5 Minute Fiction Blog Tour: Week 2 – FINALISTS!

Holy Cow! This was amazing, wasn't it? I had so much fun reading all the INCREDIBLE entries.  And I almost feel sorry for our awesome judge, Shelley Waters, since she had to pick ONLY five entries.  Well, but she did it! She picked them already!

I'll paste them below and you can vote for your favorite in the poll at the end of this post. Voting will be opened until tomorrow at 9:00 a.m EST.  Have fun deciding which one you love! ;)

Aaaaand congratu-freaking-lations to our 5 finalists!!!
They are:

1) Leah Petersen, @LeahPetersen

2) Corinne O’Flynn, @CorinneOFlynn

3) María Cope.

4) Chris Blanchard, @blanchardauthor

5) Nicole Wolverton, @nicolewolverton


And their fabulous entries are here:


1) Leah Petersen

It was a lazy summer day when Megan threw a bikini, a change of clothes, and a pack of cigarettes in the knapsack and walked out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

She though, with satisfaction, only just tinged with regret, the pictures left behind, of Steve and warm winter nights by the fire. The clothes in the drawer that still smelled like him. Left behind the broken dreams and broken promises.

She threw the knapsack into the car and stopped to light a cigarette as she took in one last, long look at the house. The beautiful lighter had been a present from Steven. So after she lit the cig, she tossed the shiny, still-lit gift onto the porch.

The gas-soaked wood burst into flames.

She got in the car, put the top down, and drove away.


2) Corinne O’Flynn

I never got to say goodbye. I'll never get over that. My brother would certainly never forgive me. I could see in his eyes that he didn't want to hear my excuses, not today. Never again.

I woke up five minutes late, just five. But that translated into two hours late when I missed the express train and had to take the local. I imagine they tried to delay for me. But time waits for no one.

Five minutes late. I knew they all thought I was just lazy. I knew my hair was still a mess. I grabbed a glance in the side-view mirror in one of the parked cars and saw mascara caked under my eyes from sleeping on my face. I licked my fingers and tried to wipe my eyes clean. Maybe they would see my eyes and assume it was from tears.

I walked up to the grave site through a sea of the mourners as they were filing out past me. Nobody met my gaze. Each person shook hands with my brother and whispered small words as they stepped on to the the emotional safety of the freshly cut lawn.

My mother always joked that I'd be late for my own funeral. I don't think any of us could have imagined that I'd ever miss hers.


3) María Cope

I fell up the stairs. I mean, really, who does that? Oh yeah, me after a few glasses of Tennessee Tea. No one told me Tennesseeans put alcohol in their tea. So much for southern hospitality. So I fell. Going up. But when your mom is spitting her conservative communist manifesto (i.e. grounding me for throwing up in the fish tank), what’s a girl to do except, well, run away?

I slammed the door to my room and blasted extra emo, emo music and wrote in my journal about the struggle of life. That is, until the smell of dinner wafted up the stairs, underneath my door, snuggling its delicious aroma inside my nostrils. I was too lazy to peel myself off the bed. My stomach snarled in defiance. Grudgingly, I sauntered down the stairs, into the dining room.

“You have to pay for those fish,” Mom said for the gazillionth time, “although your father found it hilarious, I did not. You’re paying for the cleanup, too, and the money is coming out of your allowance.”

See what I mean? I had to climb on a chair to get my head in that fish tank. I should be highly praised for my lack of laziness, but nooooo. SO unfair!

“Mo-ooommmm,” I replied with a mouthful of meatloaf, “it’s not my fault! It was the tank or your Persian rug!”

So maybe I came in the house wearing one shoe and mismatched socks. Okay and maybe, just MAYBE, I might have, er, accidentally urinatedintheplasticplant in the foyer. But it’s plastic. It’s not like I killed it or anything. The fish, however, I did kind of bump off. See, I was thirsty and decided to pull a chair over to the fish tank. I mean, have you seen all the water in a fish tank? There’s like, gallons!

So I dunked my head in the tank and drank a little water. NOT a good idea, as the water immediately came back up and into the fish tank. Bye-bye little fish. “Sweetie,” the momster said cautiously, as if I were a tad bit slow, "you’re twenty-five. You will begin taking responsibility for your actions starting now.”


4) Chris Blanchard

“Are you really going to just sit there and do nothing?” Gail screamed.

“I don’t see why not,” John replied. “I’m comfortable.”

“Do you know what is going on out there?” Gail asked.

John propped himself up on the couch with one elbow and peered out the window.

“Looks like a giant robot is rampaging around the city. Again.”

“Exactly,” Gail said. “And don’t you think you ought to be doing something about it?”

John took a deep breath and sighed. “You know, it’s at times like these that I really hate my dad. Imagine leaving this kind of responsibility to me.”

He clicked off the TV and stared at Gail, who was putting her hands on her fists and grinding her teeth. He smiled slightly. She was sexy when she did that.

“Okay, okay,” he said, pushing up self off the couch and stretching as he stood. “Let’s get to the secret lair and change into costume. Hopefully, this robot will be as easy to beat as those aliens were last week. I can get back in time for Robot Chicken.”

“I swear,” Gail said, pushing the button on the bookshelf that opened the secret tunnel. “You are the LAZIEST super-hero in the world!”


5) Nicole Wolverton

Two drops of blood chased each other down the iron in slow motion – a lazy dance – the second catching up the first and then speeding along to reach the fabric of my pants, pressed tightly against the beam. Drip drip drip. The piece of metal glowed green and bronze in the path of sunlight peeking through a hole in the . . . whatever you called the mess: pile, destruction, clusterfuck.

How long I lay here, well, I didn’t know. I’d been sitting on the subway, the sound of the rails below thwuping rhythmically, the screech of the rails cutting through the car. A woman had sat down next to me at the station prior; she had smelled spicy, as though she dipped her body in cinnamon. I’d thought about saying hello, and I was about to when the howling metal twist rose to eardrum-piercing levels. The floor seemed to rise inexplicably, and my body hurtled forward, nothing more than a meat puppet without strings.

The cute cinnamon girl, the car, the sound – it was gone now. Something sharp dug into my back, and I continued to watch the blood drip drip drip down the beam, wondering whose it belonged to. And then I needed to imagine it was only red paint to keep the screams inside my body. The light shifted with each passing moment, highlighting another section of the beam.

And then the face of the cinnamon girl. The shriek in my ears sounded vaguely familiar – it was me. Blood-soaked and gagging at the drip drip drip.


Happy Voting! =)