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Write a story that begins with someone dancing in a bar.

Posted in Character on May 3, 2024

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✍️ 65 stories

The World’s on Fire

Winner of Contest #249 🏆

Trigger: Cancer My head rocks back, long hair sticks to sweaty shoulders and my tank barely holds my jiggling A-cups as I pound it out, dancing. I’m that “Girl on Fire,” a single mom gyrating to Ms. Keys. Flinging out one arm, hips swing and dip, fingers snap, eyes close, and my rock and roll fantasy, straight from a music video: my apartment’s clutter, with the snap of my fingers, flies to order. I burn, more than a flickering flame, heart thumps, shoulders shimmy, sweat drips into my pierced belly button. The fuchsia, sun-yellow and ...

84 likes 72 comments 72
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Golden Brown

Submitted to Contest #249

Author's Note: This story is heavily-inspired by the 1981 song "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. I don't own the rights to this song or its lyrics.CW: Allusions to drug use**11 May 2024Dearest Aurelia,Just so you know, I played our song at my bar tonight. Yes, “Golden Brown” by The Stranglers, that familiar refrain that makes you break into that certain smile that makes my heart ebb and flow like a diamantine river, permeated --- what else –-- The Golden Brown Bar. Even after six years, I could still clearly picture it: the almost-medieval h...

64 likes 91 comments 91
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The Field of Crystal Dreams

Submitted to Contest #249

(CW: Violence) The aroma of cedarwood and cheap beer filled the air like smoke from a forest fire. Tapping cowboy boots and high-heeled stilettoes matched the raunchy country music blasting from the hi-def speakers in Old Charlie’s Bar. It was a Saturday night, and the place was packed with stressed-out patrons who wanted to let loose and have some fun after a long work week. A sea of flannel shirts, blue jeans, and twirling summer dresses filled the dance floor like one would expect, and every seat at the bar was taken. Framed pictures o...

45 likes 22 comments 22
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Priscilla, Come Down

Submitted to Contest #249

If Priscilla was dancing on the bar, it was going to be a short summer. That’s why when we saw her do it, we started banging our glasses as hard as we could without breaking them. It was a little like the way they used to run Congress in the colonial days. Order, order! Sit down, John! Not that she listened. She’d been working at the bar since before she was old enough to drink, and by the time she was past fifty, she didn’t want to hear a damn thing about what we wanted or didn’t want. She didn’t even care that it was bad luck for her to be...

33 likes 15 comments 15
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What Lies Beneath

Submitted to Contest #249

What Lies BeneathSummer 1972.“Road trip!” Pam screamed over the sound of the juke box. She had shoved her chair aside, since there was no dancefloor in this hole-in-wall bar, her arms in the air, hips bumping and grinding to the beat. Feet barely moving. After half a pitcher, she could sway her hips or move her feet. She opted for swaying to Otis Redding.“Wastin’ time!” Barb was still capable of doing a fair lip-sync of Sitting on the dock of the bay. Pam a tad too wasted to remember all the words.Fancying themselves the last hippies, the tw...

32 likes 26 comments 26
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Her

Shortlisted for Contest #249 ⭐️

Loud music fills the room, making it hard to hear anything else. It's the type of music that takes over every bodily sense. The type in which even its smallest background beats demand to be heard. I’ve heard colleagues complain about this bar more than once; bothered by the noise, and if not the noise, then the flashing lights, all blues, reds, and greens. But I like it. The music is like an invitation, one wherein its offer to you is to become a part of its entity.I frequent this place often and in doing so, I have become a part o...

31 likes 9 comments 9
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DANCE OF THE DAMNED

Submitted to Contest #249

 (The story contains descriptions of torture and violence)The dimly lit bar exuded an aura of faded elegance, the soft glow of neon lights casting a surreal ambiance over the audience, who sat in hushed anticipation. As the spotlight flickered to life, illuminating the makeshift stage at one end of the room, the murmurs of conversation died down, replaced by an air of eager expectation. As the curtains slowly parted, revealing the expanse of the stage, a solitary figure stood poised at its center: the ballerina.With a grace that se...

24 likes 17 comments 17
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Amelia Unseen

Submitted to Contest #249

“Hey handsome, does the Wurlitzer work?” Buck raised his eyes and continued drying glasses behind the bar. A woman in her early twenties he hadn’t seen before, was standing between the door and the jukebox. He smiled and shook his head. “It works fine.”“How about floating me a few quarters, won’t you? We could use a little pick me up in here, don’t ya think?” She looked around the little bar with a bit of disappointment in her eyes. Buck assumed she randomly stumbled into Kelly’s Pub on her way to a better invitation. She was trying too...

24 likes 15 comments 15
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Game, Set, and Match

Submitted to Contest #249

(contains swearing and irreverent references to God)I hurried off the stage and made for the dressing-room, which was more like a cupboard really. When I got there, I extricated the bank notes tucked into my waist band and stockings, stuffing them straight in my purse. Fighting back the nausea I always felt after a number, I stripped, ran a cloth under the tap, and wiped myself down.The whisky bottle called me from the make-up table. I poured myself a good measure, downing it in one. And that’s when it caught my eye: an envelope at the foot ...

19 likes 15 comments 15
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Curtis and The Cryptic Coyote

Submitted to Contest #249

“How long this been going on?” Curtis asked calmly, staring at the young woman going batshit Coyote Ugly on the bar. Billy Preston sparked through his brain: Songs without melodies, dances without steps.Neither reference would help here: Nearly everybody at The Mill tonight was in Pampers or swimming around a scrotal sac when the Tyra Banks movie was burning up the box office, and Drake seemed as soulful as this crew ever got. And The Dancing Queen had no melody or harmony to move her around.“Jesus, maybe a half hour,” Officer Brainard half-...

18 likes 9 comments 9
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Lost in the Jazz of Midnight Reverie

Submitted to Contest #249

As the night fell and Alphonse Fontaine's thoughts became entangled, he found himself wandering the darkened streets of New York City. The bustling metropolis was teeming with restless energy, and flashes of lightning illuminated fleeting apparitions on the rain-soaked cobblestones. The bright lights of speeding vehicles reflected like countless tiny, shattered mirrors, adding to the city's energetic atmosphere. The moon’s silvery light guided Alphonse as he turned a corner and heard the soulful notes of a saxophone groove emanating from a n...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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The Last Dance

Submitted to Contest #249

She sees it as much as feels it. She does not question this. Content instead to be afforded a ringside seat to a very special moment in her life. A moment made special by it’s simplicity. A celebration of an end. All of her final exams now over. The elation of having completed this part of her journey. No care as to the results of her efforts. That is for another day. All that matters is now. There is nothing else. She feels alive in a way that she hasn’t in such a long time and she embraces that feeling and pulls it closer. She sees it all ...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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Marcie-Fleur Rushes In

Submitted to Contest #249

Sparkles of light from the overhead disco ball flickered around the dance floor of the Mug and Jug bar, mingling and refracting off Marcie-Fleur’s blue and silver sequined mini dress. She shimmied while a hundred butterflies beat their way out of her tummy and flitted around with the dancing lights. The rock band drummed and strummed their popular rhythms while the gravelly voice of the lead singer screamed out emotion-filled vocals. Marcie loved the music of this band, Xscape. Her arms, hips, legs, and feet clad in totally impractical kille...

16 likes 24 comments 24
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The Dance

Submitted to Contest #249

The music seemed louder to her throbbing ears, the dancers seemed to be gyrating, jumping, and bouncing more than usual. She watched him silently drinking his beer. His leg nervously shaking under the table. She couldn't help but wonder why he seemed so nervous? Maybe he was feeling the difference in the scene as well?  They had been to this bar many times before. The music was always good, a live band that played a mix of old rock and country. Normally, not too loud, you could always hear and be heard while in a conversation. ...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Cassandra Under Glass

Submitted to Contest #249

Near a city on the coast, at the outskirts of that city, at a crossroads by a small town, in a tavern without a name, on a shabby, straight-backed stool at the far left end of the bar, sat a tall, slender man in a lavender suit.“How much for a Jack and Coke?” The man asked the portly bartender. His tone had a fake-innocent quality to it, like he’d never ordered such a drink, or perhaps any drink, ever in his life.“Five bucks.”“What if, in lieu of those few, petty, dollars, I showed you something? Something guaranteed to impress and amaze. So...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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