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Write about someone’s journey to retrieve an important object that’s been out of their possession for a long time.

Posted in Adventure on Aug 23, 2024

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✍️ 46 stories

Eleven Years of Hope

Winner of Contest #265 🏆

When the doctors asked him if he wanted to hop into a frying pan, Alexander of Severe Level III, long acquainted with doctor tongue, knew they meant they wanted to trial a new drug or a new treatment. Alexander said okay because he was tired of being shut up all day in the institution, and wanted to travel to the testing lab. More importantly, he had lost a central piece of himself to shrapnel when he stepped on a landmine eleven years earlier, and continued to perplex what was left of his cerebral cortex with the hope of its recovery.The do...

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THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY OF LIFE

Submitted to Contest #265

Prologue: A Devil's Bargain Fifteen years ago, Bob McFadden sat slumped over a chipped bar counter, the fifth whiskey in his hand barely warming the cold, empty space inside him. The bar, a dingy dive where Hope went to die, was lit by flickering neon signs that cast ghostly green and red shadows on the stained walls. Bob, a failed musician who had peaked before he ever truly began, stared into his glass, lost in the swirl of his shattered dreams. A man appeared at his side as he contemplated the relentless tide of failures that had swept hi...

22 likes 11 comments 11
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The Great Gauza

Submitted to Contest #265

My legs were falling asleep; the Council had been in session for almost an entire day, with arguments tossed to and fro around the clearing. The issue was whether Buruzagia, the Chief of our tribe, should leave the village and trek north to the Mountains of the Mun, there to seek, and return with, the Great Gauza, which had been lost years before to the mountain folk.I fidgeted, and not for the first time, trying to bring life back to my poor numb limbs. Buruzagia noticed and copied me. Ostentatiously winking in my direction, he clapped his ...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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The Horseshoe

Submitted to Contest #265

“I am on my way to pick up a horseshoe. My brother Dennis took it. It’s been outta my hands for a very long time,” says the man on the seat beside me. We’re on a Greyhound somewhere in West Virginia. I swirl my frosted vanilla cappuccino and take a long pull through the straw. Around us the other passengers are snoozing or gazing out the window. I’m glad I doctored my drink with a stiff shot of Grey Goose before I boarded. “A horseshoe, eh?” I say.My seatmate Braydon is a tough-looking guy, with close-cut hair that doesn’t quite disguise the...

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Master Said He'd Marry Annette

Submitted to Contest #265

Trigger warning: mild gore.The apples were rotting on their branches, encircled by an aura of fruit flies. The buzz of the garden vibrated through Annette’s being, burrowing through her ears like termites, eating away at her insides as though they were wood – only she didn’t have any insides, and she was, in fact, wooden. Given her hollowness, she was propelled forward only by an innate knowing – a curious something that animated her wooden legs, ridden with termite holes, to rise and fall with a featherlike frailty. A gust of wind could hav...

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Relationships Mean Differences Not Intolerances (X and Y; Y and X)

Submitted to Contest #265

[ALLUSIONS TO SEX]X and Y; Y and X"What will we do with all these balls you have here?" Your hardball, footballs, volleyball, basketball, pickleball, squash, and tennis," Sarah innocently asked of Herman, her soon-to-be husband, the very first day they moved in together during her second year of medical school."Balls are overrated.""What do you mean? Of course, they aren't," Herman said."They most certainly are. You know as well as I do that they are useless in the grand scheme.""Sarah, you need balls to play well; I'm telling you, I need th...

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Lost Object.

Submitted to Contest #265

A partially shaved man's face came into view on my display, his voice melodic and soothing. “Hello, fellow YouTubers. My name is Listening Brad, and today, I'm transporting you back to Australia in 2018.The display transitioned to a rotating silver and purple flashing Merkaba accompanied by eerie music. A well-trained conspiracy theorist ear would pick up the music as a back-masked or reversed rendition of a well-known song from the 1960s which had explicit occult themes. The Channel's name was displayed in black, bold letters next to the no...

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A Cold Case Gone Hot

Submitted to Contest #265

Edgar read the same line once again. His eyes were pale, his skin paler. His brain had certainly turned pitch white by now. He couldn't stop himself from giving it another look, as a drop of sweat started running down his left temple.  "How could it?" His synapses finally made contact, for the first time in the last minute or so. Or was it two minutes? No one could tell how long he had spent on this nightmarish paragraph. He put down the newspaper on the coffee table, and sat back on the couch. Some of the ink had started to run after m...

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Mae and Jun

Submitted to Contest #265

Dear Mae,              I’m coming to see you beautiful. All my things crushed and stashed away in a black roller bag, an illogical, chaotic mess. I banged my knee barging through the station turnstile – hard. I’m sure it will throb endlessly tomorrow, but for now it’s nothing. Truthfully, I can’t feel anything at all. I’ve only uttered a few words the last four days.              So maybe silent words, f...

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Hidden but not forgotten

Submitted to Contest #265

Sophia waited anxiously in the damp dusk of the bus stop.  She longed for the warmth of home, but first she had to face her brother, a brother she hadn’t spoken to for almost four decades.  The thought was repugnant, but the visit was unavoidable.  Her day, like the day before and those before that, had been spent working through the papery remnants of her recently deceased parents.  The drawers and boxes of policies and documents from a lifetime of signatures, agreements and purchases.  The trinkets and memories of ...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Kingdom By the Sea

Submitted to Contest #265

When little, I lived in a small house of orphaned girls. We were under the rule of a fearful woman named Mabitha. She demanded that we call her Mother, and we did. Why would we not? If you were to have met her, you would have called her anything if she demanded and demanded she did. To her face, we called her this, but at night. In our room, we whispered the smallest of whispers, a breeze of words, "Mab-Witch." Giggles would erupt at the name, followed by firm pressed hands on our lips. Our own hands involuntarily shutting us up in fear of h...

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Take Me Home, Country Rhodes

Submitted to Contest #265

An hour into their monthly meeting, the Cressy Town Council has made one resolution: Despite dressing her monkey, Harold, like a child, Dacia Montero’s pet won’t be allowed to eat banana splits at the diner’s counter anymore. The Council’s agenda shifts to the more serious subject of tourism. “We’ve got lots of quirky odds and ends in town, but there’s no real big attraction,” Chief McLaren Pontiac notes. Opal Carr, the Library Director, nods, her long neck making her look like a chicken pecking at specks of feed. “We have Carhenge with all...

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The Necklace

Submitted to Contest #265

It had been a long time since he saw that necklace adorn his late wife’s neck. He remembered it so vividly: sparkling diamonds set in beautiful gold. He had designed it himself. The sporadically placed rubies had made for a beautiful contrast against her brown skin. He always thought it brought out the cherry colour of her lips - lips he had not kissed for far too long.. Yes, he remembered this necklace very well. It was almost as though it was only yesterday, when he had so lovingly gifted it to his beautiful bride on their wedding day. It ...

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A Surprise to His Family

Submitted to Contest #265

A Surprise to His Family Frank was known to all as a tough and manly sort of fellow. In high school and in college he was on the varsity football team, and put fear in the eyes, hearts and minds of quarterbacks, halfbacks, and even those hardy guys whose main job on the forward line was to stop the attacking Frank.           It came as no surprise to anyone that after he graduated from college in the policing program, he became a police officer, that every wrongdoer in town feared t...

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The Heart of the Problem

Submitted to Contest #265

The thunderous pounding of the waterfall draws my attention. This river flows through the country of Precipa like a major artery, carrying the gift of water and life to the mostly dry desert kingdom. But here, by the river, the ground is lush, and full of life. The air smells like a summer rain, earthy and rich, and the chirping of crickets and the buzzing of insects charges the surroundings with life.  Wind whispers through the branches of the nearby willow trees, and I decide this is the perfect place to stop for the night. I've been ...

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