No, no, no, this isn’t another crazy bid for more sponsorhip money. Every week of the Write-a-thon, Clarion gives us writers a new challenge. For Week 2, we were tasked with creating our own Sponsor Challenge for the sponsor board. I suggested a flash fiction contest for my challenge. Beth Overmyer submitted the winning entry, “Kiss Me.” With her permission, I now present it to you for your reading pleasure:
by Beth Overmyer
For a hundred years I lay in the castle’s topmost tower, mulling over the witch’s words. “Neither will you rise nor wake, ’til True Love’s kiss the spell will break. Yet ne’er will your young head rest, ’til mortal eyes meet True Love’s Test.”
Every sound, ever whisper of wind made my heart leap in anticipation. Could this be He? So many false starts and broken hopes lay strewn across my sleepless dreams until that one bright day. He had come.
I tried to still my breathing, anticipation getting the best of my imagination. I didn’t know what to say or what to do, having never been kissed before. What if I wasn’t good at it?
There was a gentle wrap on the door, which creaked open on its hinges. This was it. My hope, my life, my radiant knight, come to free me at last!
His feet trudged across the floor, his armor groaning in protest. “Hello?”
I puckered up…
“What? This can’t be,” I heard my valiant conqueror gasp. “Of all the battles of I have faced, this has to be the worst. For who could kiss this ‘young maid’ with such old appearance cursed?”
I heard the coward turn on his heel and run for the door, leaving me alone to lie in this forever sleep. I thought I knew and had it all, when I was young and beautiful. Yet I learned too late in time that True Love is hard to find.
If you enjoyed this flash story, please sponsor Beth. Even as little as a $5 donation will help keep Clarion running as one of the top sf/f writing workshops in the country.
