Get Drunk
Written for the Writing Battle Fear 2025 Flash Fiction competition, the three prompts were Horror, Plumber and Spiderweb. There was a 1000 word limit, this is the 1200 word version.
I landed on the idea for this story by way of a different one, something my wife and I spitballed while driving across Tasmania, an idea I’ve wanted to expand on for ages. This borrows literally a single element from that story, the rest is entirely new.
The “science” behind brewing a beer here is all accurate. Assuming you could keep the person alive through the process of altering their stomach’s pH (the ammonic cocktail would probably kill most people), the fermentation process would probably raise their internal temperature to lethal levels. I originally had the perspective character fitted with a cooling hat to protect their brain during this, but it was cut for word limitations.
I talked to Brendan Ibbett, co-owner and head brewer at Kicks Brewing, who I think is the best beer brewer in Australia, and he confirmed that my decisions all made sense. He probably wouldn’t brew a beer this way though.
If you’d like to read the version submitted for the competition, which was cut down to 1000 words, you can see it here.
The Eternium Stone
Written for the Writing Battle Autumn Short Story competition, the three prompts were True Crime, Pub, Tyrant. There was a 2000 word limit.
I raged against the idea of True Crime as a fictional genre when I initially got it. Writing Battle is a peer judged competition, and it was clear from interactions I’d had online that some people had determined that True Crime as a genre must contain a story that is factually true. Think Zodiac, or Spotlight. Except those stories involve actual journalism, and required far more than 2000 words and 7 days to be told correctly.
I decided to attack the idea of Truth itself, and write a story that was true within the confines of its own world. The other genres for the competition were “Cozy Fantasy, Espionage, Cemetary Tale” and I tried to cover those genres a bit as well.
I hope you enjoy, then, my idea of how a cozy fantasy world might listen to their version of a True Crime Podcast.
I didn’t win by the way, and in the feedback I found out that some people were disappointed that I hadn’t written about a true crime like some sort of Vice beat reporter. Incredible stuff.
The Orphan
The Prompt: “You are “The Orphan”, the only supervillain that is not outright hated. You show no mercy on heroes that have collateral, especially those that leave children without parents.”
Not a terribly complex piece, although there are some layers that I thought worked well. I arrived at the “Orphan Annie” thing a bit late and went back through to backwards engineer the references to fit the rest of the story.
I think if I have a schtick with prompted writing, it’s that I approach it like a genie approaches wish-granting, like it’s an opportunity to ironically mess with the person who made the request. In this instance, I viewed the prompt as an exercise in capital punishment and I took it through to its final conclusion.
Reload
The Prompt: “Player keeps reloading trying to save every ally in a mission, one of their allies remembers every attempt.”
Hey, video games! My wheelhouse! I love the idea of an NPC finding out they’re in a game. The essence of any good game is the journey of learning any player takes, so I thought it would be nice for my NPC to take the same.
Naturally they have a radically different perspective on what that journey actually is, and that’s what lies at the heart of this particular story.
I went in some silly directions with this one, like the name and the ending, but overall I had fun putting it together and I think it broadly worked.
Flight
The Prompt: “Attention passengers, this is your pilot speaking. Opening your flight window shades is now prohibited until further notice. The airline is not liable for any psychological distress experienced from viewing outside.“
This one screamed horror from the outset, and I ran with it. It was fun limiting myself to describing the scene using only what the perspective character could hear initially. Obviously it helped that most people are familiar with the layout of a plane.
I actively removed the original ending to preserve the horror of the story itself. There’s a few twists that aren’t even a little bit spelled out for the reader, which might make it seem like random stuff is happening. None of it is random.
Joabyjojo 