Good morning, Prosers,

It’s week forty of the Prose Challenge of the Week! Last week saw you all writing about addiction. We had shed-loads of superb entries to read, so thank you everyone.

Before we find out which one of you takes the $100 prize, let’s take a look at this week’s prompt:

Prose Challenge of the Week #40: Write a story about a drunken one-nighter, written out of gender. The winner will be chosen based on a number of criteria, this includes: fire, form, and creative edge. Number of reads, bookmarks, and shares will also be taken into consideration. The winner will receive $100. When sharing to Twitter, please use the hashtag #ProseChallenge

Get writing, now.

Back to the winner of week thirty-nine. We have read all of your entries and thoroughly enjoyed every single one. There can only be one winner, however, and after much deliberation that winner is, @Skull with his piece “From The Eyes of an Addict.” Congratulations to you, we will be in touch shortly to arrange transfer of your winnings!

That’s all for this week, here’s to a week filled with all things Prose!

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose.

The child, S-shaped and sleeping, sucks her thumb in honeysuckle dreams. Tomboy hair, mussed by her mother's hand. She wakes.

"Honey, don't suck your thumb. You're too old."

What did the shrink call it? An "oral fixation," I think. The shrink, the pant-suited talking head that reeked of chimney soot. Was it that box of little white sticks that kept her happy?

Her brother teases: "The boogeyman comes for kids who suck their thumbs because he knows they'll never grow up."

She searches for the boogeyman her entire life, inhaling the embers of a slash-and-burn childhood. Her exhaust pipe face spewing the chemicals, hoping to catch the boogeyman's outline traipsing through her mist.

One day he comes. He comes and steals her breath, clamping down on her throat, squishing her lungs to bleeding black between his alien fingers. He comes from behind; she never sees his face.

The woman, S-shaped and sleeping, sucks her thumb in honeysuckle dreams. No tomboy hair, a bare scalp, traced by her mother's hand. She doesn't wake.