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End your story with two characters reconciling.

Posted in Adults on Aug 11, 2023

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✍️ 47 stories

Your Personal Savior

Submitted to Contest #211

I figured out where Jesus lived. I was walking home from SuperFresh and made him out through the shaded wilderness of the yard that turned out to be his. He was wearing basketball shorts, his light brown hair falling down his bare back. It was the middle of a muggy Long Island heat wave, and I could feel humid sweat dripping down my own back. It sounded like Jesus was cracking nuts — acorns or something? — into a big plastic garbage bag. The bag was already more than half full. I kept walking, wishing there was someone I could tell about my ...

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Ad Aeternum

Submitted to Contest #211

It is the beginning of everything and he awakens like a drowning person breaching the surface with a toehold on the shore. what is a person what is water what is breathing what is shore But all of it is already inside his consciousness. And then: “Come find me, David,” they say, and the longing is like a supernova expanding inside his being, and he is too small to contain it all, and this is not in his consciousness and he is afraid. what is david what is fear WHAT IS THAT WHAT IS THAT WHAT IS THAT And then he is gone. # “Do you rem...

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Elmer and Earl

Submitted to Contest #211

Every day at three pm throughout the month of June, the sprawling oak cast the perfect shadow over the bench at the far end of Winslow Park. Both men knew this, and it was always a race to see who could first lay claim to it. Arrive too soon, and you had to sit under a judging sun, punishing you for your greed. Arrive too late, and you had to endure the ridicule of your rival. It was a slow race, both men now in their mid-eighties; a walker-aided, creaking conquest of prime bird-feeding space. And though the contest lacked the athletic pro...

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Moving Forward Together

Submitted to Contest #211

Marley fought back a yawn. She had already been driving for five hours but knew she had another three to go. She glanced over to the passenger seat, where Clara was fast asleep. She and her sister had agreed to take turns driving so they wouldn't have to find a place to stay during the twenty-hour drive they had in front of them. As Marley continued down the long, empty stretch of highway, her thoughts drifted to her sister. Clara had been distant lately, and Marley couldn't figure out why. Was it because of the divorce? Marley knew that t...

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The Silver Tin Box

Submitted to Contest #211

THE SILVER TIN BOX Near Bucharest, Romania 1940 The murky surface of the water suddenly broke into small shimmering ripples of light. The boy’s eyes shot to the movement and he watched, mesmerized, as two tiny black eyes lifted up out of the cloudy depths and gazed unwaveringly at him. He was lying on his stomach at the edge of the pond, arms crossed under his chin and his chest supporting his weight. Unmindful of the wet mud that was slowly soaking it’s cold tentacles into the front of his faded jacket he knew that his mom would scold h...

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Speaking of Iris

Submitted to Contest #211

Note: some implicit mentions of sexual violence. … They say it’s the taste of salty lips. That it’s a knife that pierces the skin on your back, that moves slowly within you, your bones, making its way out your stomach. They even say it’s the grief, the anguish that ties you to your bed and wraps you with its icy hands to offer some sort of twisted validation in that you are utterly alone. But then? When the grief, the anguish, the distress fades, when your cuts have healed and you’ve collected yourself once again, swept the glass under ...

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Fathers and Sons

Submitted to Contest #211

       Reggie’s Diner was bustling as usual at lunchtime. It was the perfect setting for the meeting. It felt like an eternity since they had spoken. Such a crowded place would hopefully discourage an outburst from either of them.            When Luke arrived, his Father was already there. Typical of the Old Man, taking a power position. Letting him and everyone else know who was boss. Luke pushed down the anger, or was it frustration, he felt buil...

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The Travel Bug

Submitted to Contest #211

Friday, May 21st 3:30pm pick up car.  I read and reread the note in my leather bound planner more times than my own acceptance letter to Northwestern. I tried to hide my smile by biting my lip but it was no use. I was ecstatic. I finally closed my book and rested my head on the hard plastic seat under me. The L felt more rickety today. We must have hit a nasty bump since the woman in front of me gripping her pole in a cherry red peacoat lost her balance and landed backwards onto my lap.  “Sorry,” She muttered trying to rise up ...

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TETELESTAI

Submitted to Contest #211

“This is Michael Thompson,” I said.  “He tried to teach me German.”   Viv did her utmost to look interested. We were visiting my old school, Repton, and it had been a three hour car journey on a hot summer’s day. There had been a formal reception for the alumni of fifty years ago. There had been speeches and toasts. We had been able to reintroduce ourselves to each other after half a century. There had been plenty of “Can you remember….?” We had recollected the personalities of our day – the Australian...

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Home Sweet Home

Submitted to Contest #211

Summer just arrives. I hear the sounds of bird chirping outside the windows and feel the warm lights hugging over the neighborhood. Lying in my bed with weights on my eyelids, I thought to myself, “May be I should go for a walk today to feel the sun. Hear that helps with dopamine and happiness and all that shit they keep talking about.”  I didn’t sleep well last night. Actually, I haven’t had a well-rested night for the longest time. Outwardly, keeping up with fake smiles and small talks here and there help me maintain an overall somewh...

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Doc & Oscar Find Family

Submitted to Contest #211

Doc Weaver was not a doctor; he was a self-proclaimed librarian. He was 82 years old, relieved to have just passed the line drawn by his other family members at 81. He lived in his bookstore: above, behind…in his bookstore. And today, he was searching for something he knew was there, but could not find!Blowing out a gust of frustration, Doc stood with his back to the front doors and stared the length of his domain. Up front here, it was more organized to attract unknowing pedestrians from the heat or from the rain. The windows were dust...

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Fifteen Miles

Submitted to Contest #211

Fifteen Miles by Jim McMahon     Every day this summer, since the draft notice arrived in June, I’ve been trying with alcohol and drugs to induce amnesia against this moment. But Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News, live from Viet Nam, won’t let me forget.     “And that’s the way it is,” I mutter.     “What?” Dad says, and we climb into his red Mazda Pickup. It’s a short distance to Highway 395, and fifteen miles to the airport. Hopefully, we can cover that distance without g...

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The Endless Gallery

Submitted to Contest #211

I hadn’t felt this moved by a painting in decades. Each tilt of my head brought a different perspective of swirling color. Waves of red swept into eddies of ochre oranges and sulfuric yellows. The longer I looked at it, the less any of the colors wanted to stand still. It might have shown a sunset, or the thin skin of a star. I ached to possess the skill the artist so clearly had possessed. The command of colors, of emotions, all placed on canvas by merely human hands. Forget decades, I hadn’t felt this moved in centuries. This was a work w...

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Anastasia

Submitted to Contest #211

My birth was an oddity, at least that’s how they told it.Tireless and prodigious, I was born a month earlier than what my parents had expected. “It’s all part of the Lord’s plans sister Maria. Yunno He works in mysterious ways” the pastor’s words, part religious, part anesthetic, reduced Mother’s tendency for paranoia. But science had no need for verbal tongue twisters, the doctor warned that I might not make it; too “weak”, too “feeble”, too “frail.” Mother paid her no mind, and with a tight grip in screams of blood, she brought me to the l...

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This Empty-Eyed Town

Submitted to Contest #211

It was dusk when he began to walk. The moon hovered near the treeline almost hidden by the thick brush that lined the two sides of the street. The street lights were flickering. A nasty orange huge washed the empty road, and still, he walked. Head down, one foot in front of the other. His shoes were so terribly worn down, holes grew in the soles. The laces were fraying. They had once been white, now a dirty brown-grayish color. But it was the only pair he had. He tried not to let the patheticness of the situation seep into him too much. ...

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