Arid Challenge Winners

An actual desert, or a desert of the mind? This time we gave you the ending of your tale, an evocative line: "Engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind." We couldn’t wait to see where your creativity would take you, and the entries to the Arid challenge did not disappoint.

Congratulations to our winner, D. J. Reddall, for his unusual tale ‘Bathtub Jinn’ — bonus points for the punning title. It begins with a visit to the doctor’s office and a diagnosis of MS that’s handled with a dark, wry humor. This is a piece full of nice observations, from the missing comma in Tim Hortons to the narrator reflecting on what his illness might do to his handwriting. And then it takes a swerve into Persian mythology, unexpected and yet convincing, and lit with odd details that hint at the narrator’s past: when a surprising spirit appears, she shines with a light “that reminded me of the cherished, antique lamp that was on my grandfather’s desk, long ago.” Such a nice touch.

In second place is James Leek’s ‘Berry’, which pulls us forward into an England of the future, a far cry from a green and pleasant land, thanks to the climate crisis. We loved the immediacy of the opening, the narrator longing for the sweet juice of a berry but finding it shriveled to dryness. The speaker in this story is just one human being paying the price for the desecration of the planet: that little dry berry stands for the whole world. Effectively done.

And a shout-out too to our runners-up. Brendan Donagy’s ‘Chandler Frye and the Desert of Doom!’ raised a smile with its meta-narrative of a workaholic mystery writer; PK Colleran’s ‘What Grandpa Antone Saw’ is a visitation and a moving death-dream, a chant of memory that pays tribute to a loved one. ‘The Long and Painful Death of Sandie Malone’ by Caroline Jane is also a tale couched a memorial, one distinguished by effervescent language and a gig at Coachella.

This may have been the Arid challenge — but nothing our creators put forward could be called dry. Thanks as ever for your words, your imagination, your vision. On to the next!

You can check out the full list of winners HERE and learn about our current challenges below: