Flash Fiction Winner: "Bad Fit for the Crit Group" by Simon C. Larter

"Her muscial voice tinkled in his ears like a glockenspiel?" Frank's snort of incredulous laughter had cut short Sara's reading, and now she stared at him, blinking, mouth opening and closing, goldfish-like. "Seriously?"

"I . . . I-" Sara began.

"No, honey. Just . . . no." Frank chopped the air with a bladed hand. "You just can't use similies like that. Can't. That's godawful."

The flush started at my collar and worked its way over my cheeks to my temples.

Stunned silence weighed on the group, until Don coughed into his hand. "Er . .Sara, would you like to go on?"

Frank folded his arms across his barrel chest and leaned against the seatback, eyeing Sara balefully from beneath bush brows. One boot heel tapped against the tile floor in jittery rhythm.

"No," Sara mumbled, crimson to the dark roots of her blonde hair. "Someone else go."

He let Sophie get all the way through her story. A muffled sigh of relief breezed through the room. Frank frowned and nodded to himself. But Don's tentative encouragement stumbled to a halt a few sentences in when Frank harrumphed and sniffed loudly.

"I don't think so," he said. "Don, is it? No. You're wrong. Missing the forest for the trees. Sophie clearly intended the moon as a veiled reference to Artemis, not merely as scenery. Well done, good lady!" He frowned and nodded brusquely in her direction.

Sophie blinked three times in rapid succession, then made a show of fumbling in her handbag for a tissue.

He told Craig his prose was purple. Mary used too many adverbs. Ralph's "voice" was twee. Twee?

After he'd gone, I apologized to the group. "He seemed nice when I met him in the bookstore," I said. "I'm sorry."

It took months for them to forgive me.

THE END.
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Simon Larter graduated from Drexel University with a degree in Civil
Engineering. His work has appeared in Per Contra and Flashquake, and
is forthcoming in LitNImage. He lives with his wife and three children
in New Jersey.

He blogs at Constant Revisions

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Check back tomorrow to see who won our "Honorable Mention Award."