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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about a character in a situation where they have to be brave for someone else’s sake.

Posted in Character on Jul 7, 2023

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 61 stories

“Not in Pain” by Dorothy Lee

Submitted to Contest #206

[Warning: this story contains description of physical injuries that might lead to upsetting image] “Ah!” A short grunt came out of Amy when she foolishly cut herself with scissors. A tiny arrow-shaped wound appeared on the inner side of her left ring finger. She calmly put the scissors and the yarn she was cutting down on the table. It was Saturday morning, the day when Amy and her mom spent doing their common hobby. Amy was cutting yarns for her macrame in her study, while her mom was combining two threads on her spinning wheel just a few...

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“Two organisms, one boat” by B. Oyewole

Submitted to Contest #206

When my father asked me if she would be okay, I said yes - because really, there was nothing else to say. Because I could intuit that he wasn’t so much as asking for medical updates, as he was a reassurance of faith, our faith, that she would be okay. That she would sit up from that bed, any day now, and would pull out the long transparent tubes that now sustained her breath. Her voice would be croaky at first, hoarse from the months of unuse, and then she would try again, and ask for water, which I would rush to bring to her, and after she’...

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“The Mogollon Monster” by Jonathan Gartner

Submitted to Contest #206

“It’s coming up here in a few minutes I think,” Tom said as he put his hands over the heater vent.  “Daddy I’m cold,” six year old Alisha said from the back seat. “The hot air doesn’t get back here enough.” “I’m sorry sweetie,” Mel replied to her exhausted little girl. “Let me point the vents back towards you a little more and you wrap that blanket around you okay?” “I’ve got the blanket but it’s not helping enough,” she complained. “My fingers feel all crackly and my nails are turning purple.” “We have more blankets and warm cl...

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“The Girl Down the Stairs ” by Allison Dandar

Submitted to Contest #206

When our parents died, I didn’t expect that a war was about to begin. So now, it is just Charlie and I in our small German city. We were supposed to go to live with our grandparents, but exactly one week after our parents died, the bombings started. Now, it is too dangerous to travel cross-country. Most of the trains have been derailed or bombed. All of the remaining trains that are still running require you to have papers, which neither of us have. There is no way that I’m risking traveling without them. These days, mercy isn’t even shown t...

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“Scorchers” by Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #206

Laura’s grip on the wheel wouldn’t loosen. Her foot crushed the accelerator. The country road melted into a blur. Lying on the backseat, her son was caught in a loop of torturous screams. Heat came in waves on the back of her neck.            Between the screams and spasms, Tommy’s face was the same her students made when clueless. But add pain, a lot of it. Triple the despair. And flood it with fear.            Laura choked on the...

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“The Sentinel” by Aaron Tippit

Submitted to Contest #206

Little Kimmy Simmons lay in bed, rolling and jerking. She let out periodic moans and whimpers. The room’s temperature dropped suddenly. She reached for her blanket. Once, twice, then her mind clambered out of the sleep fog to find the elusive covering. Floating above her was a cloaked figure. The hood was tossed back, revealing a slightly feminine face with black eyes. There was no nose, just the hole of a skull. Its hair was luminescent white and floated around like it was in the water. The thing's mouth was full of razor-sharp fangs too l...

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“A Light in the Dark” by Rose Belle

Submitted to Contest #206

Essa gripped her clay lamp tightly as she stared into the thick darkness. Under the dim light, she could perceive the castle was in shambles. The Desolate had reached this place as well. Was Xerxes still here somewhere…? With a gulp, Essa took a hesitant step in. She waited for a moment before moving on. She shivered as she inched forward. The attack had been so swift, almost too precise. Could those monsters have some intelligence among them? Essa dreaded the answer to that question. Could there be a traitor…? The storyteller-healer shoo...

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“The Queen's Test” by Jocelyn Nelson

Submitted to Contest #206

Queen Carmilla was not at dinner with her visiting dignitaries from surrounding countries. She was not at her mother’s bedside, even knowing the woman who raised her only had a few hours left in this world. There were other places she wanted to be, but the fear pulsing through her city drew her to where she was needed. Her heart sank as she saw the cause of that fear appear on the horizon.  Her brother. Kirous was banished eight years ago for what he did to her and several young women in Varasta. The dark magic he’d used on them had lef...

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“The Hidden” by Nora Sheppard

Submitted to Contest #206

The Hidden "Why won't you marry me?" "I'm 17, Peter. There are things I want to do before I get married." "Other girls marry at your age, Karin. Don't you love me?" An old argument. It seemed to come up every few weeks nowadays. Maybe Warsaw, Poland in 1941 made the young feel they had to hurry with life. Karin's brother, Alex, and his friends already had been declared "ethnic Germans" and drafted to fight with the Nazis. Peter, at 23, was considered a cripple; a childhood injury left him with a limp. He wouldn't be a soldier, b...

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“The Princess and the Werecat” by Kathryn Dunmyer

Submitted to Contest #206

The final rays of the sun vanished behind black clouds as Cole crested the hill.  He planted his bo staff firmly in the ground and regarded the valley below as behind him, Princess Valora climbed the last few steps, panting heavily.  She leaned against a tree and struggled to catch her breath as Cole squinted into the gloom. “There!” he exclaimed, pointing at a small, inconspicuous clearing.  “I see it!  If we hurry, we can beat the storm.  Come on!” He turned to head back down the hill, but Valora sighed. “Could ...

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“A Week” by S.R. Feld

Submitted to Contest #206

“A week?!” Had I heard correctly? It couldn’t be….could it? I felt the room starting to spin, turning into a giant maelstrom, that relentlessly pulled me down into nothingness. I tried to fight against the current, not wanting to accept what I had just heard but as I looked at the doctor’s sad and apologetic eyes, I knew. I wanted to scream or argue that there had to be more we can do, but I could not speak. I could not breathe. I felt the room and the voices around me fade away as darkness started to envelope me.  “Too aggressive….eve...

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“Come Fly with Me” by Lindsay Burns

Submitted to Contest #206

‘Can’t we just have a luxury staycation? Apparently it’s going to be a hot summer.’ Sadie was casting around for excuses but Will was having none of it. ‘It’s more than a holiday, Sadie, it’s our honeymoon. And if my Nan wants to pay for our flights and hotel, then I want to go somewhere special.’ Sadie sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder, her eyes following the white trails across the blue sky, relieved she was sitting in her garden and not in one of the planes way overhead. He had a point, she knew. But after three years together, h...

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“Freddy Looks for Home” by ML Biddison

Submitted to Contest #206

In human terms, Freddy would be a ten-year old, but being an armadillo, he hadn’t really been around that long. The name Freddy is only an approximation of what his mama calls him, which can’t be translated into something we might understand, so we’ll just call him Freddy. One afternoon, while Freddy sifted through the soil for tasty white grubs, he felt a tremor. He looked up from his task and noticed the skyline wiggling. Then it jumped up. At the same time, the dirt beneath him sunk several inches. Before alarm reached Freddy’s consciousn...

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“The Shipwreck” by Parul Malik

Submitted to Contest #206

There was a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean. About a thousand people on that ship. Nine hundred and five people nearly drowned, when the captain sent an SOS signal. Brandy an eleven-year-old child, endeavoring to save another kid from drowning. Finally, after two or two and a half hours another ship arrived. Brandy stepped up the marble staircase of the great ship, as the kid who Brandy had saved came running up to him. “Thank you, so much for saving me out there!” he said. You were so brave. Oh, and by the way my name is Rowan. “Well, you’re...

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“Don’t Let The Bed Behemoth Bite” by Alexander Brotherton

Submitted to Contest #206

“Thus ends the story of child-meets-monster, and so begins the adventure of the most unlikely friendship,” Mom closes the book she was reading. “That’s my favorite story,” Lottie yawns while tucked into bed. “Is that why you want me to read it to you every night?” Mom teases from a bedside chair. Lottie smiles, “Yeah.” “Even though we have plenty of other books to read?” Mom points to the bookshelf. “Yeah.” “Most of which you’ve never even given a chance?” says Mom through her teeth, pretending to be angry. “Yeah,” Lottie giggles. Mo...

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