by Jaime Gill
1st Place Winner – Flash 405, June 2026: “Loop”
Fiction
I rise from darkness like an air bubble from the deep and pop into consciousness, in pain and sticky-blind until my scalp sucks up the blood and I find myself staring into a man’s open eyes that don’t move—don’t look at me, at anything—because he’s lying broken on a rock, his back snapped like a stick, while I lie in undergrowth and thorns, lacerated but not shattered, my mouth keening though I understand nothing, and then everything moves fast: A mangled motorbike rolls from below—glass, plastic, and metal merging—and the man’s body unsnaps, his hands jerk to the handlebars, and as he and the bike hurtle over me I whirl up to join them, tumbling and screaming up from valley shadows into sunshine, where we reverse in a screeching jag around a monkey-shaped blur before racing backwards through serpentine, palm-lined roads, up and down, up and down, away from the sun plummeting ahead until we stop outside a villa where we walk backwards hand-in-hand to a table and spit coffee into glasses, then move to a room where we climb into a bed and mumble nonsense words until a different, lighter darkness swallows me.
* * *
I wake before Josh. Back home he’s the early riser, bringing coffee if he’s not trying for sex. Holiday Josh is different—I like him even more. I can imagine a second holiday. A third. Maybe a lifetime.
I lick his neck, waking him, and we mumble sleepy hellos. He rolls over and hugs me tight enough to almost hurt. He suggests an early morning drive before the tourists wake from their hangovers to jam the island’s roads. I’m game—we’ve got five more days for sex, after all.
We head to the villa patio, the sun rising over the rice paddies, painting them a gleaming green more vivid than any I’ve seen in nature before. Ayu, our host, brings lattes which we gulp, the road calling. We’d never driven motorbikes before Bali, and we’re both intoxicated by speeding through the open world, breeze whipping through us.
The ride is glorious, that fat orange sun rising ahead as we race round the tarmac coiling through this green, green land. I hold Josh’s waist, chin on his shoulder, drifting into reverie until he yells a jolting “fuck” and then we’re swerving, skidding, screaming, falling, smashing.
* * *
I rise from darkness like an air bubble from the deep and
Judge’s Comments: This piece is sticky. There’s no better word for it. I read it a few times to truly understand the weight of the event—it is so beautifully disorienting in the beginning, which leads us to such a heartbreaking reveal, which makes the loop even more heartbreaking. The best flash fiction can encapsulate a whole span of a life in the slightest of spaces, without sacrificing juicy language or emotion. It does not simply speed through a story; it makes us feel as if we’ve languished in its world for days when it’s only been a few minutes or moments. “Coils” did just that. Days later I was still wishing these characters just stayed in bed. Please. Maybe this time. Maybe if I read it again.
Jaime Gill is a queer British ex-music journalist, now working or volunteering for nonprofits across Asia. He writes, reads, runs, boxes, travels, and sometimes socializes at gunpoint. His stories are in The Forge, The Missouri Review, Fractured Lit, The Masters Review, Trampset, Pithead Chapel, and others. He’s won multiple awards including a 2024 Bridport Prize and 2025 New Millennium Writing Award, and been finalist for the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Very Short Fiction contest, Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, and Bath Short Story Award, alongside three Pushcart nominations. No pets or kids, but he’s keeping some houseplants alive, barely. He’s writing a novel, screenplay, and more short stories. Website: jaimegill.com. Newsletter: jaimegill.substack.com.
Photo by Geio Tischler