“Forgetting on Draft” • by Elis Montgomery

I say I’m drinking to forget. The barkeep fills my glass, and I sip.

Her name. Her face. My mind’s a wound, everything bleeding out—

Suddenly I’m pain free.

I’m also… hollowed.

I see my half-empty glass. The amber liquid of forgetting… something.

“I… think I made a mistake.”

The barkeep nods, pulls from a different barrel. “Don’t worry. We’ve got remembering on draft, too.”

He serves me a second potion. As I drink, I notice a stranger now sitting at the bar, staring at the barrels, unsure.

Not a stranger.

“Hi, Molly,” I say.

Her tears pool. “Hi, Max.”

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Elis Montgomery is a speculative fiction writer from Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of SFWA and Codex. When she’s not writing, she’s usually hanging upside down in an aerial arts class or a murky cave. Find her there or at elismontgomery.com.

 

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The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction piece playing off key word: draft.

One more story to come!

Categories: The Pete Wood Challenge