Coming second at the Newcastle Sausage Roll Eating Contest is far worse than coming last. Bottom place went to a wiry Maths teacher named Elaine Fairfax, who had no more than a heavy meal from her half-dozen sausage rolls. Eighteen of them sat like a boulder in Ricky Dishwright's stomach.

He groaned as he pushed himself to standing. He had nothing to look forward to but the grim task of digesting seven thousand calories. The room was full, but nobody even looked at him. All their attention was on Albert Barndrop, the winner by one regulation sausage roll. All that had separated Ricky from victory had been twelve inches of sausage-meat and pastry.

Albert's sleeves were rolled up, showing off the tattoos that celebrated his other wins. The Folkestone Whelk Olympics. Victory three years running at the Cornish Party. His tattooist was waiting for the well-wishers to die down to mark this latest achievement. Local journalists did their best to interview him, while fans swooped in for selfies. Albert already had enough sponsorships for a decent living and there were rumours that he'd soon be crowned King Greggs. Ricky was nothing more than a failure who'd had too many sausage rolls.

A kid stood beside Albert Barndrop and Ricky had to pass close enough to hear the kid saying that he too wanted to grow up to be a champion. At that moment, Ricky hated himself for not being able to cram in more. Next, Albert was taking about giving his prize money to Oxfam, how his gluttony would save lives.

Before Ricky made it to the door, he had to pass Elaine Fairfax, who wanted to jabber away about the contest and share sportsmanlike commiserations. Ricky was firm as he walked straight past: "Love, you ate six sausage rolls. You're not on my level. We don't sit at the same table."

He passed the counter where the uneaten sausage rolls were being handed out to the audience. Gristle and guts and pastry they were, little pleasure to eat, but people pretended to be Albert Barndrop, mashing them into their faces as fast as they could.

Ricky was almost out when he was intercepted by a hefty guy in a suit. Don't let it be an fan, thought Ricky, that would be humiliating. But this man's clothes were too fancy for that, out of place at an eating contest.

"Cheer up, mate," the guy said.

Ricky wanted to tell this man about all the wasted time. The months of breath training and psychological practise. The weekends spent gorging on low-calorie high-volume foods like cabbage, so much cabbage. He didn't have access to the advanced scientific techniques that Albert Barndrop could afford. No, Ricky had done it the hard way and lost.

But he said none of that. Just, "Yeah, thanks."

"You're in luck," said the man. "Why, Ricky Dishwright, there are things you only get from coming second. There are opportunities for someone like you on the dark web. Albert Barndrop loves having fans mob him, but he's leaving the real money on the table."

The man gave him a card and Ricky hurried to the Uber, hoping he wasn't too late, that the sausage roll grease wouldn't start wrecking mayhem on his guts, not yet. Once home, it was a night of commuting from bedroom to bathroom, slowly working the horror from his system.

Since he wasn't going to sleep, Ricky hunted down the sort of videos the man had talked about. Grim stuff, but it was for real. Proper bare-knuckle eating contests. He'd never even heard of casu marzu before - cheese rotting with maggots, illegal to sell - but people paid to watch it being shovelled into competitors’ mouths. There was a website about human ducks - Ricky could only see the preview clips, but they were a world away from foie gras. Elsewhere, he found a video titled "Yes, Slugs are edible"

There was a time when such videos would have horrified Ricky. Now, he was excited. These were things that Albert Barndrop would never stick in his gob. And, this time next year, when Albert Barndrop was King Alfred of Greggs, well... Ricky would be there, at the Newcastle Sausage Roll Eating Tournament, with some very special challenges.

Background

This piece was written for my regular writing group, for the prompt 'Dead Loss'. Prompts are interesting as I'm never sure what will emerge.

My original idea was about billionaires buying bespoke apocalypses. There was a lot of world-building for a short story, and it all started feeling wrong when I had 130 words in the first paragraph. I've written many stories much shorter than that. I deleted the whole thing on Saturday and started trying new ideas to see if something would click.

All I needed was the opening line - "Coming second at the Newcastle Sausage Roll Eating Tournament is far worse than coming last". After that, the story wrote itself. The voice was clear, and much of the editing was done by reading aloud. I tried to make it as amusing as possible - which meant deciding if it was funnier to be King Greggs or King Ginsters1.

Both this and my deleted story contained world-building, but here it's driven by the situation. In the other one, I was explaining a set-up, how the sale of bespoke apocalypses work, and it felt like explaining my way to a punchline.

It's interesting where stories come from. I rarely get a decent story when I start from a concept - the things I like most come from catching a sentence that works. There's a lot of chance to the process. I try many different ideas and pick one to continue with. It seems to be effective, but it's sometimes uncomfortable to keep searching until the good thing comes.

The only thing I’m not sure about is the ending, and that list of things in the penultimate paragraph. I fall back on lists too often.

Recommendations

In a Land gallery's Ritual exhibition is on in Hebden Bridge until Sunday. It features a piece by my friend k shields, along with work from from ten other artists. In a Land is an organisation run by photographer Bryon Good, currently based in a beautiful studio in an old mill.

I was recently published in the first In a Land zine, with a story called Bibliospores. I don’t submit a lot of work these days, and I was excited to be featured in this zine. It’s a beautiful collection of art and writing, and Bryony has done a great job curating this. Many of the stories emerged from the writing workshops she’s been running in Hebden Bridge and Todmorden.

I also picked up a copy of Bryony’s photo-book The Fool. This is a record of Bryony’s walks to local areas with folklore links. The photographs are beautiful, capturing wonderful landscapes as well as textured details.

Weirdly enough, she turns out to be someone I performed with Bryony many years ago, as part of Curtis James’ show Two Knocks For Yes.