Autumn 2025 - 250 competition

Here is the winner of our spooky ghost / horror story   NAWG 2025 Autumn 250-word Flash Fiction competition . It ran from Friday 3rd to Friday 31st October, First, second, and third place entries will also be published in Link magazine. See the website HERE

The prize of £25 for the winning entry goes to SUSAN KING  for her story:

RUSSIAN ROULETTE.

I dread this day. Pumpkins with grinning faces and kids running about dressed
as ghosts. Ghosts don’t wear costumes, they’d know that if they’d seen one. I
can cope with all that – it’s the knocking on doors blackmailing adults into
giving them treats that frightens me. Don’t they know how dangerous this is?
Agnes has a bucket of Cadbury Heroes by the door. Her children have
grown up and left home which is a relief to me, I can tell you I want to yell at the
little ones who stand with expectant faces when she opens the door. Bugger off,
I want to shout. But of course, I can’t.
You can’t imagine the horror of watching her fill her syringe and pierce
the wrapper of a chocolate bar, plunging the needle into the gooey inside and
withdrawing it empty. You don’t know what it’s like to watch helpless as she
smiles and hands out the sweets.
She’s not daft enough to poison each one. For her it’s a game of Russian
roulette. She waits for the post on the village Facebook page. She reads the
hundreds of messages of sympathy with glee, scrolls slowly through emojis of
crying faces, pink hearts and praying hands. She notes the date of the funeral
and gets out her dark clothes.
It’s the same black dress and coat she wore my cremation. A human black
widow spider, she dispensed with me after our children were born.
It’s just other people’s children she dislikes.