We're thrilled to present one of the winning stories in the 2026 Freewrite 500 flash fiction competition: "Poisoned" by Lisa Dotzauer.
We remember the needle better than the press.
The press does not frighten us.
There is splitting, certainly. Crushing. Skin gives way, flesh follows, seeds crack between iron teeth. What remains runs cloudy into the trough.
Then barrels.
Darkness.
Time.
But sweetness, too.
This needle was different.
A hand beneath the trees.
Wet leaves. Woodsmoke. Black earth beneath fingernails. Cold fingers turning me until they found the reddest side.
Then metal.
A small wound beside the stalk.
Something pushed inside.
I had no word for poison then.
Only wrongness spreading through my flesh.
Afterwards, another hand.
Smaller.
Teeth.
Thenβ
The story becomes unreliable.
There is a girl.
There is always a girl.
Laces pulled tight enough to stop breath.
A comb.
Iron shoes waiting in the fire.
We remember all of them.
We cannot have witnessed them all.
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HISTORICAL CONTAINMENT
MATERIAL ASSESSMENT 7714
SUBSTANCE: Fermented apple beverage.
ORIGIN: Hessen, Germany.
PRODUCTION DATE: 6 October 2029.
HISTORICAL RESIDUE: Present.
SOURCE: Unconfirmed.
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They test the barrel.
Then the press.
Then us:
Root.
Branch.
Leaf.
Fruit.
At the forest edge, they find the oldest tree.
A drill enters the trunk.
We flinch.
Its rings contain summers nobody recorded.
Frost.
Drought.
Lightning.
A graft pulled tight with cloth.
Hands without names.
They search backwards.
Orchard records.
Parish records.
Births.
Deaths.
Harvests.
A story printed in 1812.
There they stop.
We do not.
Before ink, there were mouths.
Before pages, kitchens.
Before records, remembering.
Firelight.
Hunger.
Children listening while something moved between the trees.
Mothers repeating what their mothers had told them.
Each telling changed us.
The girl became beautiful.
The woman became wicked.
The forest grew darker.
The dead learned to wake.
And we became poisonous.
That is the part they kept.
Not the hand.
Not what the hand did.
Us.
The sample is tested again.
No known toxin.
No pathogen.
No explanation.
CONTAMINATION STATUS: UNRESOLVED.
A technician reaches for us.
We recoil.
She stops.
The scanner passes over us again.
Nothing.
Her hand approaches.
Cold fingers.
Metal.
Our flesh tightens around a wound that is no longer there.
She withdraws.
For a long time, she looks at us.
Then one word on the record changes.
OBJECT STATUS: POISONED.
Not poisonous.
Poisoned.
Someone has read us correctly.
Her hand reaches for us.
We remember the needle.
