ANNOUNCING THE
PLACE
WINNERS OF OUR
2018
FLASH
CONTEST
We asked writers from around the world to submit their very best
work in any genre. The catch? Each entry had to be less than 1,000
words. We’re no stranger to running writing competitions, but the
response from the writing community shocked us: We were treated
to more than double the entries we typically receive. The following
three winners represent the best of the best in both flash fiction
and nonfiction, and all leave a startling impact in an incredibly
short space: The longest among them is told in just 941 words,
while the shortest clocks in at 375.
1ST
THE TOWER BLOCK: APARTMENT 1307
By Markús Már Efraím | Fiction
S
he had read that the worst torment for the
prisoners of Alcatraz was seeing and hearing
the people living in freedom across the bay.
But even though the tower block had essentially
become a prison for her, Magnea still cherished
the view. When she and her husband had become
some of the building’s first occupants 40 years
ago, it was the view that captivated them. Now, it
was its only merit. Since the TV’s menacing
behavior stopped it from being a source of enter-
tainment, they spent their evenings looking at the
sprawling city outside the vast living room win-
dow. Now Magnea sat there by herself, watching
the houses below and taking comfort in the
notion that they were occupied by happy families
who were not captives in their own homes.
This high up, she never saw any movement out-
side, save the odd, bewildered bird that dared
approach the building. So she was aghast when she
saw what looked like a person pass by her window.
Shocked as she was, she looked out the window
toward the ground, where she saw what looked
like a puddle of blood but no body. She called the
caretaker, who reluctantly agreed to check it out.
Under normal circumstances – if there was ever
anything normal about this place – he wouldn’t go
outside the tower block after dark. But he would
definitely lose his job if children were to discover a
disfigured corpse in the morning.
The caretaker called Magnea back and told her
there was nothing there, that she was imagining
things. She only had herself to blame, really,
spending all her time staring out the window.
Maybe he was right. So Magnea decided to go to
bed, but she didn’t sleep that night.
The next morning, she went outside – which
she hadn’t done just for the sake of it in a long
time – so that she could see for herself. The care-
taker wasn’t lying. There were no traces of an
accident. She took a deep breath and headed back
up the stairs, all 13 flights. She didn’t dare take
the elevator, because she didn’t know where it
would take her.
When night came, she returned to her habit of
looking out the window, but she didn’t enjoy the
view like usual. She felt uneasy; the previous
night’s vision had seemed so real. She was expect-
ing the worst, and then it happened. Again, she
saw a person in a flapping dress plunging past her
window. She couldn’t call the caretaker again – he
would have her committed. Not the police, either,
because her phone could only make calls to the
caretaker’s office. So instead she just closed the
curtains and tried to read a book she had read
many times before.
* * *
Once her only connection to the outside world, the
view had now been ruined for her. It didn’t matter
what time of day she looked out, she always saw
that person plunging past her window. Magnea
had tried to alter her sleep pattern in order to take
in the view at different hours, but there was noth-
ing left to enjoy. Now the curtains were always
closed. The loneliness, which she had barely coped
with before, had become overpowering.
After a few weeks of recycling old crossword
puzzles and revisiting books she now knew by
heart, she walked slowly toward the window.
Magnea decided to let some daylight into the
black hole the apartment had become and hesi-
tantly drew back the curtains. She let out a muf-
fled scream when she was met by a face at the
writermag.com • The Writer | 31
window but quickly realized it was her own
reflection in the glass. It was dark outside. She
had lost all sense of time after the weeks of total
isolation. But then her eyes caught the falling
body. This was unbearable.
Magnea went to the bedroom and put on the
dress she wore to his funeral. She wished he could
see her in it. When she went out to the corridor,
she was faced by the elevator, wide open and wel-
coming her. This time around, she knew it would
take her where she was meant to go.
The roof garden was bigger than many public
parks, but there was nothing that justified that
botanical designation. The vegetation had com-
pletely given way to bare concrete – there wasn’t
even a single weed in sight. But, oh, the view! It
stretched as far as the eye could see in any direc-
tion, and there was nothing disturbing it. She felt
the pull of the wind as she stepped on the ledge
and took her last look at the city, bathed in light
under the dark sky. She thought about the prison-
ers of Alcatraz who had leapt from the island
cliffs into the rapid current below in the vain
hope of escaping their imprisonment.
On her way down, she caught sight of the win- Writing in your native language has its obvious
dow she had spent so much time looking out of,
and in that brief moment, she saw her own terri-
benefits and is also necessary for the preservation
of languages, but there are less than 350,000 2ND
fied face looking back at her. speakers of Icelandic in the world, so writing in
English has its appeal. Icelanders are generally
PLACE
Markús Már Efraím is an Icelandic author and educator rather proficient in English to the point where
who has spent most of his career offering free writing work- consumers of English literature (like me) tend to
shops to kids. He’s on the board of advisors for The Interna- mix English syntax with our writing in Icelandic.
tional Alliance of Youth Writing Centers and has published
The Stuff of Nightmares, an award-winning collection of hor-
ror shorts written by his 8- to 10-year-old students. Markús
Given English’s huge vocabulary, I feel that writ-
ing in English gives me a certain freedom, but at
the same time it’s not my native language, so my
SUMMER SCHOOL
lives in Reykjavík with his young sons, Úlfur and Baltasar. writing can easily get stiff or pretentious. By Deb Jannerson | Nonfiction

What was your revision process like for this story?

I’ve heard everything about “shitty first drafts”
(credit to Anne Lamott), and generally that’s true.
With most of my writing, I revise back and forth
and I’m not shy to share it with people I trust to
get comments. But the truth is that I wrote this
story in one sitting, and I only revised a few
I
t wasn’t a good shade of blue, like Robin’s Egg,
or even one of my classmates’ favorites, like
Teal or Periwinkle. Still, I always knew my
mom’s car by sight. Often, it pulled up when my
hands were still spackled in clay, or before I had
removed my safety goggles.

Q&A
WITH MARKÚS MÁR EFRAÍM
What inspired you to write “The Tower Block:
Apartment 1307?”
I’m fascinated with horror, and I wanted to write
an Icelandic haunted house story. Iceland has a
long history of ghost stories but not haunted house
stories, presumably because of our lack of old
estates. But we have plenty of big apartment build-
ings, and they creep me out. Dark concrete hall-
ways and the anonymity of such housing do for me
what Victorian mansions do for other people.
I was generally inspired by my two favorite
novels, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill
House and Stephen King’s The Shining in the way
books, movies, myths, and my own life and weave
around that. In the case of “Apartment 1307,” it
started out with this urban legend I found online
about how people in a Japanese skyscraper kept
seeing a woman fall past the windows and imme-
diately saw the potential in making that a more
personal story.
This story is the beginning of a linked short story
collection, also called “The Tower Block,” in
which all stories are set in the same apartment
building. The collection was originally written in
Icelandic, though you have since rewritten it to
Sebastian Ziegler
words, nothing in the story’s structure.
You work with young writing students on a regular
basis. How does mentoring budding writers affect
your own craft?
It helps so much, and I encourage all writers to give
a little back to their community by tutoring kids. I
could answer this with an essay, but basically I
believe teaching any subject helps you understand
it better. I used to tutor math in high school, and it
made me a better math student. You have to dig
into the rules and fundamentals and find a way to
explain it in a basic way. That helps you understand
those things better yourself. Also, I write for kids,
and there’s an obvious advantage to be in constant
connection with your intended readers, getting to
understand their thoughts and ways of speaking. If
I hadn’t started teaching the craft to kids, I would
probably not be writing today.
What’s your best advice for fellow flash writers?
My general advice to young writers is read, read,
read, and write. When it comes to flash fiction,
just go ahead with what you’re feeling at the
moment. Keep it simple, work with one character,
This time, she wasn’t there early. I tightened
my backpack over both shoulders and dropped
my cupcake wrapper in the trash bin by Miss
Newbury’s desk. There was something exotic in
the way I had memorized a school I did not usu-
ally attend, how I had infiltrated these classrooms
that remained locked when I rode my purple
10-speed by on spring weekends.
Outside was so bright that I didn’t feel like I
had been indoors all day, only in the shade. I
thought about the Martian I had papier-mached,
the lizard I had seen hiding behind the lunch
table, and then what had happened before class
that morning.
I still was thinking about it, how she had
looked more scared than me, how her voice had
trembled when she rasped, “Say it was an acci-
dent,” as the blue brought my eyes into focus.
Even though skipping was more fun, I
switched to a sprint for the remaining distance to
the minivan door. It took two hands to open, but
once I’d hoisted myself in I was free to spread
both palms in the air.
“No one asked!” I exclaimed. Her eyebrows
made a V-shape. She did not talk, though her

that I wanted to write a book about a house that English. How did transitioning to a second lan- and don’t be afraid to break the rules. When I mouth was frozen half-open as though she had
was inherently evil. For each particular story, it’s guage affect your writing? What did you lose and teach flash fiction to kids, I tell them it’s OK to intended to. I tried again. “No one asked about
enough for me to grab at a simple idea from other what did you gain (if anything) in the process? leave your reader guessing. my head, if it was an accident.”
32 | The Writer • March 2019 writermag.com • The Writer | 33