The First Page Challenge 2025—3rd place
Congrats to Andrew Riddles for winning third place in the First Page Challenge 2025! Here's what our judge (Michelle Barker) had to say:
"Riddles' City makes for a close third place. This was another entry with a strong voice and sharp language. The story feels edgy in a way that promises to keep the reader off balance."
City
The bronchial whining of the elevator always reminds Jonathan of the night he accidentally murdered his father. Whenever he mentions this to Josephine, she objects.
“You cannot accidentally murder someone. That would only be manslaughter.”
“‘Only,’” says Jonathan. It’s not much comfort as the grinding, wheezing lift, so reminiscent of his dad’s final breaths, reminds him he is a patricide. “How do you know?” he asks.
She tells him she has extensive legal training. When pressed, she confesses that this means she has watched all seven seasons of The Good Wife.
“Objection!” says Jonathan.
“Overruled!” she replies. The essence of killing your own father is—well, what’s that Orwell quote? “If the war didn’t happen to kill you, it was bound to start you thinking.”
Jonathan is here to tell you: murdering a parent will start you thinking. Several times a day. Every day. For twenty years.
Now imagine Jonathan, on a typical February evening, in the apartment building lobby. He wrestles from the umbrella stand an honest-to-goddess Spandau light machine gun—probably the MG-34, possibly the MG-42—and steps into the Berlin night. He rakes the fronts of the apartment blocks across the street with 7.92mm rounds. They punch bullet holes as large as a stripper’s pasties into stucco, stone, and brickwork.
Judder. Judder. Judder. Spandau. Spandau. Spandau, thinks Jonathan, as he traces violent arcs, unleashing 1,200 rounds per minute.
It’s all imaginary, of course. He doesn’t have a machine gun. He abhors violence. Even killing his dad was nonviolent. He hates guns. Seriously, he really hates—well, oh, okay then, if you insist. What the hell. When in Rome. In this case, however, Rome is Berlin: just another thousand rounds. Maybe into that Mercedes C5? It’s asking for it—it truly is. As he ventilates the vehicle, he spots her, gliding up Hermannstraße as if towed in a gondola with a vaselined keel, by a squadron of mice she has bewitched. Josephine’s girlfriend. Lover of my lover, thinks Jonathan. It is she. It is The Clara.
Andrew Riddles has written forever. Most recently, his short fiction has appeared in many journals including Viridine Literary, Sumac Literary Journal, Borderline Tales, Frighten the Horses, Type!, and Molecule.
Andrew’s play, BUYSEXUAL, won a Best in Festival Award at the Ottawa Fringe 2024, while Third-Party, Blameless won both first prize at SOOP’s Short Play Festival in NYC in 2024 and the Audience Choice Award for Best Play in the THINK Fast Online Play Festival 2025. His full-length work Mazzolatura {FTP} appeared in the Rogue Theater Festival NYC 2025.
He is currently an artist-in-residence at das Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin.
Instagram: @tattoos_company
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