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Write about someone who’s traveling away from their hometown for the first time.

Posted in Character on Aug 23, 2024

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✍️ 53 stories

A Ticket to Me

Submitted to Contest #265

“Number 76, please proceed to the counter now,” a lilting voice, warm like clay, croons out of the loudspeakers.  A tiny smile as thin as a twig forms on my face. With that velvety announcement, adrenaline pumps from the base of my spine upwards, like a tree emerging from the smallest mustard seed. A slip of paper with the number 77 is trembling in my hand like an autumn leaf helplessly shaking in a gust.Perhaps, yes, in queue at the services counter of the only shopping centre in the small town of Lumangkahoy, three hours away fro...

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The House of Blues: A Tale of the Arts Department

Submitted to Contest #265

June 17, 2015Thea noted it straight away, even as Earl continued to greedily explore the depths of his second bowl of she-crab soup.Earl Mason was a down-home Central Illinois downstater whose marine appetite generally had ended at Long John Silver’s. But roughly 45 years after falling hard for the University Arts Department’s Chicago firebrand, the college bean-counter plummeted headlong into Lowcountry cuisine. The Charleston trolley guide had insisted on what had persisted as a working neighborhood soul kitchen even after Southern Living ...

26 likes 12 comments 12
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Nuthin's pretty cool

Submitted to Contest #265

Days ago, the young giant, too easily distracted, wandered away from his fellow giants. First, he loped after a butterfly. A pretty butterfly with many black lines and splotches of other colors. Until he got distracted by a skittish squirrel, but that little thing climbed higher up a tree than even the giant could reach. With a sigh of disappointment, the big guy moved on. He followed the spots of light that danced through the trees. Until those faded at the end of the day. That disappointment was also soon forgotten when he got a whiff of f...

20 likes 16 comments 16
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THE FIRST STEP

Submitted to Contest #265

I wasn't prepared at all. Not in the slightest. My heart pounded like a wild drum, my thoughts racing in an endless loop of doubt and fear. But I knew that if I didn't take that first step, I would forever be trapped in the small, suffocating black dot on the map that I called my town, a place that felt more like a cage than a home. But it wasn't even really my town. I wasn't born there. The place where I was born is a stranger to me, a distant, hazy memory wrapped in the fog of time, just like my parents. I wouldn't know anything about the...

17 likes 24 comments 24
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"If you Can Make It There"

Submitted to Contest #265

They were so angry with me, I knew no one would agree to take me to the MacDonald’s where the Greyhound bus stopped, and I had too much with me for that long walk. So, I waited until everyone was asleep, stole out of the house to the barn, where I’d stashed my suitcases and large garment bag the night before.Getting them down from the loft was harder than getting them up there, but I finally did it. After catching my breath, I wrestled them into the old cart we used to take the kids to the pumpkin field at Halloween and harnessed the donkey ...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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The Trip

Submitted to Contest #265

Everyone told me I was brave, but I wasn’t. I also hated being alone, so I read to pass the time, especially during that summer. I packed books I bought at the Book Fair, and not much else, to get through the flight there to see her. I missed my Mom, but I really wanted to stay home.  I pulled my seat belt over my shoulder, and Daddy backed the car out of the driveway. I envied kids I knew who traveled to see one of their parents by car, or rode a bus, which Daddy insisted wasn’t very safe. I’d flown before, with both my parents, b...

12 likes 14 comments 14
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Coffee with a Stranger

Submitted to Contest #265

Daniel sat at a red light, windshield wipers on full blast as the bottom poured out of the sky. He had a lot on his mind that morning; the gloomy day matched his anxious mood. The day Daniel had been looking forward to was upon him, and he was eager at the prospect of starting a new adventure despite his nervousness. He tried not to think about it as he made his way to his favorite breakfast spot on Kneeland Street.  Daniel just graduated last week, top of his class at Harvard. He was accepted for the fall semester at Seattle Univers...

12 likes 8 comments 8
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White Roses

Submitted to Contest #265

If someone had looked out the window early this morning, they would have seen Mr. Williams, as usual, neatly dressed with a hat on his head and a bouquet of flowers picked from his garden, heading to the cemetery. Dressed in his wool suit, he sat on his bicycle and rode to Mrs. Williams' grave, who passed away six months ago. They had spent their entire lives in this small town where they were born. She worked as a teacher, and he taught math. They had no children of their own, so they considered all the children as theirs. The kids felt the...

12 likes 6 comments 6
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Displaced Cargo

Submitted to Contest #265

“Get up. Get up. We have to go— Yasmin, now. Move! We have to go. Wake your brother.”  Perhaps I am dreaming. I can still see the stars out the window as my eyes blink open and shut. There is no glass, so I can feel the warm summer air blow in as my mother continues whispering.  “Yasmin, get up. Now.” I grumble and roll over, pulling the thin blanket over my head. Someone rips it away and slaps me in my face. I jolt awake, sitting up in shock.  “I will not tell you again.” She hurries out of the room and into the kitchen; I ca...

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Brooke and Jenson

Submitted to Contest #265

The last place your parents would expect to find you is at a gas station, hiding your face behind a hood and sunglasses like some shady thug, while hiding a cat inside your hoodie. By now, they’ve probably contacted the school they enrolled you in late in the semester. Maybe Mom filed a missing person’s report while Dad insists on driving around the city in hopes of spotting you. They can’t seem to keep up with you anymore, not since the three of you traded the peaceful normalcy of New Orleans for the humid ghettos of Houston. While they’re ...

10 likes 9 comments 9
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My Crazy Year

Submitted to Contest #265

My Crazy Year by Amanda Stogsdill The wintery Colorado wind blew fiercely, numbing tingly fingers as my friends and I gulped in the frosty air. Bundled up in winter coats, scarves, multiple pairs of gloves, we boarded our usual bus to the Center for the Blind.The center was recommended by my vocational counselor, a place for learning new skills while living independently. So, there I was boarding a plane for Colorado. I'd arrived very unsure of what would happen. I was met by staff who assisted me through the airport, driving me to my...

9 likes 6 comments 6
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Walsh

Submitted to Contest #265

    A gas station made sense for his first stop in the city, but as he opened his wallet, he saw one lonely bill. He figured it best to save the twenty. Gas could wait if he was already here. 500 miles from Vicksburg had been enough to drain all but twenty dollars of the money he’d made on his last fencing job. A beer would help put him at ease he decided, and an easy spirit was well worth the price. Walsh determined that a place with a name like Barfly’s would surely be providing alcohol at this hour and would welcome an...

9 likes 0 comments 0
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There is peace in darkness

Submitted to Contest #265

The world was black, but that was alright, for there was peace in darkness. I sat on my old chair and listened to the wind howling outside. The branches of a long dead tree rattled against the shutters, which groaned on their rusted hinges. But it wasn’t the sounds I could hear that worried me, it was the one sound that wasn’t there. My stomach burned in my gut as I hadn’t eaten anything solid in more days than I cared to count, and now it wrung itself into all kinds of twists and turns as I fought to come to terms with the unbearable. I kep...

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In Death, I Felt Alive

Submitted to Contest #265

The wheel sank into the wet ground beneath us. The rain had pursued our wagon since we left town, relentless as if the sky itself had closed its eyes on us. The waggoner, an old Catholic man, did not stop, convinced this was his challenge from God. We sat in silence, chained to the wooden walls, lost in thoughts of what we had left behind and what awaited us at the end of the road. Our fate was to be forgotten, cast away in a prison meant for our kind. We had not earned this punishment through crime or sin, but simply by existing. We were no...

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Blame it on the French

Submitted to Contest #265

I am an engineer, but I never dreamt about becoming one when I was a child. I did not have anyone make me fall in love with the profession either. What made me go to university and hate my guts for five years was a phone call, an ex-boyfriend, and a quick and impulsive decision, and all of that was caused by a trip to France.  I had French lessons in high school. I did not want to, but my mother thought it would improve my curriculum and help me one day expand my horizons. My negotiation skills were not so sharp then, and I caved. For y...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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