Last words

In Competition No. 2765 you were invited to fill in the gap in ‘The Last —— on Earth’, and to submit a short story of that title.

The challenge produced an excellent entry. I very much enjoyed J. Seery’s engaging opening: ‘The events at the Cheltenham supermarket at the end of the 24th century inducing the accelerated evolution of the foot are too well known to need  description, initiating, as they did, the decline and disappearance of shoemaking and mending and their artefacts.’ And I was sorry not to have room for Noel Petty’s poignant and plausibly titled ‘The Last Landline on Earth’ or John Samson’s entertaining wordplay. Commendations all round but especially to Frank Osen, who scored high on laughs, Alan Millard, Gerard Benson and John Phillips.

The prizewinners, printed below, earn £30 each. The bonus fiver belongs to Alanna Blake.

The Last Garden on Earth
One strange tribe still tells how the first people came into being in a garden. A romantic fantasy that appeals to me: a place of flowers and grass and occasional shady trees, like those in ancient paintings. Grandmother has a book, over 200 years old: Encyclopaedia of Gardening, with pictures of scented blooms with lovely names. So different from the minute florescence of the vegetable and cereal ranches, where genetic advances have eradicated the need for insect pollination. Those vast hectares, together with wide afforestation, provide the vaunted ‘Green World’ supposedly counteracting the concrete deserts of our megalopolises. The only garden now on earth is walled and private, created by an oligarchical sheik in, perhaps by coincidence, proximity to ancient Eden.

Yesterday I found a real flower, a tiny blue blossom that had somehow forced its way between stones in a crumbling wall. The Encyclopaedia says it’s called ‘forget-me-not’.