -Dave Alcock
*
As it was falling, fall’s first leaf to fall said, not in anger, but surely disappointed…
You say the summer flew by. You always say that. It didn’t. You just weren’t watching. -Marvin Waldman
*
untitled
“Take a leaf out of my book.”
Said the oak tree.
“And shut up shop ‘til spring.” -Alan McDiarmid
Congrats to everyone who participated! Karen Walker's story is dazzling! I read the story first, and loved it. Then I read the title and found it even more amazing. The assonance of those "a" sounds beautifully echoes the emotions of the scene described in the story. What a piece! (Even the first four words are particularly evocative and hint at deeper layers of meaning.)
Wonderful 😊