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Frame your story as an adult recalling the events of their childhood.

Posted in Adults on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 243 stories

The GLOW (The Glorious Leslie of Wrestling)

Submitted to Contest #102

From the early 1960s until that dark morning I left home in 1970 the only times I recall my family spending together (unless you counted those awkwardly silent early evening dinners and my father’s, thankfully diminishing, Sunday drives with us all crowded in our dirty white Ford Galaxie Starliner), were around our tiny black-and-white TV set watching professional wrestling. Once a week, we’d gather in front of that old, battered Philco 4248-E sitting on a coffee table in our living room; twist, turn, and fidget with the foil-wrapped rabbit ...

87 likes 32 comments 32
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Number 27

Submitted to Contest #102

Beauty is a hunted down beast, a double-edged sword slitting slayer and slave. You hate the ones who have it and hate too those who don't. Those who have it eventually reach a need in their satisfaction for life, to have more, searching deeper than what their beauty holds, what it has made them hold, or who. When you're on the side where strangers call you the devil's child, the curse of the cursed, you are on the side of a lot of lonely times, a lot of times where you've wanted to die because of this lonesomeness, this thinking, "Can anyone...

69 likes 27 comments 27
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Pouch Eggs

Shortlisted for Contest #102 ⭐️

Someone is talking to me but all I can see is their teeth, so round and yellow they look like cooked corn. We are sitting on the parking lot outside of my apartment, the black tar heating under us and turning our insides to mush. The asphalt has been running a tiff with the sun for hours now, finally reaching a fever pitch as the sun lets loose its rays in a constant barrage against the stubborn pavement. It refuses to surrender its stance, though it has remained solely on the defense. All I can feel is its warmth heating the undersides of m...

62 likes 30 comments 30
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God Bless the Child

Shortlisted for Contest #102 ⭐️

It started simply enough: I just wanted my Puppy Surprise, and if the school talent show could be my ticket, then I’d sing my heart out.As far as ten-year-old me was concerned, Puppy Surprise was the must-have toy of 1992. You got the momma dog in a pink cardboard box with a handle cut out in the shape of a bone, her little plastic face with big, painted-on eyes staring out at you. In her belly was a Velcro pouch, and hidden inside were her puppies, which you’d help her deliver after you brought her home and took her out. There could be thre...

57 likes 29 comments 29
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Dearest

Submitted to Contest #102

I breathe in the scent of fried food, sugar, and popcorn. Today, for just a moment, everything is perfect.Evangeline is here standing with me, I have her attention, and can I say that I look simply dashing?I do.With a little breath of courage, I puff out my chest slightly, today is a day for bravery.Evie doesn't look so bad herself.Oh who am I kidding, she looks gorgeous with her sleek blonde hair pulled back in an ebony band that matches her red and black plaid skirt. Her scarlet blouse fits into her skirt making her waist tiny and als...

54 likes 23 comments 23
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I Understand

Shortlisted for Contest #102 ⭐️

“I understand.” I must have said that to him a million times, the words flowing from my gullet like a hollow wind through wavering pines. The somber ballad of a lie retold.  Those words followed our every heart-to-heart, trailing behind them like the tail of a soaring kite. By the time of my great escape at the age of 18, that kite was in tatters, tumbling through still skies to the barren wasteland of what was once our family home. My mind runs rampant at a cheetah's pace, and my memory equally as spotty. Even ...

42 likes 20 comments 20
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Ketchup and Mustard Initials

Submitted to Contest #102

I took each step slowly as if the four steps to the pulpit were a barrier between the past I’d always known and a future that I wasn't ready to face. My feet seemed afraid to cross that threshold, each step growing increasingly steeper to climb if in no other place than my heart. They’re all waiting on you, I thought. Get a move on. I’d rehearsed time and time again and thought I was ready. There seemed a disconnect between my physical self and my mind, though, a chasm between the image I maintained in my mind's eye and t...

39 likes 18 comments 18
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Why The Suffering?

Submitted to Contest #102

It was a sunny and beautiful weekend morning. The kind of weather that suits this kind of lovely towns where things and traditions remain the same. Everything in the right place! The house’s walls were salmon-colored and decorated exquisitely. The front garden plants were selected carefully to always paint the home’s atmosphere with endless colors. You were also able to see the backyard fruit flowering trees from the 4 points of the compass, what a view! All neighbors envied how the garden was built, perfectly balanced. Outside, some k...

33 likes 4 comments 4
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Grave New World

Submitted to Contest #102

Jim extinguished the fire, even though the children grumbled. “Please, Papa Jim,” said a boy with dark circles around his eyes. “Just five more minutes. I’m awful cold.” He wrapped his arms around his knobbled knees and shivered as if to punctuate his point. Several of the others nodded and mumbled their concurrences. Jim sighed. His eyes darted to the ruined city skyline. Nothing but rubble and rebar. “Now, Boy—” he didn’t name them, it made it too difficult when they died “—you know I can’t do that. The spiders are attracted to the lig...

32 likes 3 comments 3
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Light It Up

Submitted to Contest #102

Sydney Olsen stepped out of the building on Bradford Stret, where she lived in a one bedroom apartment. She stood still for a moment, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face. She covered her eyes with sunglasses, slipped the 205 door key into her pocket and then set off. It only took about an hour for her to walk around three or four blocks. Sometimes she cut through the local park.Every now and then she would also stop at the SilverLeaf cafe' to rest, before going back home. On this particular day Sydney went inside, feeling kind of hungr...

31 likes 2 comments 2
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My People

Submitted to Contest #102

The cluster of skyscrapers that define the city’s skyline loom impassively across the river, sparkling glass teeth sprouting from concrete gums under the red tongue of a late autumn sunset. Sometimes I marvel at the fullness of this city life—opportunities always available in the unknown, absolute freedom in every unfamiliar face, space to pursue passion without personal persecution. Other times I despair at its emptiness—anonymity dismissing family legacy, unpredictability abolishing comfort, novelty closing the door on community. ...

30 likes 8 comments 8
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The Silenced Cicadas

Shortlisted for Contest #102 ⭐️

Content warning: war violence, rape, sexual assault, death, abortion It was that time of the year when the rhythmic song of the cicadas was interrupted. July. As the soul-piercing sound of the siren echoed, the sizzling summer day seemed to freeze in time when I witnessed the tiny dots on the sky falling down like the leaves of the primeval plane tree which stood in the square of my village, next to the coffeehouse. ‘Parachutes!’ my father screamed; ‘Elpida, they’re here, the enemy is HERE!’ My father grabbed me by my arm and pulled me insid...

28 likes 8 comments 8
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Storming

Submitted to Contest #102

“Give it back!”  “This has no reason at all to be so amusing.” Fulton said with a laugh, shutting one eye and shooting a piece of ice out to hit the knife from Hadlee’s grip. She’d been throwing it up from his hand and blasting with it a little air just to keep it from Aziz’s reach.   Aziz shot him a smile and picked it up from the ground. “But you should leave him alone, Had.”  Hadlee stuck her tongue out at Fulton as she walked over to sit across from him. “Not my fault that he hasn’t sparked yet.” She said...

27 likes 1 comment 1
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A Childhood Beyond the Classics

Submitted to Contest #102

A birthday party or a trip to the beach?A camp in the great outdoors?The best cartoon ever watched?A pet or an expensive toy?I have got none of the classic childhood memories.We are teleporting to the year 2007, somewhere in Africa. Can you see these beautiful houses with huge gardens? All my childhood memories are there. Look at the children outside, aren't they happy?-But why are they outside? Are they not supposed to be watching some cartoons on TV?It is obvious there is no TV at home; do not feel sorry for them anywise. They are happy ju...

23 likes 1 comment 1
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Fight Them

Submitted to Contest #102

As I slowly twisted the key clockwise, it made a funny sound, similar to a fingernail dragging on the countertop, all the seven pins had been raised to the sheer line of the lock’s core. I pulled the thin hair strands behind my left ear, and carefully pulled the key out of the lock, placing it back in my purse. I blinked my eyes a couple of times to cut loose the glitters of black spots as the winged sun radiated its powerful sunshine. The wilted branches and fallen yellow cringed leaves compelled me to accept the change in the wind. Un...

21 likes 2 comments 2
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