Late again for the announcement of the 5 Minute Fiction winner. Tsk tsk. Better late than never! Please join me in congratulating the winner: Betsy Streeter. And here’s her winning entry:

“It’s…. a duck.”

“No it isn’t, it’s an eagle! A mighty eagle, with its wings spread. Look.”

“But look at the beak. An eagle beak curves down, doesn’t it?”

Doug leans in and peers at the duck/eagle. “You’re right, the beak goes the wrong way,” he says.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god…” says Cindy. “Oh, my god.” She paces back and forth, hand on her forehead.

“I’m leaving,” Cindy says.

“No, no you’re not,” says Doug. “You’re staying here, with me, until he wakes up.”

“Maybe it’s a raven,” says Cindy. “Can you make it black, a black bird? Like a raven?”

“No,” says Doug, “I can’t make it into a raven. I’ll end up with a black blob.”

“So, we’ve got a duck. A freaking duck,” says Cindy.

“Well we don’t have a duck, he has a duck,” says Doug.

“And we’re gonna have a broken face,” says Cindy. “When he’s done with us, we will look like ducks, also.”

“Look,” says Doug. “He broke in here, he asked me to do this, I told him I didn’t know what the hell an eagle looked like or even how to work this stupid equipment. I told him! He didn’t care. He said he’d kick my ass if I didn’t get busy. So I did. End of story.”

“Right,” says Cindy. “Right. Until he wakes up and kills us both.”

“Tell you what,” says Doug. “We tell him it’s a mythical creature.”

“A really stupid looking mythical creature,” says Cindy.

“Yeah, but with special powers. It bestows powers on its owner. He might just go for it.”

“He was stupid enough to tell you to put an eagle on there before he passed out,” says Cindy.

“Okay. So that’s our plan. Okay? Got it?” says Doug.

“Got it,” says Cindy.

They sit on the floor and pop open two beers, settling in to wait for him to wake up and ask what happened.

Congratulations to Betsy, and many thanks to the guest judge for this week, Jocelynn Drake. Betsy wins a signed copy of Jocelynn’s novel Angel’s Ink. For those of you who didn’t win, be sure to check out that book–it looks so great!

See you back here next week for another round of 5 Minute Fiction. Next week’s guest judge, by the way, is Brooklyn writer Felicia C. York