2024 Half-Price Books and the Fremont Cultural Arts Council Flash Fiction Contest Winners

April 2024 Flash Fiction Contest

‘The April 2024 Flash Fiction Contest, co-sponsored by the Fremont Cultural Arts Council and Half Price Books, was held on April 20, 2024 at Half Price Books, 39152 Fremont Hub, Fremont, CA. Cash and Half Price Books gift cards were awarded to the 1st – 5th place winners. Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to all who entered!

• 1st: “A Strange Dream” by Sarah Jensen
• 2nd (tie): “Call of Duty” by Wayne Reznick
• 2nd (tie): “Cloud Dreaming” by Nancy Guarnera
• 3rd (tie): “A Touch of Death” by Elena Climent
• 3rd (tie): “Overdue” by Vincent Nghiem

1st Place: “A Strange Dream” by Sarah Jensen

Mom put Susan to bed,
And kissed her forehead.
“Goodnight, my dear,
Sweet dreams”,
She said.
Soon Susan felt a silvery wand
Of an angel
Who came forward,
Giving her a hand.
She smiled, said
“Welcome to Dreamland”.

The angel introduced Susan
To all her friends.
Tito the dog, Kitty the cat,
Leo the bunny, ready to chat.

“Let us have a party,
To sing and dance.
Plenty of food will be laid,
Cakes, puddings
And ginger bread.
A pot of milk and honey,
And some carrot for the bunny.
Fish for the kitty,
Among other nitty gritties.”
The clouds danced with them all
In the night sky,
The Moon and stars shining through
The gentle breeze passing them by.
The angel danced with Susan,
Her friends clapped to cheer.
All held hands to dance
Around the bonfire.

Then, as the Sun crept out from the Eastern sky,
The angel and her animal friends
Shook Susan’s hand and hugged her tight.
“When do we see you again?”
Said the Angel, morose,
As the door of Dreamland
Began to close.
 

2nd Place (tie): “Call of Duty” by Wayne Reznick

Despite the blaring artillery and gunfire heard this morning by the medical staff, we felt sufficiently safe with our distance from the frontline. The battle resulted in several casualties and many wounded. The injured were now being carried in stretchers or escorted into the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. We were scrambling to triage, operate and treat them. It was critical for us to respond quickly, sensibly and correctly to save lives and limbs. Tension was evident in the way we moved, the expression on our faces and the tone of our voices.

This WWII scenario was a recurring dream that showed up in my adolescence, years before the popular TV series, MASH. It evoked my imagining being a healer instead of an infantryman, should Uncle Sam call me to duty. Killing people, even for a just cause, was abhorrent to me. As a kid, I steadfastly avoided playing war, even video game versions. So, yes, I strongly preferred to fight against the predatory tendencies of humans by mending and not by violence.

Ten years after the dream, I would become an MD for soldiers at a VA hospital. Unlike the dream, I remained a civilian, without ever going near a combat zone.

Curiously, the dream’s last installment threw in a complication when the medical commander asked, “Will you treat this wounded Nazi?” I consented.

After I transferred to a position at a civilian hospital, the police brought in and stayed near an injured young man. His shirt displayed a swastika and the insignia of the American Nazi Party. A hospital staff member turned to me, “Could I help him.” I replied, “If he could accept treatment by a Jewish doctor, then sure.” The patient consented.

His body healed but I don’t know if his soul ever did.
:

2nd Place (tie): “”Cloud Dreaming” by Nancy Guarnera

Last night I dreamt about clouds.

First, I flew across the sky with them, meeting all the different types and even some of the mixed and matched varieties. It was chilly, freezing in fact, and wet…but amazing. I was flying after all; the cold and wet could not dampen my joy.

Then, without warning…I was a cloud…soaring high and free!

I started as dainty, white wisps of cirrus vapor, curling like horses’ tails as they flicked across the vibrant blue sky. Then, I puffed myself up and produced row upon row of stratus waves flowing across the firmament.

Slowly, I gathered my ice crystals together and formed a huge, angry thunderhead. I became a towering cumulonimbus with a dark, gray face and a white, anvil-shaped column reaching thousands of feet into the heavens. I shook with thunder and electrified the sky with branching arcs of lightning. My fury flashed through the air and into the ground below. Unleashing a storm of torrential rain, I swirled and slashed my wrath until I had nothing left to prove. The downpour was exhilarating!

I transformed from a bright, bold nimbi-white to a soft, coral pink as I reflected the setting sun. Gradually, my blush deepened to a lush watermelon and I evaporated into delicate strands of haze spreading a gossamer veil across the waxing moon. The perfect transformation…and culmination.

I adore clouds. They are a planetary phenomenon that fills me with awe. And every now and then, when I dream at night…I become them.

What a wondrous delight!

3rd Place (tie): “A Touch of Death” by Elena Climent

This narration is not the inspiration made up by a dream, it is the dream itself, and believe me I am no “hyperbole” in the story.

I waked up and the first thing I remember was myself running. I was running as fast as my short legs were able to. All kind of different people were running side by side with panic on their faces forming a big crowd all together through a narrow and dusty street in some unknown place.

I turned my head back looking around trying to identify some of the terrorized faces around me. I was very scared. I wanted someone, at least one familiar person among the crowd to hold hands with in that stampede!

Once more, my anxious eyes went around hoping for comfort, but the entire pale and rigid faces were strange to me. My heart was pounding fast and my resistance was about to overcome, I closed my eyes and I took a big breath to regain my “composure.”

I wanted to scream but, but my voice got strangled in my throat, my mouth was so dry!

I was wearing white sandals and the right one came off on the running, I tried to tell people; stop please, stop for a moment to peak it up and could run better, but nobody paid any attention to me.

Everything was moving fast. Suddenly I found myself involved in awful vivid colors of red and blue explosion dropping me to the ground. My face was down against the dirt by the left side, I could not move. Was I hit by a. bomb? I didn’t feel any pain, I couldn’t feel my body either. Was I dead? No, it can not be me I was telling in terror
.
Someone in a brown sport jacket was lying close to me; He was quiet, motionless; he looked like a young man although I never saw his face. His blond hair was resting closed to my shoulder. Was he also dead, I wondered?

How about the other people, are they hurt? Somebody should be crying and screaming for help! but no, only a dreadful silence was surrounded me.

I wanted to look around, but as I lifted my head from the dirt, horror! my entire scalp came off, Oh God, what was that? Then, came to my memory old American movies; Indians were doing it.

Finally, a peaceful feeling of acceptant of my very end came to me.
The terrify dream gave me a sense of tranquility and peace after open my eyes in the morning.

3rd Place (tie): “Overdue” by Vincent Nghiem

On the car ride to school, I muster up the courage to ask my father what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“If I was born again,” he says slowly, “I wish I could be a doctor.”

He’s grizzled, past retirement age, and would rather chastise me for not eating breakfast or staying up too late last night rather than tell stories from his past. His employee badge, nestled in the tangles of his lanyard, momentarily gleams in the morning sunlight: “Electronic Technician.”

He scoffs. Speaks of how, under the iron fist of the communists four decades ago, he was denied entry to medical school. How, when he fled to the U.S. years later, he couldn’t become a doctor because of his unfamiliarity with English. How bitter that language could taste.

I look at him. Headstrong, chiseled and as sturdy as a marble statue, yes, but weathered. There’s a boy peeking through the cracks, someone who laid his dreams down, let them decompose into a bed of soil sturdy enough for me to stand upon.

“Why?” Red light. “I wanted to help people. Help my family, help myself. I feel the same amount of satisfaction, working with electronics. But if I could do it over again…”

The sun glimmers through the windshield, and my father and I blink. Our eyes briefly meet in the rear view mirror. I fear that’s enough looking back for the day, or at least until the next time, sometime far away in the future, I’m brave enough to ask him another prying question.

My father looks at me and smiles, slaps me on the shoulder with a heavy, lined hand. “But I have you, and your brother and Mommy.” And I hope that we can shoulder his dreams together. Possibly.