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Set your story in New York, where someone’s been waiting for your character.

Posted in Adventure on Mar 17, 2023

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✍️ 39 stories

Grace and Mercy

Submitted to Contest #190

“Cleopatra?” the barista shouted as he put the cup of coffee on the bar. “It’s Cleotha,” the elderly woman replied, grabbing the cup with her name conspicuously misspelled. “Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty . . .” If she hadn’t been in a hurry, Cleotha would have preferred to get her coffee from 7-Eleven or Dunkin’ Donuts. She never understood why seemingly intelligent people would pay more than five dollars for an average cup of coffee created by a self-absorbed twenty-something. On this day, however, necessity forced her to ...

50 likes 23 comments 23
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Demeter

Submitted to Contest #190

Mother, I just know you’ll love him once you get to know him. Sulfur. My daughter smells of sulfur. Great fires have burned around her. I know this and I know to keep my mouth shut. I clutch my clutch. I avoid biting down on my lip, because I fear getting lipstick on my teeth. Howser should have come with me, but New York City is no place for a dog that wasn’t born here. That wasn’t born smelling the skyscrapers and inhaling constantly the fragrance of streetside hot dogs. Mother, don’t be too hard on him. He’s misunderstood the way all ...

36 likes 21 comments 21
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Color

Shortlisted for Contest #190 ⭐️

I had just bid goodbye to the exterminator when Egge called.           “You’ve got to come over, right now if you can.” In that whiney voice he used when distressed, he continued, “I’ve done it, I’ve created a new color. It will change your world, it will change my world, it will change the world! Get over here right away.”           I hadn’t seen Egge for a month or two, so I was willing to amuse his sudden request. “On my way, I ju...

27 likes 17 comments 17
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Not Out of the Woods Yet

Submitted to Contest #190

[Trigger warning: illness] ‘This is dope. I’m going to meet Jim Jackson next week’ I tweet and watch the replies: “pass on my hopes for his recovery.” “UR soooo lucky.” “jim is an inspiration.” Jim hasn’t replied to me at all, despite me being his greatest fan. I’ve been with him since the beginning. I know, he’s grown his follower base, maybe sometimes he’s too sick to type replies, but he could at least have sent an emoji once in a while. My Mom, on the other hand, is too much information. She worries the trip to New York might affec...

24 likes 26 comments 26
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St. Regis Showdown

Submitted to Contest #190

After boarding the Boeing 737, I take my window seat in first class and try not to be noticed. Pretending to fidget with the tray table, I hide behind my EarPods (Taylor Swift in a resounding beat, ‘…and even though you want to, please try to never grow up,’ goes on and on). Now undisturbed in my shell, I check out the other passengers: a well-dressed man across the aisle in a cowboy hat drinking some kind of brown liquor on ice; sitting in the two seats in front of him is a middle-aged cashmere clad couple, both reading from i-Pads, th...

18 likes 20 comments 20
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Witches of Woodlawn

Submitted to Contest #190

[Pronunciation help: Dáithí - DAH-hee; Siobhán - Shi-VAWN]Nora entered the spacious pub on a corner of Katonah Avenue at midday on Monday, an hour before the bar opened. A guy about her age, mid-twenties, with a button down shirt and neatly combed hair was waiting for her at a booth next to the bar. Seeing Nora, he climbed out of the seat and shook her hand.“Nora?”“That’s me. It’s nice to meet you. Joe, right?”“Yep.” Joe gestured to the booth and Nora sat in it. She was holding a folder with her resume and some references from other bars she...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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Moments of Love

Submitted to Contest #190

Moments of Love Love Discovered―New Jersey, May 1956 I thought I’d be struck dead, for sure. A power like lightning just might surge from me and kill us both if I shook his hand. The idealized photo of a movie star—European-cut jacket; slender torso; broad shoulders; handsomely tan; silky, light brown hair―totally captivating, stood before me. His bright blue eyes and engaging smile grabbed my young heart, and I could only blurt out a weak, “Hello”, but I vividly thought …only fifteen, and next month I’ll be sixteen, we could get marri...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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IT'S A HELL OF A TOWN

Shortlisted for Contest #190 ⭐️

I believe some people are sensitive about mindless promiscuity, even a single sentence of it. The year was 1939, in the merry month of May, and New York City was preparing itself to deliver what some hoped might be its favorite character. St. Vincent’s Hospital was the venue of choice—right in the heart of Greenwich Village, where the competition for created characters was fierce. And sure enough, here she came, though not as quickly or effortlessly as would have been ideal. Alicia, with four syllables, after a popular Russian ballerina ...

17 likes 5 comments 5
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15 East 7th Street Manhattan

Submitted to Contest #190

There he sat, back to the black-bellied stove that once burned coal a little too hot. A cup filled with coffee rested on the wooden table beside a notepad. There he sat. There he wrote.It was a time before the time of computers and laptops and cell phones. An age when the tip of a pen met paper and the mind was squeezed out in ink. Thought flowed with the sweep of the hand, pushed into tails and curls, and its sentence finished in a puddle of blue. An ink dot. The stop of the thought. The start of another.He sat doing this, lifting his pen n...

17 likes 24 comments 24
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We Stay

Submitted to Contest #190

A crooked smile peeked its way through the folds of a frozen frown. Many assumed Dave did not like to smile, but really he did not have much time to or much reason.               “Wouldn’t that be something? My father has been trying to find this fine stinking city for three decades. Geography was never his strong suit. I would show him the way back if only I hadn’t inherited his intelligence.”            &nb...

15 likes 4 comments 4
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Reminiscence

Submitted to Contest #190

(Trigger Warnings: Swearing, mental health, self-harm, and suicide.)I’m sorry, Allison.The memory washes over you as cold water stings your freshly scrubbed cheeks:You and James watching reruns of Lost in your Brooklyn apartment. Picking up on his tenseness all night, even after trying to settle his mood with a bottle of red. Him pausing the episode in the middle of the protagonist’s heated confrontation and telling you he has something serious to talk about. You watching his fingers tease the remote’s pause button, as if begging him to hit ...

14 likes 14 comments 14
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The Bad Apple

Submitted to Contest #190

He hates flying. He’s the most frequent of fliers and yet, even now, he feels the tension building in his body, and sweat beading on his forehead. Climbing into a glorified Pringle’s tube and being propelled at frightening speeds by one of the most combustible liquids known to science is not his idea of a good time. Henry knows this. Henry is one of the few who know him well enough to understand this about him. He’s also not a fan of the Big Apple. Give him the peace and quiet of the Scottish countryside any day of the week. But needs ...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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3 Weeks

Submitted to Contest #190

14th March 2004 Sarah She stubbed her cigarette out on the windowsill and closed the long sash window. It was still raining outside, but there was something beautiful about Manhattan when the weather turned. The lights from the traffic and street lamps lit the tiny droplets of rain as they splashed into puddles. Sarah had always loved the way that New York remained busy no matter what time it was. She glanced at the red lights on her bedside alarm clock. 01:34. ‘I won’t be able to sleep tonight’, she thought, as she checked he...

14 likes 5 comments 5
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As Time Goes By

Submitted to Contest #190

I must admit I’m so nervous that my stomach is all tied up in knots. So why did I answer her request on Facebook to meet her? It’s been, what, fifty-six years since we last saw each other. Oh man, we were just kids! We lived near each other in the lower Bronx, by the zoo. We grew up best friends, perhaps on my part a little more. I was seventeen, and she was sixteen, a five-foot-one beauty with brown eyes and blond hair. I was your typical Irishman with black hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. Ye...

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It Happened in New York

Submitted to Contest #190

It was a crisp autumn day in New York City, and I’d just arrived at Penn Station after a long train ride from upstate Whitehall. I’d been eagerly anticipating this trip to the city for weeks. For I was meeting up with my best friend, Rachel Wallace, who’d left Whitehall some years ago. We hadn't seen each other in a year or so, but we kept in touch by the usual social media sites and text messages. Rachel promised to take me to some of her favorite spots in the city and show me a good time.As I made my way out of the station, I scanned the b...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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