Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write about someone who can’t sleep due to jet lag, and decides to set out and explore their new city at night instead.

Posted in Adventure on Nov 10, 2023

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 19 stories

308 Years Later

Submitted to Contest #224

“Just listen, don’t talk. You need time to wake up, for your eyesight to return. Everything will be a little hazy and you might not remember how you got here, but you need to focus on my voice. My name is Dr Yadav."I tried to lean forward, but my body felt as if it weighed 100 tonnes. I barely moved an inch before I slumped back into the bed.“This is going to be a lot to hear at once, but it’s important that you know these things right away. In 2043, your body was suspended in an experimental bio-amber, freezing your body until woken. You pa...

31 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Lost Davis

Submitted to Contest #224

This story contains adult contents, mental health, suicide, substance11.30 pm.I saw that numbers on the digital table clock in my hotel room, all white and gold furnitures, very fancy room, while sipping to my gin and margarita. I’m so used to the luxury room I almost never drop my jaw anymore when I’m in one. It’s one of the good things about my job, staying at the most prestigious hotel in town, not to mention I get to travel anywhere around the world.Ping!“Hey, Babe. Miss me yet? I’m thinking about flying to you this weekend.”Sofia is a s...

16 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Bargirl

Submitted to Contest #224

Turning into Soi Cowboy is a full out assault on the senses. You leave the stink of noisy tuk-tuk traffic fumes and it’s replaced by hot oil cooking chili-flavoured street food. Its stirred together with beer and perfume with an undercurrent of sweat. The light of the coloured neon flickers across the bare skin of a host of girls. Rainbow tinged shoulders and stomachs and thighs. A thousand people chatter and the girls call out constantly.“You come with me? Show you good time.”Pay them any attention and they grab your hand, hit you...

16 likes 13 comments 13
Read story

Covert Exploration

Submitted to Contest #224

She rolled over in the lumpy, twin-size bed. A splitting headache from the dehydration made it impossible to relax. She sat up, took another big gulp of her water bottle, and looked down at her agency-issued Tudor watch. The illuminated watch hands read 12:15 a.m. Her mind told her it was still 4:15 p.m. back in Washington, D.C. She walked over to the window and drew back the blackout curtains, exposing the warm glow of the Arabian metropolis below. Lively banter between shawarma vendors and hungry customers produced a steady backdrop o...

13 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Freddy the Frog

Submitted to Contest #224

Freddy the Frog was very sick. He perched on the rail of the Corniche and looked out at the dark water. Frogs are supposed to like water, but seeing that much of it always confused Freddy. He always felt it looked threatening, like a monster waiting to rise up and eat him. He would stare at it for hours, waiting for it to attack him.There were some panthers walking behind him. And some monkeys, and buffalo too, going down the pathway of the Corniche. Sometimes, when he was on a ledge like this, animals would push him from behind and into the...

12 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Faith in N'Awlins

Submitted to Contest #224

As Faith sat at her desk reviewing her travel plans for the year, she couldn’t really complain. She loved how much travel was involved in her marketing role at the prestigious publishing house she worked for and she felt this year she had completed lucked out. A trip to New Orleans in April followed by a few Italian trips and Alaska later in the year. These academics really wanted a ‘good old jolly’ away from their families, with whatever shenanigans that involved.Last year at a Russian studies conference, Faith couldn’t believe how much fli...

11 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

A Cup of Creativity

Submitted to Contest #224

One glance at the clock told me it was way too early to be awake. That’s what I get for falling asleep when I really should have been trying to fight the jet lag that overtook my body the second I collapsed on my pillow. The city of Paris had been bustling with workers returning to their families and children chattering animatedly with peers when I finally made it to my hotel room after a long excruciating flight where the agitated screams of a baby kept me awake for its entirety.Now, the city was asleep. The only sounds audible were the rus...

9 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Not Home

Submitted to Contest #224

The clock strikes two.My cousin's sleeping soundly beside me, unstirring, but I'm still awake and hungry. I would wake her if not for the fact that she had work early the next morning. The stove shouldn't be too hard to figure out; I'll manage.The clock strikes three.I'm back in bed, belly stuffed with some concoction of noodles and vegetable scraps—not the greatest, but it would do. At least I thought it would. My stomach's rumbles no longer keep me awake, yet my eyes refuse to stay shut.The clock strikes four.We have a popcorn ceiling. Lum...

9 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Syncopated in NOLA

Submitted to Contest #224

I can’t sleep. It’s been 5 hours since I stepped off my 14-hour-long plane ride, and I find myself staring a hole into an evergreen wooden ceiling at 2 AM. Right about now, I’d be bundled up in my cozy cabin all settled in for the night, but instead, I’ve wrestled with my blanket several times and maintained my insomnia thanks to the buzzing street lamps near my window. I roll out of the unfamiliar bed and pull my phone off the nightstand in hopes of finding something mindless to do. I check social media, YouTube, the New York Times, and eve...

7 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

What Happens in Vegas...

Submitted to Contest #224

My stomach was still doing flip-flops from the plane ride. When I glanced in the gold-framed hotel room mirror, I swore my complexion still had a green tint to it. There had been enough turbulence during the flight to qualify me for the space program, and it was the first time I had ever used those little flight bags for air sickness. In my defense, nearly everyone on the flight had tossed their cookies, and I felt a great deal of sympathy for the flight attendants who had to collect all those bags. Ick! “Are you sure you feel alright, Han...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

2:37 AM

Submitted to Contest #224

2:37 am. Still haven’t gotten a lick of sleep. Every time my eyes close the pressure headaches set in and the room feels like a spinning top. Flying long distances is always the worst part of any trip. I don’t mind so much the cramped quarters, can deal with the mild irritant of upset babies crying in the background, I can even put up with the slightly oversized gentlemen sitting next to me taking up way too much legroom; however, the nausea and pulsating buildup in my skull always seem to take me out of sorts and leave me feeling discombobu...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Cold City

Submitted to Contest #224

As the plane hit the tarmac, I could feel the exhaustion of the travel day in my bones. New York City, my new home. The place I will spend all of my days, nights, afternoons. I shrugged on my jacket and nudged the burly man next to me to see if he would open the window. I was met with a loud snore. I sighed, and turned to look at the sleeping baby on the other side of me, finally pacified in her mother’s warm embrace. It seemed that everybody could sleep but me. The seat belt sign blinked off, signalling that it was time to go. I gathered m...

6 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

One Night in Suriname

Submitted to Contest #224

Too exhausted to sleep; a truly ridiculous concept when you think about it, though it was the reality that mockingly confronted me. I stared at the clock which offered grim reading: 2:06 local time, that makes it 6:06 back home. No wonder I couldn’t sleep, my body clock was used to getting out of bed at this time, not submerging into one. Amsterdam to Suriname, that’s nine and a half hours of my life I’ll never get back. Flying has never been my strong suit and jet lag will forever be the utmost bane of my existence. Although I love them, sh...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Jet Lag and More

Submitted to Contest #224

Jet Lag and More I couldn’t sleep, not matter how hard I tried to relax on the hotel bed. So I gave in to the inevitable, got up, and got dressed. It had been a long flight across the continent west to east. I think the term for what I was feeling was jet lag.  It was more than just that however that kept me from sleeping on this night. My wife and I had just recently separated. My rather drastic response to that was applying for and getting a job far from my small-town hometown and moving to the city where th...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Star Lake

Submitted to Contest #224

CW: Blood, cussing, death Glancing over I see my black shadow, Destiny. She’s perched on the bar like the queen she is, lapping at the dish of blood I gave her when we arrived.  Sven, the werewolf owner of the Dirty Dog Pub, casts her a nasty look, even flashing a hint of fang They haven’t gotten on since the first day they met. I figure it must be a cat and dog thing, or perhaps it was the way Destiny had clawed his hand to shit when he tried to pet her. Then she’d licked her paw clean, all while staring him down with a look that...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Set your story before dawn. Your character has woken up early for a particular reason.

Fiction – 93 stories

Write a story about two people living together who have opposing sleep cycles, and only cross paths at dawn and dusk.

Character – 48 stories

Start your story with someone saying “I can’t sleep.”

Dramatic – 87 stories

Write a story about someone pulling an all nighter.

Fiction – 35 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel