Everyone enjoy the Special Evening Edition of 5MinuteFiction? I’m so glad dk Levick agreed to help us make this happen.

It wasn’t an easy choice among the finalists today, as the poll shows. But there can be only one… (Yeah, been watching too much Highlander.)

Our winner is: D. Ryan Leask, @DRyanLeask

CONGRATS! Here’s his winning entry.

He’d lie awake, chilled from the cold sweats that troubled his infrequent dozing. The body still lay on his kitchen floor, no matter how many times he went to make sure it was really gone as soon as he closed his eyes his mind told him it was still there. He could no longer sleep.

He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. The water ran off bright red, he screamed, jarring himself back to life and back to the swirling clear liquid running down the drain. He could not feel clean. He turned on the water to full hot then stepped out of his clothes. They were still sticky with blood even though the clothes he had been wearing were buried —in the kitchen— along with the body. He scrubbed again, it was his fourth shower since he returned, the bottom of his bathtub was caked with mud and blood and hair and nothing, he had used two bottles of bleach but it all kept coming back.

He used the barbecue brush to scrub off the evidence again. This time the water ran red for real as layers of skin peeled off his body. The blistering heat numbed the pain in the shear volume of pain recepticles it overloaded, still he scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed.

 

And don’t forget to check out Bridges by dk Levick author of this week’s starting sentence and a great new book. Thanks again to him for your judging efforts this week! See you next week, at our regular Tuesday time, 1:30pm Eastern!