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Write a story about a problem with no good solutions.

Posted in Angst on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 32 stories

GRUESOME

Submitted to Contest #127

I wake up to a small amount of warmth on my arm in a room as cold as the Arctic. I look up to find the stark white sheet still scrunched up in my hand and my face instantly gives in to its former spot on the bed. The spot is damp and sticky with my salty tears and warm mucus. The warm spot on my arm becomes warmer as the nurse gently tightens her grip on me. ‘’I’m sorry sir but you’re going to have to leave unless you’re family or a friend, and you have already stated that you are neither.’’ I don’t budge and she sighs. ‘’I can give y...

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Jokers Wild

Submitted to Contest #127

                                        He paces. Short choppy steps, pivots, begins again. His left hand holds a red plastic poker chip, the top grooves worn smooth by incessant rubbing of his thumb. His intensity bleeds through the walls.           Upstairs, she adjusts each arm ...

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No Other Option

Submitted to Contest #127

No Other Options Lucy had always found that journaling had helped her to understand whatever the situation was at the time, and there certainly was a situation now. So she fixed a cup of tea and sat down on the front porch with her favorite spiral notebook and began to write. “The problem is this: my beloved 70-something sister has realized that her time on this planet is winding down. Well, of course it is; she never thought she would live forever. But the question that has always pestered her is plaguing her all the time now: how to pr...

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Gut Feeling

Submitted to Contest #127

My first job application since the lockdown ended and I am all nerves since the benefits cut off months ago and I am not looking my best because no proper haircut. My side tooth is freshly broken and my face contorts from time to time as my tongue keeps exploring the gap where the tooth used to reside. I try not to do this, but it’s practically a reflex. I show up at 3 o’clock as directed by the restaurant email. The maître d’hôtel, who looks like a walking penis, gives me a paper application form and points to a side booth, the table bare ...

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No Way Out

Submitted to Contest #127

The maze was a never-ending compilation of twists and turns, small hills and dead-ends. Tests, challenges, and overcoming fear were requirements to master this maze, but this was no ordinary maze. For Billy, Sarah, and Adam, three college best friends, they would have to decide if their friendship was trustworthy enough. "Endure till the end, find the secret key, and make it out before dawn, that's all you have to do," the instructor gave the orders. Teams were split into groups of three, of all ages and backgrounds. But the better you kne...

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3x+1

Submitted to Contest #127

The pain tore through me, the knife cutting through the layers of flesh, blood spilling out. For an instant, I felt nothing, and then, I felt a soreness in my chest, a soreness that seemed empty, void of all feeling and emotion, unaware of its own existence. Chills began to dominate me; the cold bit at me. The wind blew right through me, as if I did not exist. Shivering, I looked up into the face of my attacker.     I could only see his hair, a light brown with luminous golden streaks, his lips small yet full, slightly parted ...

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Unnatural Selection

Submitted to Contest #127

[DISCLAIMER: SciFi, Sensitive/Polarizing topics, Dark Dystopia, Social Problems, Govt Tyranny, Violence. Heavy, dark stuff. Please DO NOT READ if you are sensitive, or Survivor of War/Genocide/Atrocities, or predisposed to Depression.][Note: It was difficult to somehow incorporate “intuition” with the idea I had in mind for “a problem with no good solutions”. I hope that my story is still given due consideration.]YEAR 2050: Gibson was the Chief of the top-secret facility, in-charge of the entire operation. He was heading back to his office a...

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Right at Sundown

Submitted to Contest #127

There was the pond and there was I, the floating inbetween- the two legged stance in motion, tending my heart-my father, and a drowning memory. At any given moment I could be upended by Dad's passing; as he was passing, ever so slow, limboing amid oxygen and angst. Death represented itself in the water and in the waiting and all I could do was breathe, in a purgatory complete with well fed catfish rolling in the shallows.I had realized after a conversation with Dad only a month earlier- that he was in need of great love. That he was perhaps-...

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To Love or Live

Submitted to Contest #127

When she moved to Chicago, Stella made her peace with the fact she might run into him. She lived in the Uptown neighborhood, north of Chicago, barely included in the city proper. Falling apart at the edges, but it was close to Lake Michigan and the peeling paint wasn’t so bad. She knew through the grapevine that he was somewhere on the north side of the city. Probably River North, with its diamond lights and silver high-rises. The fact that she’d never seen him since moving there was further proof that he ran in different circles than she di...

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This Didn't Have to Happen

Submitted to Contest #127

My parents were miserable people to begin with. When the door crashed open only half an hour into their book club meeting, I prepared myself for a long evening. “Can you believe it?” Mom said to me. I half listened, dozing in a love seat by the television. “They kicked us out of book club.” I blinked my eyes and straightened up a little bit. We moved to the kitchen where I spiked my Coke with a generous amount of rum. I needed this to get through my mother’s ramblings. She was the kind to keep the news on at high volumes all day at the cos...

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Survival At Sea

Submitted to Contest #127

It was a frigid blustery day, with the steel gray sky spitting rain. White caps were beginning to form across Edna Bay in Southeast Alaska and the temperature had dropped to just below freezing overnight, making the coming day’s task much more difficult for 47 year old Matt Crawford and his 14 year old son, Isaac.Native Alaskans, like Matt and his family rely on subsistence fishing for salmon, to help them to survive the hard Alaskan winters. They don’t have access to a grocery store like most Americans in the lower 48. They have to survive ...

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No One Wins

Submitted to Contest #127

It sat there between us. And, for something so small, it had created such a big problem. I stared at the ceiling and held my breath. I didn’t need to look. I knew what he would be doing on the other side of our chestnut coffee table. His tree trunk arms crossed over his chest. I could almost feel his cool blue eyes drilling into my face with anger and animosity. His broad shoulders lifted slightly with each shallow breath that panted in and out of his big chest. I shook my head. A little sideways wobble of incredulity. I couldn’t believe we ...

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A Rock and a hard place ( A fiction based on a true story

Submitted to Contest #127

<CW- gas lighting/ dysfunctional family Dynamics/ adult languageGas·lightverbmanipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.The day before New year’s eveMacy Tomson tied her long, curly fire red locks into a high ponytail. Then glanced up at the digital clock on the stark white wall of her minimalistic yet cozy little one-bedroom apartment. Sitting there on her queen sized mattress, the gray color of her bedsheets seeming to illustrate her mood, she watched the minutes tick by. When 2 o’clock turned to three...

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How It All Winds Up

Submitted to Contest #127

I adjust my hair in the mirror. Well, it's essentially my hair. No, yes, it's my hair. It appears just like it, even if I haven't grown a strand in ten years. I just came to have this piece today, actually. But it looks so honest sitting there! They'll think it must really be mine, the audience, or else be too amused in my speech to pay such close attention.I'll practice once more. If only this mirror didn't have so many streaks, and I could see myself properly. Never mind that, though. Nothing upsets me tonight!I look around the bathroom—my...

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Explorers of Known Spaces

Submitted to Contest #127

Explorers of Known Spaces By Kyle Barr There was her child, running to the edge of known spaces then back across the room, back and forth like the intellectual who paces to keep their mind sharp. But you don’t have to think like they do, you have something better to offer, the child’s mother thought, watching her son. You have a knowing without knowing, a sensory kind of intelligence. “You’re an explorer,” she called to him across the room. Her child beamed back at her. Looking at that face, with all those qualities she did not ha...

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