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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#120: Nostalgia

Do you ever get a warm, fuzzy feeling when eating a favorite childhood meal or meeting up with an old friend? On the other hand, maybe you’ve revisited something you were nostalgic for, only to find it wasn’t quite what you remembered. Or perhaps you’ve found yourself longing for a time before you were even born...

This week’s prompts encourage you to write around the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia, and imagine the different ways your characters might confront memories from the past.

This week's prompts

Write about a character who yearns for something they lost, or never had.

Angst – 111 stories

Start your story with the line ‘Back in my day…’

Adults – 28 stories

Write about two characters’ different perspectives of the same past event.

Middle School – 36 stories

Start your story with a character looking through an old family photo album.

Fluff – 44 stories

Your character has always viewed the past with rose tinted glasses. Write about what happens when they’re finally confronted with the truth.

Angst – 25 stories

Stories

“Predicament 291, No More” by Arriana H

Submitted to Contest #120

Everything seemed perfect. Maybe too perfect. You could blame it on my naivety. Maybe through some childlike wonder. I used to think things were happier then. I used to feel like my family was together, like nothing could tear us apart. Laughter filled the house, we would tell jokes, play games. The fun was never ending. I remember when my brother Andrien and I would stay up half the night and listen to records, just the two of us. We would think about the endless wonders of the world. We would get lost in the music. We would tell stories of...

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“No Thicker Blood” by Hannah Foust

Submitted to Contest #120

They say blood is thicker than water, but would it be enough? The end of the civil war was an interesting time for the Carson family, picking up the pieces of a forgotten childhood, a time when the only thing worth fighting over was Mama’s biscuits. Kurt paced the parlor floor anxiously waiting for his brothers return, he earnestly wanted to reconnect with his little brother Jake, but still he felt betrayed, growing up they were rarely separated, and when war broke out, his brother left the farm to side with the Union, something he ...

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“You Know What To Do” by Chris Reed

Submitted to Contest #120

Tomorrow will be the day. I won’t sleep well. I’ll be a bloody grump because of it. Still, people much worse off than me. Bout of shit sleep never hurt no one. Shouldn’t complain. I’ll get to check the forecast on ZB early though so that’ll be something.Steve’ll pick me up at 6:30am. He’ll call from his truck twice that I’m a ‘plonker’ and then blast the horn if he thinks I take too long to get out the door. God forbid I do. Pauline’ll just about have bloody heart failure. He knows better with our Pauline, does Steve. But he likes giving her...

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“Home From the Sea” by Ted Harrison

Submitted to Contest #120

HOME FROM THE SEA “I’d recognize that grin,” my Dad said. The deckle-edged photograph showed a man in a t-shirt, dungarees wearing a sailor hat pushed forward over his brow. The cigarette dangling from his mouth obviously burned his eyes. The grin was a ‘go-to-hell’ smile as far as I was concerned. “When do you figure that was taken?” Dad cont...

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“Reverberations of Loss” by Agnes Goldfinch

Submitted to Contest #120

Reverberations of Loss You showed up again yesterday. In my dreams, I mean. You still do that from time to time, I can’t very well fight it and I’m not sure I want to, anyway. More likely, I don’t. I don’t, because yesterday I begged you to stay. I begged you to stay, but you just smiled with that soft tilt of your lips that didn’t change a bit from when you were five years old, and I woke up. I would like to think that you are still so much a part of me that you...

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“Shoelaces” by Jen Knox

Submitted to Contest #120

I stand steady on large foot decals and rotate at the waist to survey the room. Wary, appreciative, exhausted. People fresh out of quarantine cup their beverages as though they’re security blankets. They type or scroll their phones. Soft shoulders, exploratory gazes, heavy eyes. We are all vaccinated, animals that can interact again; those of us in this coffeehouse crave solitude among the masses. Baby steps. These are my people—the writers, introverts, artists, and students. I glance around the room, smiling at each of them, my gaze settli...

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“Shard of Glass” by Greg Short

Submitted to Contest #120

I found your secret, you were a hoarder, Natalie thought to herself. Her mums’ loft was full of cardboard boxes, over flowing with their contents. That was not the only secret she would find up here. Natalie had wondered whether she would come across some long lost artefact, a valuable treasure that may be desired by the British Museum. It was more likely that everything would be sent to a charity shop, failing that, the tip. Mum had not left much of a legacy when she died. Even the house was mortgaged to the limit, so her estate was not wor...

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“Flameless” by Leann Isaac

Submitted to Contest #120

Dreaming is indeed a dissociative experience where one is outside of their consciousness. I love to dream. In fact, I do it outside of the sleeping realm. I dream every second of the day, pondering and fixating on what things could’ve been like. I often wonder about the dreams I could’ve pursued as a young adult. But alas, as I sit by the warm, homely fire that I had tended to earlier this evening, I realize my age has affected my dreams. If only I could hop into a time machine and revisit my youth, I would change every aspect of my decision...

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“Same Bait, Same Fish” by Susan Grant-Suttie

Submitted to Contest #120

Same Bait, Same Fish. By Susan Grant-Suttie belgone2001@gmail.com Word Count: 2,908 Bartel came over to my desk at work. “What are you doing Friday night?” Although he was the breath of fresh air in the stale office, it was not the rescue I wanted. I looked at him, giving him the second look through a different set of eyes. He had dark haired, long eyelashes, shorter than myself, Harry Potter style glasses, and he looked very much like an accountant in his university-style sweater and jeans with his stiff white shir...

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“Familien Weihnacht. ” by Colleen Brownlee

Submitted to Contest #120

Familien Weihnacht. “There here mum.” Pete shouted from facing the window. “What Pete?” as his mum was looking through the family photo album ready to show Amy. “There here mum” Pete shouted louder. Amy and Yan were the last of the family to arrive for the Christmas holidays travelling from England. Yan had moved to England two years ago to study at university in London, had fallen in love with a Southern red head English girl named Amy. It was going to be Amys first time visiting Germany and to experience a...

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“Broken World” by Julia Townson

Submitted to Contest #120

I’ve always been afraid of the dark. Ever since I was a kid and I accidentally got locked in the outhouse. In the middle of the night. The early evening rain had trickled down to a slow drizzle, leaving the air sticky, heavy. like it was pushing down on my tiny frame and making the smell of stale urine and feces almost unbearable. Plugging my nose with one hand, I beat the rickety old wooden door with the other. And then I waited.....The haunting sound of a lonely old owl filled the air. "Whoo." Whoo is it?" "It's me," I cried, screaming and...

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“Loss of Adventure” by Robert Obszanski

Submitted to Contest #120

Sue was content. She looked down at the lemon slice floating at the top of her cup of tea. She took a sip of the tea and looked outside from her living room window at the children playing outside. They were eagerly participating in some group game and busily chatting amongst themselves. Maybe discussing the tactics that they would use to beat the other team. She felt satisfied in the moment. The autumn leaves were already filling up her front yard and people had already begun wearing warmer clothes. It was not long ago that Sue herself wa...

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“The watcher of Weeper's cliff.” by Charles Dean

Submitted to Contest #120

The watcher of Weeper's cliff. “When someone is broken inside, they begin to hear the call…” I remember the first time I heard it. It was around 2 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep and I had no one to talk to. I went for a walk and I sat down next to my favorite tree close to my apartment. I turned left and right, took a deep breath and I broke. I began to cry my heart out for I noticed that I was…alone. Right there, is when I heard it call me for the first time. “Lena…” It said with an eerie voice in a whisper inside my head. As days and w...

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“The End of the Infinite” by Gianluca Angelucci

Submitted to Contest #120

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle, E questa siepe, che da tanta parte Dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude. Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani Silenzi, e profondissima quiete Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello Infinito silenzio a questa voce Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno, E le morte stagioni, e la presente E viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa Immensità s’annega il pensier mio: E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo ...

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“Family Demons” by Catherine Douglas

Submitted to Contest #120

Snow and ice blew against the windows as Captain Westheimer limped into his office. He glared at the massive, leather-bound book on his desk before sitting down to open it to a yellowing page with only his name written on it. The book had been sitting there since the previous night, when he had been going through his cabinets and bookshelves in search of it. He just didn’t have the motivation to actually look through it when he found it. Outside, the yard of the prisoner-of-war camp was empty. It was too cold and too windy for anyone, guard ...

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$250

Prize money

244

Contest entries

163

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Nov 19, 2021 EST

Won by Rebecca Loften 🏆

Title: Meditation

Submissions must be between 1,000 - 3,000 words and will be approved and published on Reedsy Prompts within 7 days of the contest closing.

Read the full terms & conditions or check out the FAQ if you have any questions!

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