It had been a long day, and Calvin was beginning to lose his grip on reality. The contestants this year were of a quality he had never seen before and he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or disturbed. He licked icing from the previous entry off his finger as he approached the last stand. It was a gumboot. He examined the faded green rubber and dried mud; was it chocolate? He choked down his gut instinct to check for spiders. He hadn’t been wrong so far, but… Sweating, he picked it up and opened his mouth.
GDS commentary: Angharad’s story is such a great, cheeky interpretation of this theme. We love that it knows exactly where to start and end to tell a complete, entertaining story in a tiny word count.
Angharad Lodwick runs the book blog Tinted Edges and was selected for the inaugural New Territory program. She has contributed to Feminartsy, Homer, Cicerone and the 2019 Digital Writers’ Festival. She is the current editor of ChinWag, ACT Rescue and Foster’s biannual magazine. She is the creator of the zine series AnghaRANT and the podcast Lost the Plot.