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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about someone successfully — or unsuccessfully — escaping their fate.

Posted in Angst on May 5, 2023

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 107 stories

“The Fate of Customer 12” by HR Pinches

🏆 Winner of Contest #197

 Normal people don’t have destinies. Of course, I never tell them that. When they come into my shop, I take their palms solemnly—after I take their payment, $25 cash or card—and stare into the blankness of their futures with undue reverence. Day after day, year after year, they come: the businessmen and the soccer moms, the mailroom clerks, dentists, and hairstylists of the world. The politicians and the theologians, too. The young and the old, the hopeful and the hopeless, the sceptics and the true believers. They all come and its...

113 comments 113
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“The One That Got Away” by Howard Halsall

Submitted to Contest #197

During their three-year engagement, Gillian lost count of how many times Archie Abelard had kept her waiting. He’d caused them to miss endless restaurant bookings, the start of every film and party they’d ever attended, plus two holiday flights. By the end of their relationship, Gillian tired of Archie’s lousy excuses despite humouring his hilarious attempts to rescue their social life from certain calamity. #   On Gillian’s wedding day, it was the roadworks on Camden Road that contributed to Archie’s late arrival. The jo...

46 comments 46
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“A Mediocre First Day in Limbo ” by Adrienne Miller

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #197

Trigger Warnings: Reference to domestic violence (not explicit), reference to eating disorder (not explicit) Ane is disappointed to open her eyes again. People who have lived a more morally righteous life are probably ecstatic to find that the promised afterlife does indeed exist. Ane, however, has spent many of her later years holding onto the hope that there might be nothing much at all after the big end and that she might be able to skip out on her share of divine judgement. That hope came in extremely handy when murdering her fir...

12 comments 12
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“A Spool of Amber” by Hannah P. Simmons

Submitted to Contest #197

She feels his touch. He is certain of it. Though his fingertips brush the arch of her cheek with the gentleness of a moth wing, she startles. And she looks at him.No. Merely in his direction. Thanatos knows better. She can’t see him. See his black eyes that glisten with longing. See the chiseled lines of his face that ever turns in her direction. See the chest that cages a sense of both passion and despair with every pulse of deified blood. Not yet.But, for a moment, it seems her eyes somehow reach beyond her mortal perception and find ...

14 comments 14
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“Transparent Lives Pt 2 Mother's Prospective” by Daniel Fernandes

Submitted to Contest #197

Language Warning: Lots Of Expletives. Finally home as I put the bag down. Leave the keys hanging about 6ft off the ground. Tiffany isn't home yet from school. I would pick her up but ran out of fuel. I'll have to fill it up a different day. I wanted to grab some groceries but my client didn't pay. I'll stop by tomorrow and get a check. Cleaning houses isn't reliable anymore what can I expect. No legal papers so living is complex. My husband is working out the steps. There's never an update and I'm dying for what's next. I can't go o...

13 comments 13
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“Four Fated Fortunes” by Shannon Gale

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #197

We four wandered into fortune’s path And learned how we would die.We laughed, though the wariness Never wilted in our eyes.I watched as all the others wentTheir fortunes holding true.Would knowing how your life will endInfluence all you do? An unrelenting rain slides off my umbrella as I stand at Robbie’s graveside service. It’s a hurried affair, only five mourners including myself. I have already hugged and shared words with his long-suffering mother, her dull stare trained on the glossy black coffin being lowered into the earth. I do ...

20 comments 20
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“Odd Luck” by Derrick M Domican

Submitted to Contest #197

His eyelids fluttered as the darkness behind them diminished and a soothing warmth settled on his face, like that of a cosy summer’s day.He started to bring movement to his body, spreading his fingers, wiggling his toes, tilting his head left and right as he came awake, squeezing his eyes tighter shut before blinking them open.He inhaled sharply as he took in his surroundings, the same surroundings he woke up to every time, the same ceiling, the same four-poster bed, the same floral patterned wallpaper and tapestries. To his left, the teak g...

23 comments 23
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“If The Shoe Fits” by Wally Schmidt

Submitted to Contest #197

“Of course the damn shoe didn’t fit. Whaddya think? I’d been bustin’ my keister off. Scrubbin’, cleanin’, cookin’ and all the rest. By the time I got to his crib my feet were so swollen, I traded my new Louboutins for flats. I figured with the long dress ‘n all no one was gonna know I did a switch-er-oo.”“How did that work out?” “Not great. After I ditched the party and called my Uber, I realized I only had one of the shoes in my bag and I must’ve left the other one behind. Somewhere. I turned that bag inside out and upside down, but th...

17 comments 17
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“Daylight” by Sara Abbood

Submitted to Contest #197

They rise at sunset. Kicking and clawing through the dirt with cracked grey nails and broken teeth; stumbling over silent gravestones with the grace of an alcoholic. Here, the earth is barren. Flowers refuse to sprout for fear of withering; succumbing to the rampant plague of death stretching acres of land. Among them are the nocturnal inhabitants. Owls, vultures, crows, opossums, and the Undead. Opportunistic feeders lunging at the first sign of life outside their bleak forms. When they aren’t feasting on the rotting carcass of an unfortuna...

3 comments 3
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“Beast in the Jungle” by Marty B

Submitted to Contest #197

Violent subject matter: death She saw the Beast, finally, saw the terror she had feared her whole life, and it was worse than she ever imagined.    That night had started out simple enough,  like so many before.  Abbey had parked her car in the vast garage, back in the darkness of the employee section. She was wearing the light blue scrubs of her profession, clean and pressed.  As she walked through to the office her steps echoed in the concrete ‘Jungle’, as the officers called this dark cement landscape, wire...

21 comments 21
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“Capriccio in the Southern Cross ” by A. L. V.

Submitted to Contest #197

[TW: Includes mild themes of violence and substance abuse.] Hawke never seems to worry about where he is in the world.   One morning, he’ll stroll onto the deck and declare that we need to swing the ship ninety degrees to the West. The next, he’ll be pulling out the rum and tequila stock because he found a city in the horizon.  I admire his spirit, but I fear it may be his downfall.  With the Capriccio at sea for weeks on end, it’s difficult to have reliable, new information on the Great War ensuing. I hear the Alliance h...

4 comments 4
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“Sharing Shakespeare's Birthday: A Five-Paragraph Essay” by Éan Bird

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #197

Have you ever tried to write on Shakespeare’s birthday? It sucks. Do not recommend it. I’ve tried for decades. If you're wondering how one becomes called to such a task (without ever asking for the assignment), here's what happens: The stars align by order of some complicated celestial coordinates. Dates are predetermined. Circumstances overlap, and suddenly I'm unable to escape the fate of having to write on William Shakespeare's birthday. In the beginning of this preordained kismet, I vowed to compose with religious ceremony. And for the f...

12 comments 12
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“The Terror of Amberglen” by Russell Mickler

Submitted to Contest #197

The Wilds. Eder. The Game of Fate. The Aevalorn Wilds existed as an untamed forest to the south of Gaelwyn. It stretched inland from the western shore of the Fathoms for six hundred miles to meet a hilly plain dotted by steep, rocky mountain peaks. A rhododendron forest, most of its trees hugged the earth, and their trunks grew twisted, curled, and knotted, as their limbs were prone to creep sideways, horizontally to the ground. Seen from a distance, its rolling green canopy was marred by ruddy patches of rust-colored blossoms, and over the ...

13 comments 13
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“Playing The Game” by Alexandra Rodriguez

Submitted to Contest #197

Choice: Press Play or Press Exit.You Press Play.Note: Warning, Choices made are Choices kept. Future Choices do not override past ones. No matter how hard you try to forget, your memories may never fade. It is The Game that controls your destiny from here on out. Choose wisely. You're laying in a bed of wildflowers, the dewey morning grass soaking you through. The sky above you is a pale orange, quickly fading to blue. No clouds in sight, the sun is blinding at first but slowly decides to show you kindness. You sit up to find the field ...

12 comments 12
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“The Antichrist and All Her Friends” by Alex Alaimo

Submitted to Contest #197

           Dorothea's right hand still twitched and shook at her side long after the sedatives had taken effect in her bloodstream. The blue pendant had burned into the skin of her palm. The small muscles in her hands cramped, having lost feeling in her fingers hours prior. She feared that if she loosened her grip, she might lose her only chance of seeing tomorrow. The gravity of the realization weighed upon her chest, giving her a comparison to what it might feel like to be crushed und...

1 comment 1
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Contest #197

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This week's theme: Fate and Free Will

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Ended on 23:59 - May 12, 2023 EST

Won by HR Pinches 🏆

Title: The Fate of Customer 12

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