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Write about someone who needs to face their past in order to move forward.

Posted in Adults on Oct 31, 2022

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✍️ 73 stories

A Positive Contribution

Submitted to Contest #161

Grace wiped a spot of blood off the table, smearing it back and forward with her index finger. She glanced at the clock under the security camera. Nearly lunchtime. One more to go. “Come in,” she called. Footsteps clomped in the hallway, and she nudged a glass of water towards the centre of the table. And then slightly to the left.One more. She could do this. “Ready, Doc?” a guard asked, pausing in the doorway.  He was gripping the shoulder of her next client, his meaty hands forming dents in the man’s pale skin. She...

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The day I wished I'd died.

Submitted to Contest #161

The past. Everybody has a past. Sometimes the past is a mystery as much as the present—and just as scary and disturbing as the future. In the brief and dangerous journey that humans call life, time is the never-ending, looming shadow, staring with its immortal eyes down at the earth. Time, cold and unforgiving, journals each heartbeat, each blink of an eye, each thought and touch, every time a newborn cries and every time a person draws the final breath. Some may have the fortune of looking back—when that fateful moment of peering in...

29 likes 10 comments 10
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Take Me Home

Submitted to Contest #161

CW : Reference to suicide, violenceThe mofussil bus threw a cloud of dust and smoke on Lokesh’s face before he could turn away after getting down. The peepal tree stood at the same place, he noted; and the platform around it. Only the wastrels and old men who sat under it, a few chewing betel nuts meditatively, and others gossiping and observing who came to the village and who left it, seemed to have changed. Fifteen years would have sent a few to their graves and others back to their homes.He hoisted his light backpack on his right shoulder...

23 likes 13 comments 13
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If What You Say Is True

Submitted to Contest #161

I am lucky I have any friends.Well, a few anyway.I am lucky I have a lovely wife and great adult children. My role model as a child was a father who never said please, or thank you. Who would come home from work in a foul mood and think nothing of filling every room with bright, flashing caution lights:  Do Not Touch.  Do Not Say The Wrong Thing.Please let me be different, keep my dark moods to myself and not spread them like dust in the wind. How dare you believe you had the right to impose your fury on us.It was an...

20 likes 13 comments 13
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The Duke Of Plaza-Tourette Syndrome

Submitted to Contest #161

Since he was ten years old, Justin Weatherly always felt different from everyone else. He couldn’t explain his urges to anyone, convinced he would be ostracised from his school friends, his family, and society in general. Forced to hide his shame away in his bedroom closet, or isolated in the tool shed at the bottom of his garden, he clandestinely hid his affliction from prying eyes and ears, indulging his secret fetish until it ran its course. Afterwards, Justin would feel completely exhausted, almost embarrassed at the recollection of his ...

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BEYOND PARDON

Submitted to Contest #161

  For most of my life,from up here, a half mile above the earth where everything once looked perfect to me. I stared at the clock “Tik Tok”,it was loud; followed an order like fine lyrics of one's favorite song. I curled myself up into a ball, covering myself with the resplendent mustard duvet reminiscing,reminiscing memories from the past. I wish I could relive those brief years of infancy and childhood of flying the kites so high and determined, like it was the most thrilling activity to ever do instead of reading the expensive b...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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The Ghost of a Smile

Submitted to Contest #161

There are a lot of things I wish I knew about death before it hit me. Like how the pain you felt right before just suddenly fades away. Or how you really do get this sense of peace and understanding when you go. Or how you can become a ghost. Being a ghost is not exactly something I would recommend, however. Because you don’t get to move on from the people you love. Because they aren’t gone to you. Sure, you can’t interact with them anymore, but you still get to watch them. I get to watch her eyes flutter open in the morning like they did wh...

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Dream A Little Dream Of Me

Submitted to Contest #161

CW: allusions to death  The airport was bright and busy with holiday traffic. I tapped my foot anxiously on the 80s blue carpet of the plane. The seatbelt light remained glowing in a dingy yellow. Sighs of exasperation were punctured by cries of the baby at the back. I contemplated popping my earbuds back in, at the risk of missing the all important announcement that we could finally deboard. For the fiftieth time on this flight, I opened social media, scrolled through the headlines I’d read a million times, and closed it with frustration.&...

14 likes 17 comments 17
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A Locket

Submitted to Contest #161

The setting sun reminded me to sit to rest, and I let myself collapse onto a nearby curb. I’d nearly forgotten what I was walking for, my feet blistered, having memorised the long path home so that I didn’t have to myself.I pulled a chain from my inside jacket pocket, the metal locket at its end smooth and cold against my hand, hooked onto a piece of loose thread so that I had to pause to tug it free. Absentmindedly, just while I sat and let myself breathe, I thumbed the curve of the locket’s surface; a self soothing motion I supposed.I put ...

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I Talked To Myself

Submitted to Contest #161

Jane left her apartment and approached the lift, praying along the way that her guest would listen and stay in the bedroom. Jane offered to get some food for them, even though she knew it was more an excuse to get out of the house. Had she stayed, the argument would likely have escalated, and the yelling was sure to attract unwanted attention. Her younger self was in her apartment. Her pregnant, 18-year-old, flesh and blood self was in her apartment. Her hair, her clothes, and especially the look on her face, Jane was a hundred percent su...

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His Past

Submitted to Contest #161

(This story deals with domestic squabbles - words are harsh, violent, and threatening.)The depression is cloying. Every fiber of my being aches. I wish it were last year or even the year before. Everything was better back then. Or was it? 2002 was not a glorious year. We lost everything when my hubby lost his job. The house, the furniture, and everything else. I kept telling myself that as long as we kept the family together, then none of the rest mattered. But the children grew up. She graduated in 2003 and left for the milit...

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Deserving

Submitted to Contest #161

“Mum,” I paused and checked the time, “Mum?” Another pause, “Listen, I would really love to keep chatting, but I have to go.” The voice on the other end kept going on and on about the weather for the weekend and her garden. “That’s great mum, but I’m going to go now. I love you.” Before she could respond I hung up the phone as the front door swung open. I quickly dropped the phone face down on the couch and pretended to be focused on the television. A news broadcaster discussed new evidence in a case against a man accused of murdering his ...

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Return Tour

Submitted to Contest #161

It took him over thirty years, but on his return tour he would not be carrying thirty pounds of U.S. Army gear, an M-16 and twenty plus pound lead flak vest.  He was just twenty year old when he came on his first tour.  He was over fifty years old as he flew into Ho Chi Minh City.  It was Saigon the first time he came, but there had been a lot of changes since that time.  He had also been through three painful divorces since he returned home as it seemed the dragon of his past was always raising its ugly head.  Afte...

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Thicker Than Blood

Submitted to Contest #161

T.W. Violence, gore, self harmIt's the third funeral this month. It's getting annoying, having to go to all of my sibling's receptions. Mourning for someone who stole my daddy's love from me. The men and women who disappeared and then showed up dead a few days later.I stand next to my remaining three siblings in the front pew as the pastor goes on and on about how Grayson is at home and at peace with God up in the great clouds above and all that fake bullshit. My family eats it up as they mop their tears with the back of their hands or black...

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The Cat Lady

Submitted to Contest #161

The Cat Lady “I just love the cat,” Louise said to the mail lady. “A rescue,” she boasted. Louise’s face- all cheekbones and forehead- was serious with conviction. “My cat, a rescue!” she yelled to the elderly neighbor slapping her cane down the sidewalk. She hung a bony finger in the air, pointing to her house as though transformed into a sanctuary. Most of the days, the cat was nowhere to be found, hidden between the bags lining the stairwell, stacks of books, duplicate pots and unnecessary pans. Since Roger left, she nurtured a pr...

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