Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write a story about a character who’s trying to fill an empty space, literally or metaphorically.

Posted in Angst on Oct 26, 2022

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?

✍️ 55 stories

I Leave the Six Blank

Winner of Contest #108 🏆

(TW: child loss)One is black.My therapist suggested this activity, which I think is a waste of time. I'm not really very artistic.Allie was. I was surprised by how well she could color, for her age, I mean. She didn't just scribble, she chose her colors carefully, she stayed in the lines, she even shaded, sometimes. She wasn't a savant but her pictures were better than other four-year-old kids'. Oh, how I loved her pictures.Making this picture of my own is neither creative nor productive, but I must admit it is oddly satisfying. And it gives...

281 likes 162 comments 162
Read story

Void > Water > Air > Fire > Earth

Submitted to Contest #108

Void.All gone.I hold my empty red wine glass, eyeing the waiter, feigning interest in the enthusiastic young man standing in front of me. He speaks without ceasing. Not a pause. Not a comma. Not an intake of breath. Just a wall of words emanating from his overly large mouth, a chasm devoid of charm, a wellspring of nothing, a gaping maw. I’m trying to follow him, but he seems to be talking about everything and nothing—all at the same time. But this I do know. Every word, every phrase, and every clause he has relentlessly launched at me in th...

68 likes 48 comments 48
Read story

Too much red

Submitted to Contest #108

Megan was running through the familiar streets, though something gloomy reflected in the once bright roads. Her eyes stung as much as the red across her cheeks while she looked for refuge in the last safe place she had in the crowded city. An oasis as the world collapsed around her without anything she could do about it. I can’t go back there! That old man was a thief. Four thousand for a single room? That was the last thing she heard before shutting the world out. Finally, there was only a single door between her and the nook of her favor...

53 likes 16 comments 16
Read story

Moving On...

Submitted to Contest #108

My lust for life died with her. There was one empty room in our home. We never decided what we were going to do with it. Her things… that’s what I’ll do. I’ll put all her things in the room. Piece by piece…only what I can handle. It had been a whole year, and I still couldn’t breathe when I thought about her. The park we used to picnic in before… grass so lush you could sleep on it… so green that it was almost blue. Her eyes were crystal blue. Lilac bushes filled the air with a sweet aroma… reminded me of her delicate scent. The wrought iro...

47 likes 15 comments 15
Read story

greetings from my apartment!

Shortlisted for Contest #108 ⭐️

At 1:06 PM, I realize two things. First: I haven’t spoken a single word out loud today. I’ve sent some messages that say things like I laughed out loud and I’m screaming and maybe I did smile or inhale sharply, but I did not laugh out loud, and I did not scream, and I have not said a word to anyone, not even myself. Second: the wall is empty. Two days ago, I went to a new friend’s house, and he had art on the walls. Art and framed photos. We’re the same age and we both just moved here. But he has art on the walls and my wall is blank, and...

46 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

A Quiet Home

Shortlisted for Contest #108 ⭐️

“We did everything we could.” She had him cremated and did not hold a memorial service. They had no children. The few friends they had lived far away. At first, sleep had been a welcome respite from the horrible silence that had taken over their home. The unconsciousness had come easily with the grief, but as the days passed she found herself being awakened by the anxiety that crept out of the quiet. She tried turning the TV to high volume, switching channels frequently to keep it on all the best shows. But the feeling she had did not come...

32 likes 14 comments 14
Read story

The Kiss

Submitted to Contest #108

There was an ache inside of me. I was touch starved and I didn’t want to admit it. There were apps and places you could go for that sort of thing. But, I wasn’t looking for sex and I felt weird about paying someone to touch me. I have a terrible desire to belong. A need to connect deeply with other people. I have no deep connections. I have had very few real friends over my lifetime and I’ve never been in love. The ties that bind us have been cut from my grasp. I’m left holding the severed ends of the red strings that were once attached to m...

27 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The love-Hate Ambivalence.

Submitted to Contest #108

Heaven and earth has seen many love and hate stories venture through time, father time himself could not keep records of. With the buzz of romance a sudden heartbreak will bring a void to one’s heart and leave it an empty space.Filling that heart, now an abyss, is all but an act of letting someone reach out and touch your center soul, well mostly. Sometimes, we may never fill that void, or it takes sailing bravely through known and unknown obstacles. Just so happens I know two God’s whom had a ambivalence problem that took years for the...

26 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Empty Space

Shortlisted for Contest #108 ⭐️

  The space in the butterfly garden had not always been empty. From the faint smell of cough medicine that wafted from the splintering wood as she tried vainly to pry out the remains of a stump, she knew there once stood a girthy camphor tree. It was wide but otherwise nondescript and crumbling, level with the ground and featureless. But even now it refused to relinquish its hold on the brown space in the otherwise kaleidoscopic flowerbed. The stump simply would not permit anything else to grow. There were no flowers when the woman fir...

25 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Wonderland Syndrome

Submitted to Contest #108

Ahh how this moment brings me back, oddly enough, to a recurring dream, dreamt in odd concession at the exact time of two o'clock in the morning on the exact date of the second Tuesday of every month of my life since before I can remember. The events of this dream take place in front of what I first assume to be a church, but I gradually realize that there is no religion represented whatsoever, and it is not only clearly abandoned but now in complete and utter ruin, it's walls decay while the paint peels off of the crumbling and ominous towe...

25 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

The Swiss Rocking Horse

Submitted to Contest #108

Number 47 was the only calf I ever knew to commit suicide. The day she did it I'd been meaning to do some carving on my rocking horse, but out of mourning for her I didn't after all. She was the third calf to die that week. We had a pneumonia epidemic going around, but 47 didn't have pneumonia. She died by sheer will power.     The funny thing about 47 was how bouncy and vocal she was. She would make as much rumpus as any healthy calf ever did, but her little closed-mouth attitude at feeding time was always the same: b...

24 likes 15 comments 15
Read story

empty spaces

Submitted to Contest #108

TW: addiction/drugs/foul languageI will never forget that morning. Which is quite surprising because I never remembered most of my mornings or nights. This particular morning was different. It was ugly. Which isn’t saying much because most of my days and nights had become filled with some sort of ugliness. Or shame. This particular morning I awoke inside of a cardboard box. Yes, you read that right. A cardboard box. Well, it was more like a couple of cardboard boxes strewn together to make some kind of dwelling. A fort if you will. ...

23 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Tender is the Heart

Submitted to Contest #108

“You know you can’t keep doing this right?” He asks me gently, running the ruggedness of his fingertips along my hips. I try to relish in the warmth, but still, I come up short. Still feel cold.  “Keep doing what exactly?” I murmur back, turning slightly to face him on the bed. He looks down at my form, his touch is light, but I can feel the weight of his desire building. Doesn’t it always come back to this? He places his head on my shoulder and breathes in.  “Does this help you?” He asks, not lifting his head, but moving his fin...

23 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Silent Watcher

Submitted to Contest #108

My grandmother was driving me home from church when I first saw him.  He was waiting at a bus stop downtown, eyes fixed on the asphalt so I couldn’t get a good look at his face; strands of blue hair hung past his eyes, anyway. He wore big, clunky white shoes on his feet, black athletic shorts, and a pink T-shirt.             “Woah, would you look at that character?” said my grandmother, dipping her head at him.           &n...

23 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Hole

Submitted to Contest #108

I look around me, the city that until minutes ago was bustling with people and a few cars is now in complete shambles. Even the sky is weeping for her misfortunes. My once always pampered face is drenched and dripping with water. My unshod feet which once had never touched a hard floor are now bleeding from walking for who knows how long? The pain I feel in my legs is keeping me from forgetting I’m not dead. But you know what’s funny? None of these even hold a candle to this hole in my heart. A million questions in my head:‘Where am I going?...

22 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about a voyage on a boat.

Adventure – 42 stories

Write about a person or object vanishing into thin air.

Thriller and Suspense – 44 stories

Write a story about a team tunneling down into the centre of a planet.

Science Fiction – 6 stories

Start or end your story with a house going up in flames.

Dark – 55 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