Updated With Winners: LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: September Edition (...and another chance to win Chuck Palahniuk's new book!)

Flash Fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity
UPDATE: Since it's only a few days in and we already have 76 (and counting) entries--we've scrounged up two more copies of Chuck Palahniuk's new book for a total of THREE books to give away to the best three entries! So keep 'em coming!
How It Works
We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or similar. You write a flash fiction piece, using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked and awarded a prize.
The Rules
- 25 words is the limit. (You can write less, but you can't write more.)
- The whole story must only be 2 sentences. No more. No less.
- It can be any genre.
- Give it a title (not included in the word count, but keep it under 10 words).
- We're not exactly shy, but let's stay away from senseless racism or violence.
- One entry per person.
- Editing your entry after you submit it is permitted.
- We'll pick a winner on the last day of the month.
- LitReactor staffers can't win, but are encouraged to participate.
- All stories submitted on or before September 27 will be considered. We'll run the winner on September 30.
This Month's Prize
You get a second change to win an Advanced Reading Copy of Chuck Palahniuk's upcoming novel Doomed (which doesn't come out until next month!) It's a follow-up to the popular Damned. Here's a teaser for ya from Amazon.com:
Madison Spencer, the liveliest, snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the adventures in the afterlife begun in Damned. Having somewhat reluctantly escaped from Hell, she now wanders the Purgatory that is Earth as a ghostly spirit, seeking her do-gooding celebrity parents, fighting the malign control of Satan, recounting the disgracefully funny (to us, anyway) encounter with her grandfather in a fetid highway rest stop in upstate New York when she . . . oh, never mind, and climaxing in a rendezvous with destiny on the new, totally plastic continent in the Pacific called, not at all accidentally, Madlantis.
Dante Aligheri, watch your back, Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.
Your Inspiration
In July, we used a section of Dante's Purgatorio since Doomed is the second book in a trilogy based on Dante's work.
This time, let's use something specifically Chuck-related. In his interview with LitReactor's Kasey Capenter on his book Damned, Palahniuk likens Hell to his experience of staying in a hotel's "author's suite" while touring. Here's a couple quotes from the interview:
When you tour for books, most big luxury hotels now reserve a suite called the author’s suite, because they know that there is this constant tour of authors coming through town. So they put you in this author’s suite, that always has these bookshelves, and um, all the books are all the people who have ever slept in that bed. So you know, looking at the wall, everybody who has slept in the bed you are about to sleep in.
It’s like having a resume… you don’t want to know that you're sharing a bed with Paula Deen, David Sedaris, John Grisham, Jane Fonda – a whole litany of all the people that have been in that bed, makes me kind of…disgusted. But then I love the dichotomy. Their minds and hearts are on the wall, you know, in these books, but when you pull back this bedding, and see the stains on the mattress and the mattress pad- their bodies are like, there, in a very physical and literal sense…
If Chuck's Hell is an author's suite, what might be Purgatory? Your prompt is to write your own metaphor for Purgatory. Remember 25 words in prose or poetry. Two sentences. Titles are excluded from the word count.
Now Get Writing!
And the Winners are... Heather Boyd, Carole Rossi Kenyon, and Anthony David Lawson.
The number of entries must have broken records—148!!! There were many, many great entries but I had to pick three: So here they are in no particular order:
From Heather Boyd
When
It could be now. It isn't.
From Carole Rossi Kenyon
Have Mercy
Please send money for indulgences to Pope Francis Stop
60 more years of watching reruns on the golf network before my debt is settled Stop
From Anthony David Lawson
1992
The most beautiful girl I’ve ever known had given me her number. My finger hovered over that last button.
Thanks, everyone, for entering!
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To leave a comment
Comments
::Naked and Afraid::
Stuck in a waiting room with white walls, this guy keeps checking us out.
Can't wait for the Pope to finally let us go.
:Misery Loves Company:
All John could hear was water hitting the bowl from beyond the bathroom door. + or - meant a world of difference to him now.
- Another One -
The migraine simultaneously pulls apart and crushes my head, pulsing.
At least I can still see that I'm out of aspirin.
I awoke and walked to the kitchen with the stack of dirty dishes. So high and slanted just enough to see the small turtle.
Lost Love Song
They all love the thing that took mine away, financed her habit, destroyed her spirit.
The annual torture, over and over again... # Merry Christmas America.
Department of Motor Vehicles
I pull number 152 from the plastic dispenser; the red digital display reads: 11. 141 inadequate documents and ridiculous questions wait ahead of me.
:The Tatterdemalion:
Oscar awoke from the acerbic smell. He left his bricolage in the alley, crossed the crowded street, and begged for forgiveness.
--Nowhere of Mine--
And here, too, I could feel the hard murmur of the past. So I wandered again, looking for a spot where nothing had ever been.
Second Battle of the Marne
Calves trembling as I peer over the parapet, clutching my Springfield and await the signal to advance. No Man's Land ahead, Court Martial behind.
First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers
He rubbed his forehead while staring at pages lined with questions. An annual salary of $125,000 was worth the eight hour torture that is the bar.
(I went with purgatory in its original usage, as a verb that means preparation for Heaven through punishment)
In Memory of
My v-neck angel, showing half a chest tattoo, asks if I have any regrets.
After two doses of manna, I tell her I'm ready.
MF
Although I applaud magical realism,
everyday I appreciate the beauty of
mundane fakery.
The “good job” for completing on time
the dotting of the i’s,
Purgatory
I sit on a bench. I wait.
Repetition
I get up in the morning, then go to work. I come home and sleep.
School Reunion
It's not that I'm antisocial. I just can't stand these people.
Square Dancing In The Ash Of Burnt Bridges
Swing your partner, do-si-do, endless cavalcade of broken lovers. Promenade, sinners to the left, and chasse, and swing your partner…
Ellipsis
Sat between strangers on a budget airplane stuck on the tarmac. The air con's off and the toilets are out of service.
Purgatorium
The examination room. Here, stuck between the hell of the waiting room and the doctor’s visit, I hope for a pass to my condition.
Self Loathing
The mattress has the fragrance that mimics the authors that liter the shelf; shitty.
I feel like a greedy pig soaking in our stinking success.
Black Box
Between the screaming demon spawn, the hacking, skeletal stewardess, and the eternal layovers, this must be punishment for finishing Mike's whiskey. I need a razorblade.
1992
The most beautiful girl I’ve ever known had given me her number. My finger hovered over that last button.
Roaming Familiarity
Known to noone, yet trying to find a someone. Move consistently with no footing to grasp a world that they dont fit in.
He Would Have Actually Read Kafka If He'd Known
His fellow bed bug on this immeasurable, filthy mattress appeared to have Deen's voice and soul. It was going to be a long 2000 years.
Have Mercy
Please send money for indulgences to Pope Francis Stop
60 more years of watching reruns on the golf network before my debt is settled Stop
They put us all in the same room for this. It's great to meet some idols, but not so great to smell them.
One Night Stand
In the bittersweet morning, she was gone forever; leaving but only a stale purple thong. And I was haunted by yet another road not taken.
afternoonish
In Front of destroyed china; air, sounds and life ceased to exist.
Hanging on her face, her eyes looking for any sign of ruling.
Bus Stop
I like me a boy with all his teeth. The man said, licking his chapped lips.
Falling, falling, falling, falling, this feeling of terror and peace is constant. Where will I stop?
Purgatory
'Are you happy? Is this what you wanted? I have nothing any more. Your voice is all I have left.'
'Please continue to hold.'
Someone else's vehicle
The wheels turn, you are in control, you are in between here and there. Please avoid other people on the way to your destination.
Name That Tune
The bus driver whistles inanely and I'm frantically trying to decipher the tune: 'Wouldn't It Be Good' by Nik Kershaw? Its impossible to be sure.
The tumor was gone. But so were her memories.
She lingered over each photo. Her children were nothing but strangers. The emptiness was complete.
THE READING
He waited
overhearing the noise outside:
fans,
or detractors.
He walked towards the stage
would it be
heaven or hell
he couldn't know
didn't care.
Method Acting
This scene won’t last for too long
as monologue I’ll repeat when you’re gone.
Find my light and speak,
but you don’t hear me.
[untitled]
At the slightest flicker of human emotion, the wire in my dead chest tightens.
Everlasting misery is a life with no heart.
Blankly Stare Straight Ahead
With the power to make people sad wherever they go, Youngish Widow and Half Orphan consider going swimming. They'll still wait for a new life.
Hot Wired
The gene pool had been cruel. Freedom ahead even as the memories lingered long past the last explosive volt had coursed through his childlike brain.
Dive Bar
Drowning in alcohol, they slowly sunk into their seats, backs arched like question marks that asked, "What happened?”
“What can I getchu?”
"Jack... Neat."
Fish
You flinch when the heavy cell door slams shut behind you and all the heads turn to look.
Fresh meat.
A Debauchee's Platonic Victim
Peering from that charter bus, a grotesque chubbed reproductory flesh pole and glassy perverted eyes.
Unwanted self touching.
Shouldv'e stayed in West Virgnia.
Test Results
Cringing with every scratch of the pen, titilated by the hanging aroma of jasmine, her hand touches my arm, and the flush suffuses my cheeks.
The Time It Takes to Join You
Your ashes on December snow--
a hole I could've jumped into.
My sunset still sleeps
beyond the white hill.
Welfare Mom
Grabbing, scratching, needing more; I have no more to give. Fetid waste, a lack of taste, and the guilt that this is your life.
:::My own personal little purgatory:::
My personal hell is expanding!!
Yesterday it was version 2.0 and today I just killed 72 men!
Today it is version 3.0!
*The Blissful State of Being... a Parent*
I dread hiking up Dirty Diaper Mountain, a dauntingly disgusting daily task. Ankle deep in tar-like poop, I persevere and thank God for gumboots.
The E.R. Before the Psych Ward
Having finally gotten a pen, you take to calculating 2^n in increments, arriving at 2^53 being 9,007,199,254,740,992, a calculation of complexity and accuracy beyond Excel.
I frolic Carribean whorebound in Hemmingway's rum soaked bed and the sun is not all that rises. The old man and the semen.
Reduced to a shadow trailing behind the person I once was when you where there, I might say I’m happy: Running tears cast no shadow.
Tarmac Diplomacy
Her smile is stretched across a rack of aggression.
"Can we switch seats honey?"
I have the window and honey will sour before she does.