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Write a story about a character participating in Dry January.

Posted in Character on Jan 12, 2024

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✍️ 33 stories

Dry January at the Book Club Meeting

Submitted to Contest #233

Without wine bottles, Maura’s black lacquered coffee table looked decidedly naked.She moved the charcuterie board and La Croix cans around to better use the space but couldn’t shake the feeling that it was unfinished. Like a formal table without bread plates.“Maybe they’ll bring their books,” she muttered, tossing her own copy of The Honey-Do Murders onto the empty surface. The book skidded across the open space and stopped barely short of the table’s edge. Maura sighed. It would have to do.It was Ina’s idea to make the January book club mee...

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Dampening Spirits

Submitted to Contest #233

Sometime after midnight last night, I stood outside and toasted to the rain. I kissed the air, sticky with broken firework smoke and noisemaker echoes. How thoughtful I feel in these moments, on these annual nights of commiseration. There is no better party than one where my guests can’t count my liquor cabinet trips because they can’t even count their own. I woke up this morning as I wake up all mornings, dusty-brained and trembling. But, so did everyone else! On New Year’s Day they’re all just as bad as I. Though their shaking is superfici...

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Dry January

Submitted to Contest #233

Dry January The idea of a dry January came when Ray spilled his beer at a bar and started to cry. He dropped his head. Not again. What the hell? Jesus man, what’s with all the crying?   He would tear up at the drop of a hat. A leaf could fall from a branch and he would break down. A mother and child putting milk in a grocery cart could make him sob by the cottage cheese.   In short, he had lost total control of his emotions. Ever since the incident.  After numerous tests he was diagnosed as having PBA - Pseudobulb...

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It's far more fun to be dry

Submitted to Contest #233

It’s far more fun to be dry. Susan Zephar Chapter 1. I’m awake, I’m still alive I think, wait.  I start touching myself all over just to check that I have all my bits intact and am indeed still here, oh no! I’m wet, I’m cold, it’s happened again this is disgusting. Oh yuck, I’ve got vomit on my chest and on the floor, oh no! I’m on the floor again, sigh, how did I end up here again? I hope I’m at home at least, let me check, I can’t hear anything, and my vision is blurry so opening my eyes didn’t help at all. Then I remembered...

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Dry January

Submitted to Contest #233

        Doug walked into the office on the first Monday of January, feeling rough and regretting the fact that he had to be back at work so soon after New Year’s. To be truthful, he still felt the effects from the party. They hadn’t actually gone to bed until the Saturday morning, and yesterday had been spent in a drunken haze: strained sleep, feeling queasy, regretting the lunchtime tacos. Doug could still feel his stomach lurching, and every now and then, a wave of nausea overcame him. Why did he alw...

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New Year, New Me

Submitted to Contest #233

I can do this, I thought to myself as I sat on the edge of the bed, my head throbbing from the night before.January 1st. The first day of the New Year. A fresh start, a clean slate, a new chapter.Whatever you wanted to call it, something about ringing in a New Year, pulling down your old calendar, and slapping up a new one made it feel like you could just begin again. Whatever you had done last year, or hell, even all the years before, was old news done by old you. New you was limitless, full of potential, pure and undefiled, and overfl...

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Coming Home in the Rain of Emotions: A Fathers Journey through Grief, Love, and Healing...

Submitted to Contest #233

January 1st, 2024 The rain rhythmically pounded on the windshield. I pulled the handbrake and sat still. A moment of peace amid the chaos of work and family, between the downpour of stress and emotion. A sip wouldn’t hurt, someone in the recesses of my mind seemed to whisper. The thought alone calms me, a delightful tranquility occasionally interrupted by disappointment. A strangely pleasant feeling, a paradoxical emotion I had normally surrendered to. But I won’t let them get to me so quickly, I tell myself. No, not today. Today, I’ll let t...

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Chalk and Cheese

Submitted to Contest #233

Chalk and Cheese Dad loves all things British; William and Kate, tea and crumpets, The Crown, saying the loo, not so much queuing though….. People in our small town treat him like he is a rare and exotic bird. "Lovely," he says. It is baffling to me to watch the faces of folks in conversation. The faces of both men and women brighten when near him. Most of the people around here have never traveled out of the state, much less another country. Just between you and Me- neither has dad.  "Do you guys have the same father AND mother?" I w...

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Part-Time Peace

Submitted to Contest #233

Warning: this story has themes of substance abuse and self harm. “Ah-”  Along with the short but tumultuous scream, he jolted up and opened his eyes far too wide for this early in the morning. That nightmare was intense, even by Trevor’s standards. Most mornings, especially away from home, he woke up in a sweat to his own yelp of terror. Like every other time, he responded by leaning up on his hands and staring at his mess of a hotel room in Vegas.  What was different about today was he didn’t lay back down in pain from th...

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Nate

Submitted to Contest #233

I go on a date with a man named Nate. I giggle to myself on the way there: a date with Nate. We’re going to a fancy bar in the west end. I don’t drink. Over this, too, I giggle to myself, though it’s less a whimsical giggle, as with the rhyme, and more a self-deprecating giggle. I suggested the bar. I told Nate I don’t drink. He did not suggest an alternative. Bar dates are just what you do, I think.  I was home sick from work all week, so I look forward to human interaction. I look forward to getting out of my house. I never used to b...

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Hostage Haircut

Submitted to Contest #233

Dry January, a month-long feat to be sober, officially launched as a campaign in 2013 under the organization Alcohol Change UK. Guess I was way ahead of my time as “Dry Jan” started for me forty-two years earlier in 1981. See I grew up in Cincinnati, and my best friend was a fast-talking, wise-cracking, athletic kid named Larry “Pizza Face” Fox, given the moniker “Pizza Face” for his insane love of pizza and his youthful face spotted with countless red tinted freckles. We graduated from Walnut Hills High School in June of 1978 and that au...

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Dry January

Submitted to Contest #233

I miss the night. It belongs to them now. I miss looking at the stars with Dad and him pointing out different constellations. I miss the way the night air kisses the skin in that sweet, delicious way daylight just can’t. The world has changed so much since the vampires took over. They rule the night, and we, the remnants of humanity, are forced to huddle in bunkers when the sun goes down. Today, though, I’ve decided to defy the curfew. The longing for the stars, the memories of those nights with Dad, have become too overwhelming. I sne...

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Abstinence

Submitted to Contest #233

Under a beautiful, cloudless sky, two lifelong friends gazed across a glorious vista of grasslands and valleys. A majestic, snow-covered mountain range climbed the sky in the distance. They swatted at a few flies that tried to spoil the day. “I’m going to give up meat, Rick. My version of Dry January.”“You’re telling me this now?”“I’ve been thinking it over for a long time. I wasn’t sure. Now I’m sure.”“Well, that’s ridiculous, Lenny.”“Not really. There are plenty of other things that will sustain me.”“None of them well enough. And I do...

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Resurrection Rocky

Submitted to Contest #233

I don’t remember when I first arrived in Narembeen, Western Australia. My assumption is that I was born here, but with my parents now gone, there’s nobody who can confirm this. I live alone, you see, a little out of town. Always have and probably always will.Narembeen is a decent spot. Nestled in the “Wheatbelt” of this massive state, the countryside is typical of many agricultural regions, not just in Western Australia, but also further East, on the other side of the Great Victoria Desert and the appropriately named Nullarbor Plain. Endless...

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Dry

Submitted to Contest #233

“You’re giving up what?” Mary asked.“Milk,” Dennis said with a smirk that asked for a smacking.“For Dry January,” Mary prompted.“Yep.”“You don’t even like milk.”“I know,” Dennis said, shrugging like that wasn’t his fault. “Should be relatively easy to stay dry, right?”She gave him a shrewd glare. “I know you want me to say it, so I’m not gonna say it.”Dennis raised his beer, a double IPA with notes of orange peel and coriander, and took a slow, indulgent gulp. Mary watched in disgust.“So what movie are we going—"“You’re missing the whole fuc...

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