Back in May 2026, I entered The Flash Fiction Challenge 2026 sponsored by NYC Midnight. According to their website: "The 18th annual Flash Fiction Challenge is a competition that challenges writers worldwide to create short stories no longer than 1,000 words based on genre, location, and object assignments in 48 hours."
My assignments were:
Genre: Horror
Location: Borderlands
Object: Chocolate Bar
As you can imagine, this stretched my writing muscles far beyond their previous limits. Horror is a genre I don't read let alone write. However, I had a blast trying to meet the challenge. Although I did not move on to the second round, I created a story that received positive feedback from the judges, and I am proud to call mine. My favorite comments from the judges were:
"I particularly loved the men's explanations of their missing eyes—they were macabre and funny and surreal all at the same time." - Judge 1609
"I thought you crafted a strikingly vivid story world through strong imagery that evoked a real sense of horror, well done!" - Judge 2550
I did it. I wrote horror. 😃 Of course, there was great constructive feedback too about worldbuilding, tightening, and the ending, which I appreciate immensly.
I am posting my original story as submitted. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Leaving the safety of the underground for the surface stirred every insecurity Alice had fought for the past eighteen years. Born with allergies, she’d been branded an outcast and exiled to the sanitized zone at just four minutes old, but now that she’d been declared allergy-free, she must return to the surface to reunite with her absent parents.
Alice pushed a red button on the control panel next to the exit door, and when it clicked open, she sprang back, pulse racing.
Blue, the color of danger, filled her vision. The pulsing sanitizer lights the nurses used when an allergen polluted the sterilized zone also cleaned the dingy tunnels to keep allergens from infecting the patients. They struck fear into her heart.
Being cured didn’t feel any different.
Taking one last breath of safe air, Alice stepped into the exit tunnel. The door closed with a definitive click. Nowhere to go but out the other side. One mile to the surface.
“Please grab your chocolate bar from the basket,” said a disembodied voice, distorted by a static crackle. “You must entirely consume it before you exit the door to the surface.”
One bar sat in the basket. The anaphylactic’s nightmare: a wafer cookie topped with caramel and nuts, enrobed in milk chocolate. Dairy, nuts, and gluten. Her throat swelled with the thought, but lacking options, Alice shoved the nightmare bar into her pocket.
Taking a fortifying breath, she choked on the tainted air. She could feel the contaminants creeping into her sinuses. Coughing, she stumbled and reached out to the exposed rock wall for support.
Pain. Her throbbing fingers bore dots of blood.
“Hurt yourself?”
Alice crashed back into the wall, scraping the skin from her elbow, and whirled to see the owner of the phlegmy voice. A man, with a scabbed-over spot instead of an eye, leered at her.
“Now you’ve gone and scratched your arm as well.” The man grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm to poke at her elbow. Pain lanced through her shoulder.
“I don’t think it bends that way,” she squeaked.
The one-eyed man ignored her protest and spat onto her arm, digging his thumb into the wound. “You allergy kids, you’re all weak. Afraid of contaminants. You’re the real contaminants, spreading your weakness in the world.” He threw her arm down.
She wiped her elbow and puffed out her chest. “I am not weak. What happened to your eye?”
“Ahh.” He drew the sound out, and his pungent breath assaulted her nostrils. Then he caressed his eye socket. “Not many weaklings pass this way anymore. Patrolling this tunnel gives me plenty of free time, and one day I sat so still that a spider began to weave her web on my face. Intrigued, I let the little missus do her work. Unfortunately, her silk irritated my nose, and when I sneezed, she bit my eye with her toxic fangs.”
Alice gulped and glanced at the door behind him.
“Ready to go back?” he mocked in a twisted falsetto and then erupted into hideous laughter.
If only it were an option. Turning, she crashed into a second man.
“Running, are you?”
Unlike the spider-loving spit-healer, the new man wore a patch over his right eye. He shoved a bottle into her hands. “You don’t deserve to reach the surface, but I’m required to give you this.”
“What happened to your eye?” she asked, moving around him.
He caressed his patch. “In solidarity with my brother, I covered it with birdseed and let a crow peck it out. We wouldn’t still be twins otherwise.”
The brothers cackled in unison, and Alice fled. Though fearful of the future, she could not claim it fast enough.
When she reached the entrance to the surface, she jabbed the green button on the control panel. Nothing happened. Panting, she opened the bottle and guzzled half its contents before reading the label.
UNWORTHY.
Alice flung the bottle away. Leaning over, she attempted to vomit out the fluid, but her throat constricted, blocking its escape.
No. This could not be happening. Her throat closed, blocking air from her lungs. Her tongue swelled, causing pain in both her jaw and her ear. Tears dripped from her eyes as she scratched at her throat and slid to the ground.
She was cured. No more allergies. No more reactions. The doctors had promised her.
Had the brothers poisoned her to keep her from reaching the surface?
She needed help, but the sanitized zone was now a mile away. As her vision blurred, she remembered the chocolate bar. She’d thought it was her worst nightmare, but maybe it was her ticket to rescue. If she could eat at least a bite, perhaps the door would open.
She wrenched the chocolate from her pocket and fumbled to tear the plastic. When the wrapper opened, the bar dropped into the dirt. In any other situation, the possibility of contaminants would have paralyzed her, but in her desperation, she bit off a large chunk.
As her strength faded, the nightmare bar melted on her tongue, and the liquid chocolate slipped through her constricted throat. It coated her esophagus, and the swelling eased. She drew in the smallest of breaths. With the precious air came energy, which she used to chew the antidote. Every bite of dairy, nuts, and gluten that reached her throat brought another breath, and before long, the bar was gone.
Click.
Freedom. Alice staggered to her feet. Only an hour ago, she’d doubted she was truly cured, but now she knew. Nothing the surface threw at her could compare to the terrors she’d faced in the tunnel.
On the other side of the door, a white light blinded her, and she shaded her eyes.
“Alice, my daughter.”
She tried to blink into focus the source of the familiar voice, but it would take her some time before she could see the man and his missing right eye.