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Write a story that hinges on the outcome of a coin flip.

Posted in Adventure on Jan 6, 2023

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✍️ 68 stories

Come In Spinner

Winner of Contest #180 🏆

Thommo rammed a bayonet into the rocky clay and tied a string to it. Thommo, the only one of us over thirty, and therefore responsible, was our Ringie, the supervisor of the Two-up ring. He attached a second bayonet to the other end of the string and, using the bayonets like a giant school compass, drew a perfect circle in the clay soil. It was the 23rd May 1915, just months since I'd left Australia, to fight for my country and our King, George V, King of England and the British Empire. We were perched on a small section of rock on a hil...

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The Coin Flip

Submitted to Contest #180

“Okay, heads I eat the worm, tails, you eat it,” Riff muttered to Clay as he gripped at the cold copper-plated zinc in his sweaty palm. He wiped a bead of moisture from his forehead, wondering how he could flip the penny strategically to get it to land on tails. He debated about using the trick coin that he’d traded with Billy on the bus last week for his pocketknife. Double tails = Win every time! was the writing on the package. He felt guilty about using it on his brother, but maybe he should just this once. He wasn’t about to eat no ...

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When Lady Luck Gives You the Finger

Submitted to Contest #180

CW: dismemberment.It took me twenty four years to find my finger. That’s twenty three and three-quarter years after Debbie left me at the altar.Okay, we never quite made it to the altar, but we did have matching rings. She was my high school sweetheart and I had big dreams for us. I had a sweet job and a football scholarship promised me a pro sports career. Everything was bright.My major was meaningless. Coach told me I was the best wide receiver the school had ever seen and nothing else mattered. I supported myself with the coolest job ever...

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Flip for Infidelity

Submitted to Contest #180

TW: Sex. “We could hurt a lot of people. People we love,” she said. “How about we leave it up to the coin?” She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a shiny silver coin. His eyes lingered on her body. “What do you think? Heads, this is the end. Tails, we keep going?”He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but he didn’t want to stop either. As much as he loved his wife, there had been nothing between them in bed for a long time. At first he had tried to conjure up the old sparks. Every rejection hurt more than the one before. Eventually...

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Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Submitted to Contest #180

Heads I win, tails you lose.I toss the coin over and over, it spins in the air to land in my palm before I slap it over onto the back of my other hand. When I remove my hand, Heads!- ‘May you Rest in Peace Your Majesty’, I think, then flip it again, heads-Her Majesty’s serene profile again. Flip, the silver spins and glints in the artificial light- tails, a little platypus swimming, frozen in time, the monotreme memorialised forever on the tail side of the coin. Growing up, my dad used the coin toss to solve all his paren...

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Indifference

Shortlisted for Contest #180 ⭐️

Eduardo and I sat on the bluff, overlooking the factory complex in the valley below. The gritty sand beneath us was a dusty buff color, matching our sweat-encrusted camouflage clothing. The air was warm from the day-long bright sun, now moving behind the Lliama Volcano in the southern Andes, and particles of dust swirled in the air. As the sun descended, the vents and air conditioning units on the rooftops of the Chilean weapons complex flashed in the copper sunlight. I pointed into the valley. “See how they don’t open one gate until anoth...

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The Ringer

Submitted to Contest #180

“Congratulations, you’re in luck!” Fredrick suddenly appears behind me with a slap to my back. The new batch of flour I just made coughs from the bag and sprays me with its powder. Luck. As if that were a real thing. I’ve learned to leave Fredrick to his wild attempts of a better life, always in and out of jobs while trying to drag me along with him. Truth be told, my ‘so-called’ luck couldn’t be worse. Granting him this moment of appeasement, I carefully set down the bag and foll...

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Maladie

Submitted to Contest #180

“It’s either heads or tails, mister…. Heads we fight… tails… well, I guess it’s yer lucky day. Whatever you call don’t matter none to me, coz, if we draw, you die…” Chance Petersen was an ornery, two-faced, back-shooting son-of-a-bitch that wasn’t happy until he picked at least one fight with someone before supper time. The misfortune today, just happened to fall upon the head of a lonely drifter who wandered dry and thirsty into the aptly named, The Last Drink Saloon, in a temporary makeshift railroad town in Arizona called Canyon Diablo – ...

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Tilt-a-Whirl

Submitted to Contest #180

CW: Wrestling with mortality. Flipping a coin in zero gravity is useless. Floating, it will spin until stopped. Classic indecision. The Commander knew that. No time to waste. Protocols demanded he bring his crew to safety. No time to think or debate. Sounding alarms roused us and all hands jumped to. Redundant systems were failing. The station was shutting down. No one knew why. Meteorite damage? Not likely. Systems flashed code-red across the board. With solutions unavailable, the Commander ordered immediate evacuation. The escape pod sea...

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The Impossible Choice

Submitted to Contest #180

I’m never sure which sensation I’m aware of first. My consciousness is slowly returning, and my head is still buzzing with the sedative they use to keep our bodies in stasis.There’s the feeling of the viscous liquid purging from my lungs, designed to provide oxygen and keep the lung tissue healthy. Imagine the deepest, wettest cough you’ve ever had, then multiply it times a hundred.The feel of the synthetic adrenaline courses through my muscles. A tingling sensation, spreading through every vein and capillary. It wakes the muscles up and rep...

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Heads Of Luck, Tails of Sin

Submitted to Contest #180

"The choice is yours." The cloaked figure exhaled as he hovered along the aged floor boards. The black robes danced around his body as if life itself seeped through the threads. "And what choice is that?" The young woman questioned, standing in the door frame. Her tone empty, indifferent. She watched, unflinchingly, as the tall figure's decaying hand escaped the thin veils of darkness to gently pour steaming water into a teacup. The tilt of the kettle releasing a cloud of steam."Is it a new life that you want? Or is the need to feel som...

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Submitted to Contest #180

Stella lay in their king-sized bed, blankly staring at the ceiling and feeling her husband waking up next to her. She was vaguely irritated that he was conscious now, bracing herself for whatever mood he was in today. They no longer fully listened to each other, both waiting for their chance to speak but never to be heard. It had been years of useless bickering with minimal moments of fun in between. After eight years together, she had been certain they’d beaten the seven-year itch, but this indifference was worse. Sure enough, casual morn...

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The Final Flip: A High-Stakes Batey Game in the Anti-Gravity Sphere

Submitted to Contest #180

Nico had always been a survivor. Growing up in the slums of a dying planet, he had learned to adapt and to make the most of every opportunity that came his way. When the Unknown Blues arrived in their massive spaceship, offering a chance for a select few humans to leave Earth behind and start anew, Nico jumped at the chance. The immigration process was straightforward, if a little unsettling. Nico was immunized against a range of diseases, and given a crash course in the customs and technologies of the Unknown Blues. He had never seen creatu...

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Canned Coffee

Submitted to Contest #180

The smell of rain, thick and sweet in her hair. Wrapping her frozen hands within his own, wanting to withdraw instinctively to preserve his own heat, but then forcing it back and holding her tighter. It had been three days since he had seen Sarah, and Ian was worried after the first few hours. He had met the police, dialed her parents, texted friends, called her phone only to reach her voicemail immediately. He sat in his darkened room, staring at his computer screen, eyes pulsing around several open tabs of her social media. Ian looked do...

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It's a Toss Up

Submitted to Contest #180

I stood in front of the class and recited "two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, long I wondered, long I stood..." I thought it was funny because the day before I was asked to make a big decision that would affect the rest of my life, although I was just 12 years old. You see, my mother and father were splitting up. They both wanted me to live with them. They told me that the decision was up to me where I would land. I wanted to scream at them, "You can't leave this kind of thing up to a kid!" But I di...

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