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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about someone who decides to make their own version of something old.

Posted in Character on Mar 17, 2023

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✍️ 36 stories

“What You Would Do for an Audience” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #190

Painfully nostalgic paradise presses in on you from all sides; with the same thoughtless repetition as the waves, you ask why you’d even take the time to come here without her. The Jamaican sun beams from its high perch, warmly penetrating your skin that you know is in need of sun; the teal waves lap at your feet, cooling them with refreshing playfulness; the air is thick with the smell of salt, a beach hallmark you’ve long craved. But everything could just as well be a monotone, texture-absent gray. Your eyes—no, your whole body—remain cold...

9 comments 9
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“The Rainbow Sweater” by Ariel Lunsford

Submitted to Contest #190

Mr. Gregson shuffled into the window-lit house. Yellow walls reflected light around the kitchen where he set down his duffle bag. He paused, breathing in the still and familiar air. His fingers rubbed at his shadowed eyes.  It had been a long week. Crumpled blankets and pillows lay strewn across the living room floor. On the coffee table, an open sleeve of cookies sat next to two water glasses. A picture frame lay on the carpet where it had fallen a few days before. A pile of assorted yarn sat on the kitchen table. Feeling slightly d...

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“eBay...Where retro items go to be reborn” by Space Writer

Submitted to Contest #190

Ginger Mavis was a STEM geek. Her first invention came at the age of 8 when she somehow rewired the doorbell to ring whenever the ice cream truck was ten houses away. She had timed herself to see how long it took her to make it outside by the time she heard the carnival music of the truck playing. It was roughly ten houses. Her father was perplexed when the doorbell suddenly stopped ringing. He was equally dumbfounded when the doorbell rang randomly between five and six o'clock every evening. The jig was up when the neighbor down the s...

1 comment 1
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“Aset” by Tiffany Epstein

Submitted to Contest #190

She was an Egyptian goddess Aset. Many pronounce her name wrong. She is from long long ago. Times were different then. She can’t tell their secrets to life and death but offers clues and hints to me. She is one of my guardians. I have many of them. Old and new. Times are rapidly changing and One needs be on guard. There are many evils in this world trying to make the humans die faster. From what I gather the faster the evil kills you the longer the wait into heaven. If you call the afterlife that. It has many names and many different stories...

1 comment 1
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“Dear Reader” by Clementine Herold

Submitted to Contest #190

Dear Reader,If you’re reading this, then that means I am dead. You will probably find a stack of these in my desk drawer as I have always written one before flying to make sure that each important person in my life knows how I felt about them and how much I love them and how much I hope they loved me just as much as I loved them. But this one is different. This one I’m going to tell you about my friend’s car.One of my closest friends, Matthew Johnson, has this super cool car. It’s a blue 1968 convertible Ford Mustang. The blue is less of a b...

3 comments 3
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“A Slightly Damaged Pitcher” by Madlyn Springston

Submitted to Contest #190

The day the pitcher narrowly escaped being smashed to bits, I decided it was time to retire it to my display cabinet. The teal blue container full of pens, pencils, scissors, and whatnot, had lived on my kitchen counter for so long, I barely noticed it anymore—until my careless elbow sent it tumbling over the edge. That slow-motion moment stabbed my heart with a panicky sense of loss. But the clatter that followed turned out to be only the contents spilling on the floor. I picked up the pitcher and tenderly placed my thumb against the f...

2 comments 2
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“Handprints” by Indigo Brenner

Submitted to Contest #190

98 years post-collapse Mason’s mother Delna had named him after history; that’s what she always told him. She had taught him his letters and numbers at home before he was three years old, basic reading and arithmetic by the time he was four, and when he was five, Mason went to school with eight-year-olds. All this was because it was very important to Delna that he learn about pre-collapse history. He never had a bedtime story set after the year 2027—while his friends heard about Nera the Cat and Bumpi’s Trials, Mason heard about the Librari...

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“Prometheus Slept” by John Lente

Submitted to Contest #190

March 12th, 1952 I have not kept a journal before.  Journals, diaries, and daily logs are for the preservation of days.  In my lengthy time on this Earth, I have not wanted to preserve my days.  Thousands of days and nights have all blurred together, one as forgettable as the other.  The moments worth remembering are few enough that I can recount them easily enough.  Each time I tried to end my life failed, but I am hopeful that I have made a breakthrough.  With the understanding that eventually someone will fi...

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“Renewed and Reinvented” by Ariana Cox

Submitted to Contest #190

Amelia carefully pushed the hanging clothes from once side of her mother’s closet to the other, stopping at each garment to consider if it matched the vision she had in her head. Since she was a child, she loved trying on her mother’s clothes and makeup. She even had a picture of herself with a face full of blue eyeshadow and red lipstick donning a green silk dress that was many sizes too big for her. In the photograph, her mother looks on quizzically, eyeing her childlike fashion sense However, this time she wasn’t playing dress up and her ...

2 comments 2
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“Hi, Lavender” by Pranavi Josyula

Submitted to Contest #190

The attic—the place that was once blooming with genius—is now a pool of broken parts.It all started two months back, when she first spoke. “Hi, Lavender. My name is Selena Hendrick, but you can call me Mrs. Hendrick. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ll be here to remind you that you can do anything.”“It’s even more of a pleasure to meet you.” It’s even more of a pleasure to meet you after all these years, I meant, but I would’ve confused the programmed woman. She was almost a doppelganger of her predecessor, with the exception of her upright p...

2 comments 2
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“Sometimes I wonder” by Lunny Muffin

Submitted to Contest #190

Sometimes I wonder what could have happened if I never grew up. What could have happened if I never went to college or became an engineer. Maybe I would have never had children . I would never have broken my ankle falling of a bicycle. This is a question I often think about and dream about. Especially when the days become grey and the nights feel cold. A river runs as well as it can go, it runs free and wild. It will continue to run until it meets an obstacle. A stone, a mountain, a log on the road. Of which it hits continuously and withou...

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“How To Defeat The Oven Gremlins” by Philippa Hibberd

Submitted to Contest #190

(CW: Anxiety, mentions of abuse, alcoholism and biphobia) The smoke alarm was blaring through the apartment. Again. In between coughs, Lauren let out a string of expletives that would make Gordon Ramsay blush as she frantically turned all the stove’s dials to zero. How ironic for a professional chef like her, she thought as she removed the pan of burnt leeks and somehow still undercooked carrots from the heat, that there was that one meal she could never get right. The family heirloom recipe, no less. She flung open the window and waft...

4 comments 4
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“The Drawing Desk” by Gregory Wright

Submitted to Contest #190

This was going to be hard. He had dreaded this ever since his mom had died a month ago, but the house was going up for sale and everything had to be cleared out. He faced the storage closet in the basement, juggling the key in his hand. The door seemed to threaten him with its battleship gray paint and its menacing presence. There were deep claw-like scratches for numerous moves, and hinges rusted to a deep brown and it presented an aura of foreboding, something he felt even as an adult.          ...

1 comment 1
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“Reincarnation of Malaiah ❤️” by Archana Baghel

Submitted to Contest #190

She sat in the corner looking at her reflection in the broken mirror wondering what "something" was that messed with the flow of life. What had gotten so stuck in rut that her smile was mostly halfway incomplete . There is no evidence of anyone else to be held responsible. As many blame games she wanted to play, the only reflection that stared back was her own.Life is the ultimate prankster and all of us its victims. God gets pure pleasure in seeing us chasing our tails. Humans are the most entertaining reality show props.In that exact momen...

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“@staris” by Charlie Baudry

Submitted to Contest #190

I’ve spent goodness knows how many hours watching other people put make-up on, far more than I’ve spent on my own face in the last fifty years. I tug at my cheeks, getting both hands involved in order to lift the jowls. “A tuck” that’s what they call it. All this skin, safely tucked behind the ears, out of view, where it belongs, heaven forbid saggy skin is visible. When I let go, the skin rushes back, not quite like a twanged elastic band, more like a dribble running down a cheek. There was a time it didn’t do that, although I didn’t notic...

2 comments 2
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