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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about a character learning to stand up for themselves.

Posted in Character on Oct 25, 2022

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 48 stories

“The Final Acquiescence of Stanley Sprout” by Maxwell MacDonald

Submitted to Contest #153

Inside the violin case was a bottle of champagne with a faded label, two dusty flutes, a key, and a slim stack of letters that Stanley Sprout had all but worn through. On the outside, the case showed spots of soft, beige skin through its black leather belly and spine. The kitsch stickers from trips to different cities randomly placed over it had all peeled up in the corners. Stanley had the habit of flipping them with his fingers, usually during an argument, only making them worse. He wanted to laminate them to preserve the memorie...

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“The Reality of You and I ” by Jessica Trolene

Submitted to Contest #153

My heart is heavy. The pain has made itself a home inside me, weighing me down as if I am tied to rocks in the middle of the ocean. Left out to dry but I am still drowning.  I struggle to keep my head above water. But after all this time, my weeps for support have been ignored. Ignored longer than they should have been. I am realizing I do not deserve this. After all these years filled will tears, I will no longer allow myself to sink. I wish I had the courage to hate you, to cause you more pain than you have ever caused me. Unfortunate...

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“Retribution” by David Blackburn

Submitted to Contest #153

            Retribution                                                      By                   &nbsp...

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“Lions that Watch Over Us” by Jeromy Ozaeta

Submitted to Contest #153

Warning: This short story adult language, themes of domestic violence, bullying, physical abuse, suicide and violence. If any of these topics trigger you, please find something else to read. This, or any other story is not worth risking your emotional health. Be kind to yourself always            The cold concrete sidewalk with its familiar cracks and chips glided under the boy as he trudged to school, his feet dragging and his mind numb with fear, cold, and the dread of another day at...

5 comments 5
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“Be With Me” by Karin Morley

Submitted to Contest #153

There are no positives to be found in fighting. When I was growing up, there was a saying that you “don’t fight for peace, you don’t have sex for virginity”. I fought my Dad and his belief that absolutely no one in the American workforce, at the time or at any time, actually wants to work. No one. I fought my Mom when I found out that it wasn’t just the Catholic Church that thought that women were second-class citizens, it was men, throughout history, who thought women were property and that the unpaid labor of a woman was expected and that ...

2 comments 2
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“A Story of Ash and Smoke” by Fredrick Williams

Submitted to Contest #153

Content Warning: minor references to violence, abuse, and mental health            A thousand years. A thousand masters. The genie had experienced much over his long, immortal life. He had seen kingdoms rise and fall, and he was perhaps responsible for a few of each. The rarest experience, he found, was a person who saw value in him. Beyond, of course, what he could give to them. The genie’s container, a fancily decorated golden bottle, had found itself in an antique shop gathering du...

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“I Didn't Know” by Bri Yoder

Submitted to Contest #153

We’ve all been there—the toddler stage of emotional health. The getting-back-on-your-feet phase after the world as you knew it was pulled from under you like a rug. Everything feels high stakes. The relationships that felt so close are suddenly over your head and out of reach on a shelf where you never placed them. The exhaustion, the crying, the fear of darkness that you thought you had overcome. How do you recover when someone has pushed you down and kicked you in the gut on the playground called life? How did relationships go fro...

3 comments 3
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“My Bully Dates My Sister” by A Cyr

Submitted to Contest #153

I attended an all-white high school in Ephrata, Washington — a small sleepy farming town with little to do. My white mom slept with a Black dude, whom I've yet to meet, and well, here I am. I hadn't seen another person of color. At least not in person. If Menace II Society and 2Pac represented Black culture, I was more than okay with that. I watched MTV when Mom wasn't home, and the dangerous lives they purported to live resonated with the anger I had for being misunderstood. Even though I lived in a small town, I wasn't immune to racism. Fo...

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“Today’s not done” by J. Smith

Submitted to Contest #153

Looking back, through my childhood, is difficult. In fairness to all parties, it was a different time. For context, I was born in 1986 in southwest Louisiana. Lake Charles, Louisiana to be exact. It was the same town that my mother, aunt and uncle grew up in. In fact the Smith’s had lived in that area dating back to the 1700’s. Evidently my ancestors were removed from France. After refusing to fight a war against the British. They were relocated to modern day Nova Scotia, Canada then once again displaced in the mid eighteenth century to...

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“Light” by Kurtis Leong

Submitted to Contest #153

The hair that drops beneath the world tree all eventually reaches the soil where the metamorphosis of life occurs. All made under the Rune of All Creation, the people of clay and mud were left with only their individual thoughts…and their individual lights. Throughout the paradise that they were provided with, some formed communities, some traveled on their own throughout the realms of the paradise, and some wanted to break free. One child of Heaven and light was chosen to end the choices of the people of clay and mud, to restrict their deci...

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“Standing Up” by David Feng

Submitted to Contest #153

Apollo stumbled into the nurse’s office right around lunch time, where he usually ended up every day.  “Again?” questioned Floria, the school nurse. “Yeah,” breathed Apollo. Blood was gushing from his nose, and he looked like an alien with the amount of bruises on his body.  “You really need to start standing up for yourself, or you know Marcus and his gang will  keep beating you up!” Marcus Freerider was the school bully, and he took great satisfaction in pushing around Apollo, to the point of bleeding and bruising at so...

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“The case of the missing children” by Preesha Jaiswal

Submitted to Contest #153

Once there were 3 children Josh, Amy, and Martin. Their parents were on vacation in Philadelphia so they were living with their grandparents for quite a while. Grandpa would typically just lay on the couch, scratch his big belly and fall asleep. While, on the oth´t́ hand, Grandma would walk around the house and give out her freshly baked cookies to the neighbors, and water the plants in the house. One day when Grandma was about to go for a walk she saw it was snowing. Grandma was not able to walk in the snow so she called Josh, Amy, and Mart...

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“Lorna's Classroom” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #153

Lorna walked through the hallway of the Demonds Junior High School to her first math class of the day. This year she’d finally scored the classroom with the windows that looked out onto the courtyard where there was a Japanese style garden. Until Al Harcourt had retired, she’d spent the last eight years teaching in the other designated math class room that abutted the school gymnasium and had no windows. Al had constantly complained that he suffered allergies from the garden, but he wouldn’t for the slightest moment entertain ...

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“Library Reinvention ” by Nasneen Abdalim

Submitted to Contest #153

I don’t know how to tell Henry that every time he ends a sentence with a question mark and an exclamation point I want to personally declare nuclear war on him. Some may call this overreacting, but after two months of tutoring him in English, you’d think he’d at least learn how to use correct punctuation.  “Henry, what do you think is wrong with what you just wrote?” “I dunno. Isn’t that your job? You’re supposed to tell me what to fix.” “Well, no not exactly.” I plaster on a syrupy smile, “My job is to help you recognize your mistak...

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“Invincible” by Sanchita Khan

Submitted to Contest #153

The sun was about to rise. Its soft golden light had already bid farewell to the night and declared another day to begin. Some small birds were chirping from their nests. Chickens became restless to come out from the coops. Women in the village already got busy preparing the food since their husbands would go to the paddy fields and their children would attend school. Sonapur has only one school. During monsoon, sometimes this school becomes the emergency shelter for them. Throughout the night, Asma couldn’t sleep, and her pillow was soake...

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Contest #153

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This week's theme: Fighting Talk

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Ended on 23:59 - Jul 08, 2022 EST

Won by L. E. Scott 🏆

Title: Broken

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