Flash Fiction Competition  2026 

WINNER: ROSALIND PARKES – THE END OF AUTUMN Today you wait at the crossroads for the school bus, with your new satchel. The leather is pristine chestnut, like the conkers you have stooped for on the way. Autumn is your favourite. A silver blackbird, tiny, is stamped onto the satchel’s flap, flanked by bright buckles and stiff straps. By the end of the day, there will be a ragged scar in the leather, too deep to be polished out. Now, though, at the bus stop, you are excited and hope for homework so you can use the compartments inside. The green single-decker turns the corner and you are suddenly hesitant. It is dangerous to let the back-seat boys from the top class see your satchel and your delight in it. You sit near the front. Harriet will be on soon but she will choose another seat so Sheila can sit with her at the next stop. Their colouring-in is the best; you have given up trying to match the solid smoothness of their maps, or keep the greens and pinks and browns inside the lines. At school, Miss Bignall has just rung the bell so there is no time for the playground, thankfully. There is just the awkwardness of assembly, sitting cross-legged in your skirt, and then the safety of lessons. You can do these, even Arithmetic, because times tables are words and rhythms when you recite them aloud for homework. Your lips learn the shapes and movements and if you keep going you can get 20 out of 20 in the test. Because you are in Clive, which is another name for red, (not Raleigh, Drake or Nelson), you get a matching lollipop. Nelson is the worst because it’s blue. No-one has ever seen a lollipop that’s blue. Breaktime is another worst. The tarmac seethes and sounds are unintelligible: the yell of triumph at a Bulldog win, the shout of rage when someone pushes in at skipping. The edge is good, until Rebecca Demelweek – dark hair, perfect fringe and at a loose end – finds you. She’s a pincher, a scratcher. Although you’re good at watching other people, how they make things work, copying what you see, Rebecca’s not convinced. She knows it isn’t real, treads on your foot and shoves you into the hedge. Mr Gilmore moves her on. The minutes pass, the bell rings. When you go in, the blackbird sits atop a stark pale branch where someone’s compass point has dragged across. You don’t tell. Embarrassed, ashamed of what it means. Guilty that what was bought for you is spoiled. These feelings, which don’t seem to make sense, you don’t have words for but you know they’re real because your stomach aches and you want not to be here, at your desk, trying to write the numbers neatly in the squares, waiting for the bus-ride home. Thinking that Autumn is spoiled forever now.