Exceptional Whom Can You Trust in This Short Life? Decision Time by Jay Squires 75 Words Flash Fiction contest entry

I stand at the ledge, pressing down my toes for balance.   Craning my neck, I peer over between my feet. They do look like ants.   A sudden gust whips my shirt tail into a white surrender flag. My pulse thrums the back of my throat. Somewhere, sirens whine.   I grit my teeth. Close my eyes. Step off.   Kneeling in the gutter, I flick an ant off my ankle. "Damn Pest control! Sixty bucks for this!"   Recognized Author Notes About Word Count. This leaves me with a very uneasy feeling. Microsoft Word counts it at seventy-five. Word Counter dot-net gives me a seventy-five. WordCountTools dot com comes up with seventy-seven and tell me I'm writing at the 11-12th grade level. Only secondarily do I question America's Education system. My primary concern is who's right on the count. Oh ... FanStory peg it at 81. Because of the variance, I removed ALL hyphenated words and performed a manual count, repeating it a second and a third time: seventy-five. If I'm disqualified by word count ... I will sue! LOL, no, but I'll be pissed!

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