The PNM Flash Fiction Prize is open every year for entries from July1-Augsut 30. Writers eighteen years and older around the world, who write in English, are eligible to enter. Stories must be no more than 751 words.

Hidden Places

There were places we could go that early summer, at the height of the drought, that had been invisible to us earlier and were inaccessible to us later.

The lake’s shorelines, stalked by fishermen and long-legged water birds, cinched in tighter as the days grew hot. Dry canal beds led to tunnels and secret portals we climbed through in evenings, when the sun sank towards shadow. Impromptu channels ran through uncovered sand bars, turning to trickles before giving up in pre-solstice haze.

In the bottomland, at the end of our property, a whole meadow was revealed where a small wetland once existed. We tentatively climbed down the narrow incline to reach it, testing bare feet on new ground, together standing where it should be impossible. You laughed as I ran and sank through soft-cracked soil floating under a carpet of cowlicked spikerush, lush and green in the golden light. In another temporary spot at the bottom of the lake, we tempted invisible alligators, real and restless in their evaporating home—caution signs be damned.

In all the secret places exposed, we carefully stepped around what we would not say. I collected magical treasures—coquina rocks made of shells, mollusk husks in the shape of lavender butterflies—lying like words out of place on the freshly disclosed shore. You kept talking and talking and talking, asking questions I answered in syllables or with clever comments. I ignored—did not see—captivated looks while you diverted compliments with the determination of watery fingers channeling across sand.    

Then one day you went back home.

Would you believe the day you left it started to rain? Oceans, torrents, hundred-year floods. Meadow turned back to pond, erasing all traces we were there. Drops fell from palmetto fronds all day, like tears from lashes. Alligators glided out of antediluvian hiding places. The portal closed, too busy guzzling gallons of storm water to tempt travelers.

And I started writing. Deluges of words: crystal drops, swamp water, clear mountain springs, rivers clogged with red silted snowmelt. No discrimination. Everything came out.

I wanted to send them to you. But I didn’t know your address.

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Jaime Greenberg is a writer and photographer who writes with words and light. She lives in South Florida with her husband, two teenagers, cat and dog.

The Fading

Hunched over the kitchen sink, my son held the point of an unhooked safety pin to a flame, watching it blacken clean. Then, one by one, he opened the blisters on his right index and middle fingertips. Then those on his four left fingertips.

I couldn’t see his face, only his shoulders, broad and tense, his hands working, loosely, easily still. I should have suspected that his fading began when he hauled his double bass up from the basement, ordered new strings and began practicing every day, late into the evenings, again.

He played in the high school orchestra, almost twenty years ago now. He had auditioned on cello but didn’t get a seat, so I went down the next day and—had a talk with them. They came around, asked him to play, but that he switch to bass. And it was a fine compromise. He was tall, my boy—and they needed tall to hold up the instrument—with big hands too, the width of a vinyl  LP. Big steady hands, like mine. I am—was—a carpenter. Not by trade, just a hobby. Until my fading got bad. I made nearly everything in this damned house: the mahogany countertops, the cabinets of beetle-kill pine, their L-shaped handles made to hook an arm on and pull. Yes, I still had a few good years after the fading began, and I made the most of them so I could make the most of this house, for both of us. Just in case.

“Son,” I said, reaching my hand toward his back. But I stopped short of laying it there, limp and lifeless. Surely, I had already laid enough upon his back.

He looked at me and feigned a cringe, tightening his lips and squeezing his eyes half-shut. “Bass blisters,” he said.

“Was that some Miles Davis you were playing?”

“Yes. Well, Paul Chambers—”

“Of course, So What, right? One of the best bass lines of all time,” I said.

He paused, turned to me, and set a hand on the countertop leaving four prints red as wine. “It isn’t a bass line,” he said, “it’s the melody. The only track on the album—most albums—where the trumpet, saxophone, keys—everybody—steps back to let the bassist play the melody. And it’s the best one on the record.”

“So What.” I nodded.

“Yeah. So what,” he said. “My intonation… I still can’t…”

“Son,” I said, unsure of how to start. I had imagined this conversation many times, but never with words, more like a movie montage, with music—maybe a melody played on the bass, low and heavy, its wooden body creaking underneath it like this old house we haunt. And somehow, I make him understand that this diagnosis isn’t an end. That we adapt. How I can help him, how—

But I remembered receiving my diagnosis and know I wouldn’t have bought such a montage then. There is a long name for the fading that I’ve long since forgotten. “It’s too late,” the doctor said. They could fix my spine but not the nerves. Then she said, “But it may not be too late for your children.”

It turned out that my daughter didn’t have the gene. She’s a musician too, by trade, a singer. My son refused to take the test. In many ways I think it would have been easier for her to have it—she makes a good living with her mighty voice alone—but I am glad it was him. If it wasn’t for this fading of sensation, of fine motor skill, his bass would have remained silently below us. If it wasn’t for this fading—mine and his—I figure I’d be living here alone.

“I should get back to practicing,” he said, walking backwards through the swinging door.

“You should let those heal first,” I said, looking toward his fingertips.

“No, it’s better this way. It helps me feel the strings,” he said, and left.

I moved to the counter, wet my sleeve under the touch-sensor tap and carefully wiped away the prints. Listening to the music, I closed my eyes and for a moment felt the smoothness of the wood again, the sandpaper against my palms as I smoothed it, the weight of my hammer and smell of saw dust.

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Noah Evan Wilson is a New York City-based writer and musician. “The Fading” is his first published work of fiction. His records, Desert Cities (2019) and The View from the Ground – EP (2021), are available on all major streaming platforms.

The Breakup

Don't keep anything, they said. I kept some things. A blue vase wedding present, a stuffed dog that used to have a necklace looped around its small neck. At least, don't keep the mattress, they said. I kept the mattress, festooned with too many pillows and a bright, bold bedspread in pinks and reds and oranges that he would hate.

I unfurled a deep red oriental rug, yellow-gold tassels fringing the edges, adding another color to the mix. I saw everything in motion—the rug unfurling with a crisp snapping sound, the gauzy cattail curtains undulating in the breeze. The light seeping through the gauziness, creeping, aware it had been away a long time.

I heard him say he doesn’t understand decorative pillows, saw him push aside slippery circles and cylinders for his artless sleep. I saw us standing in Macy’s at the foot of fake beds that would never be ours—they were too perfect.

Don’t keep the bedroom set, they said. I kept the bedroom set. I found a larger-than-life size Klimt, a woman. Hang her horizontally, they said, as the painter intended. I hung her vertically. The bright colorful swirls around her head contrast the dark unyielding wood angles of the bedroom set. The soft hay of her hair cascades towards her soft curves. We stand by the mirror in the mornings, both naked, pale, and still.

My mother took the tour and murmured agreement with the hand towels and bath rugs. The bedroom, however, confounded her. She asked why I want a strange naked woman in my bedroom. Each morning, I look at myself in the mirror, the reflected Klimt behind me, and I wonder which strange naked woman she is referring to. In my mother’s bedroom, there are butterflies, flowers, and cherubs. The cherubs are naked; their short chubby legs open to nothing but smooth flat porcelain.

What you need, they tell me, is a good night’s sleep. Those curtains don't block out the light. I tell them, “I know.” The breaking dawn tickles my right ear, spreads slow like old honey over my face, whispers in my left ear. It wakes me. It is not my husband's blaring alarm clock set on snooze for an hour.

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Melissa Rosato is a family physician living in South Philadelphia with her son Benjamin. She writes things. Sometimes they are funny. Her nonfiction chapbook, We are all Patients, was just published by Variant Lit. Melissa’s flash fiction has appeared in Into the Void and Schuylkill Valley Journal, and is scheduled to appear in Flash: The International Short Story Magazine. Her creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Barnstorm and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.