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Write a story titled 'Paradise Lost'.

Posted in Angst on Apr 26, 2024

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✍️ 70 stories

Paradise Lost

Winner of Contest #248 🏆

Calls for help came every day, in every language spoken from Alpha Centauri to Xanoid 10. Meteor. Famine. War!!! Help us, they pleaded. Whoever they was in that particular society that had figured out how to contact us. “Please remain calm,” I used to say. “A unit will be dispatched to your location.” But after our people went Silent, the calls went more like this:  “Hello? We need help.” “We're sorry, but Planetary Assistance is no longer available. Our thoughts are with you during your pending apocalypse. Goodbye.” “Wait —” And I woul...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

Paradise LostThe emergency room buzzed with urgent activity as Amina lay on the sterile hospital bed, her face contorted with pain. Surrounding her were dedicated medical professionals—Dr. Adam Khan, Dr. Maya Ahmed, Nurse Omar Ali, and the team of nurses—Layla, Sarah, Fathima, Ayah, and Leila. Each of them focused intently on ensuring a safe delivery for Amina and her unborn child. Amina, a survivor of war and unspeakable violence, had carried her unborn child despite the trauma inflicted upon her. The memories of that fateful day on the bat...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

The familiar green outside the Pathfinder gives way and we’re in the fire zone, struggling to get our bearings in an alien landscape. I catch my breath and slow down to a crawl, staring wide-eyed at the devastation. Blackened tree trunks stand rigid, stripped of their outer appendages. They’re like limbless sentries in a macabre guard of honour along the side of the road. Landmarks and road signs have disappeared, and the ones that remain are off-kilter and charred; their paint has bubbled and flaked. A fine white ash has collected in drifts...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

Paradise Lost(Paradise Found?)I almost let the phone go to voicemail since I didn’t recognize the number and suspected I would have to be rude to yet another salesperson.Yes?Mr. Samuel Makarov?Yes?I have a story for you.Those are magic words. I’m a freelance reporter. I’ll take whatever news I can get. Excluding who is sleeping with whom, who had a face lift or tummy tuck or who got who pregnant.Talk to me.Not over the phone.The man gave me the address of a coffee shop just out of town. We agreed to meet in thirty minutes.Mr. Ahmed Sharuff a...

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PARADISE LOST

Submitted to Contest #248

Of all the apples on the tree, she had to pick mine.From the start, I want everyone to know that I do not understand why I got punished.I want to know why.This is all a load of nonsense.Someone must help the brother worm.My very existence is in complete accordance with God's commandments.Why was then my apple torn from the tree and brutally damaged by those two idiots, Adam and Eve?Here I am in the apple, cooling off, enjoying resting after a hearty lunch.Lying on my back, listening to the sounds of pleasure that my body emits before it almo...

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Paradise Lost

Shortlisted for Contest #248 ⭐️

Trigger warning: domestic violence, mental health The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. (Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1) Some say that Signor Dante’s Inferno is a most accurate representation of Hell. For my own part, I would argue that Man makes his own Hell when he ignores the corner of Paradise he finds here on Earth and lets himself instead succumb to fatal passions.The cell from which I write has become my personal inferno, for Heaven is where she is and she is not here. They say I will han...

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Paradise Lost

Shortlisted for Contest #248 ⭐️

My late husband never did give me his green thumb.  I remember when we first met, I was amazed at his ability to coax life into blighted tomatoes, pray seedlings into sprouting in lackluster soil, and convince frostbitten blueberry bushes to produce gallons.  My late husband grew up on a ranch in Southern Texas, and his sweet drawl and lazy eyes persuaded me to have not one and not two but three drinks with him that sleepy summer night in Alabama. He was visiting the University of Alabama where I was a student and had lived all my ...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

On a leisurely Sunday excursion through the verdant French countryside of Bellefleur, where emerald fields roll velvety to the touch and unfurl their plush sprawl beneath the azure sky, lies a grand rustic farmhouse that appears plucked from the pages of a whimsical fairytale. Newlyweds Aurelie and Lucas Dubois are desperately looking for their first home, hoping it will be the last. With a mistaken turn down a winding, dusty dirt road, their haphazard path unwinds to a hidden gem where their dreams are destined to take root on fertile land....

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PARADISE LOST or FOUND?

Submitted to Contest #248

That went well. Don’t you agree? I do. So simple. Quick. Painless. Good for you. You certainly made the right decision.  Yes, I know I did, although it wasn’t easy. The children fought with me for months before they finally accepted that I’d made up my mind…as I’ve done all my life. I understood their viewpoint but this time, I had to do what was right for me, even if it hurt them. I wish I had done likewise. Instead, I let mine convince me to do this or try that. They talked about the benefits of one option over another and even they c...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

   Emma stared out the window and tried to memorize the scenery as it passed. She could see the flourishing greenery, but in all honesty, she couldn’t determine any of the details. Not through her tears. She refused to blink or close her eyes all at, knowing that the moment she did the tears would fall without stopping.   The train’s journey wasn’t smooth and Emma was jostled repeatedly at its sudden lurches. She wished they would reach her destination soon. Only then could she truly leave everything behind. But...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

As I write this, dear reader, I become acutely aware, that this harrowing tale of hardship and heartbreak, longing and loss, fear and frustration. Intertwined with moments of joy and jubilance, excellence and exultation, sweetness and serenity. May fall on deaf ears, if not read with an open heart and an open mind, one that is prepared to allow itself to experience the full gamut of emotions that I have lived through in my unreasonably extended stay on this earth.To start at the beginning, A good place to start as at the beginning of my tale...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Abuse, violence, mental health issues. There used to be doves in the sky. Gliding, white-feathered, across blue expanses. They swirled in the air below billowing clouds. I could only follow with my eyes but follow I did, soaring alongside them. They lifted me, raising my spirits with each swift wing beat. I found inspiration in every soft coo. I fed them on the balcony of my lake house in the summer, offering seeds and scraps. I breathed in the freedom they represented, hoping it would energise me. My heaven was a quiet we...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

- Paradise Lost-  « My Thoughts….they feel like little worms trying to crawl out my head...that’s why I write.... to trap them somewhere” He looked at me uninterestedly with two pale blue eyes then sucked over his cigarette and continued puffing out smoke as he spoke:“You know... like a little vivarium, a place for them to grow , live and reproduce” I imagined the little  brown creatures with their thin, ringed bodies slithering out his ears and mouth and him swallowing them back to keep them inside.There was a curious ai...

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Paradise Lost

Submitted to Contest #248

Joan had lived in the cottage for as long as she could remember.  Each morning she’d wake up to the pink sun streaming through her window, the soft curtains that framed it billowing in the sea breeze. She’d stand, stretch, grab coffee, and lounge on her porch for a majority of the morning until Evelyn woke up. Then Evelyn would join her, pressing her lips gently to the apple of Joan’s cheek, and smile softly in a way that caught the light of the sun just right.  They’d walk hand in hand on the beach, pressing their toes firmly into...

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Paradise Lost--Catty Christians!

Submitted to Contest #248

Monday morning, the routine. Ingrid had driven her four kids to their parochial primary school. Her youngest, Matthew, was settling into his first year in the system. Now Ingrid's future was ahead, confronted by piles of washing, with mountains of meals to cook.Why wasn't she skipping around in her free time, reading a romantic chick lit? Yes, she was realizing again that her devout husband's rhythm method had failed. Ingrid was the first and last to know the end result of those fateful questions. "What's for dinner, Little Mother?" Plus the...

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