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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

“Memories” by Deborah Elliott

Submitted to Contest #120

Memories Deborah Elliott Jackson trailed his trembling hand over the brown leather photo album, a rough spot in his hand snagging on a crack that was along the binding. For a few seconds, he focused on the crack and wondered how long it would take for the rest of the photo album to succumb to age and handling. He glanced up and stared out the window at nothing for several uncounted minutes, and then he slid into the wooden chair; making himself comfortable on the paisley print cushion, and scooted closer to the table. Even though he s...

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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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“My Average Family” by Ramona Scarborough

Submitted to Contest #120

My Average Family I have looked at these photo albums many times. But it wasn’t until I retired, that I opened them again and saw the pictures in a whole new light. I came from an average family, or so I thought. Summers as a kid, cars came rolling into our dusty driveway. Relatives poured out and into our spare bedrooms, bellied up to the large dinner table and swam in the creek behind our house. An only child, I reveled in ready-made friends and vacation from school. “Her...

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“A Walk Down Widow's Lane” by Patricia Hesse

Submitted to Contest #120

A Walk Down Widow’s Lane Patricia Hesse Looking back I realize my little sister and I were an oddity in our neighborhood; the truth is even my parents didn’t fit in. Our house was right in the middle of what I knew was the biggest concentration of old people this side of a nursing home. Most children probably conjure up the same image and assumptions when they hear the word “old” used to describe someone; however, growing up among these individuals I learned how different everyone is even though their ages may be almost the sam...

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“The Hobby Shop” by David Ader

Submitted to Contest #120

“I won’t be too long,” said his wife. “I’ll meet you back in…say…45 minutes. Tops. Don’t be late again. Not in this weather.” “Sure, sure,” he replied, edging back towards the car with three bundles of groceries in his arms. “What did I say?” she asked. He leaned over to put the bags on the hood, hugging them to keep them from toppling over. Had she just said something? He was sure he’d heard her voice behind him. With arms still manhandling the groceries, he twisted around, feeling the twinge of a pulled muscle, to look over h...

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“Ciqәne ” by Joyce Hightower

Submitted to Contest #120

Ciqәne Ciqәne sat cross-legged as he gazed into the fire flaming before him. The dancing shadows it cast around him in the darkness reminded him of his inexpressible grief at the loss of his grandmother. Thoughts of her brought tears to his eye, that never managed to spill over. The lump in his throat did not change the stern expression on his chiseled brown face. His eyes closed and he saw her dancing again. Her legs had long lost the lithe of youth, yet with soft footsteps, she moved to the rhythm of songs from times past. Songs that only...

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“Life's Loss” by Jacxx D

Submitted to Contest #120

Have you ever been in such a bad place you feel it'll never end? Have you ever worked so hard to keep something you hurt yourself in the process? Have you ever wanted something so bad you didn't care what the repercussions were? As long as you got what you were looking for nothing else mattered. I fell in love with a girl when I was eighteen. It started off like any other new relationship. We first started by having conversations over social sites for sometime discussing the basics. That led to meeting up and getting a feel for that person. ...

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“The Creature That Was Once A Man” by J. W.

Submitted to Contest #120

David Martin cried for hours at his desk, his notes strewn across the hardwood floor. He had been writing for two days straight and his words were now a jumbled mess lying dead on the floor of his study. He hadn't killed those words. They just died. That's how it is sometimes, you think of something, something really brillaint, and that idea is ripped from your bodice of an intellect so quickly that you have no time to finish it. A miscarriage of the mind. So as David Martin lay, head down, tears streaming down his cheeks, he missed his sto...

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“Catlady” by F.O. Morier

Submitted to Contest #120

She didn´t own an old family photo album to leaf through on days where she felt lonely. She didn´t even have a single photograph. Only a few pictures on the wall of glamorous film stars she had cut out of newspapers she used to wrap the food for the cats in. That way she could share in their sparkle that would bring back familiar smells of peppermint and cologne. For the briefest of moments, she would let nostalgia woosh through. A sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place in a distant time, enrobed in yet other smells of slig...

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“'Tis Better” by C Britt

Submitted to Contest #120

"'Tis better to have loved and lost ..." The words crash like tidal waves against the inside of my skull, over and over. They roil the turbid waters beneath my mind's dark sky. They soak everything and drown rationality. And then as each wave recedes, it drags conscious thought out to a watery grave. My feelings swim against the current, struggling to get to safety, to form something coherent and make their way onto this page before the burst of salty water comes crashing down again. Do you remember the first time you said you loved me?...

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“Afraid to Sing” by Eva Leticia Brito

Submitted to Contest #120

"Listen to your heart" was one of her favorite songs. She used to hummer it while showering, trying to imitate the sultry blonde singer of the Swedish pop rock duo Roxette. The part she liked the most was the one that says love gets wilder than the wind. She imagined a gale of erotic fantasies, not understanding then how painful it could be to break that fragile division between passion, violence and craziness.Her name was Camila, meaning "the one who awaits the sacrifice." She was a young woman in her late 20´s, petite, with tanned skin, da...

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“violins are polished with petals and memories” by Ramsey Tawfick

Submitted to Contest #120

violins are polished with petals and memories: Sitting on the withered flowers, a Goliath lay. His back was arched over a fallen tree, eyes glaring glossy at the tinted and cracked the glass ceiling. The flowing frame of the ceiling was made of citrus copper bending with carved blots of metal. The windows were tinted ruby red but nothing could be seen through the ashen snow delicately resting on the glass outside. The place itself was a large hall with seats piled high in a semicircle, only parted down the middle by a once-grand mahogany d...

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“Agony” by Kamil Ali

Submitted to Contest #120

An emergency 911 call in the middle of the night started a series of events that plunged the joy of pregnancy into a dark hour of tragedy for Erasmus, Florentine, and unborn baby Elijah. An ambulance arrived in record time and rushed the family to the hospital at breakneck speed. One medic drove while the other applied CPR to the unconscious Florentine. With tears flowing down his cheeks, Erasmus feverishly rubbed the blue tips of his wife’s fingers and toes to aid blood circulation. Before they reached the hospital, Florentine gave birth to...

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“This is how far I could walk” by Georgia Papp

Submitted to Contest #120

I wonder if I had tears to shed, would they be falling now? Or is the point of tears long passed. When they bring in the new captives, I scan their faces to record biometric data. I help out where I can. Most are young and male, only three females in this batch, no children. At least that’s a mercy. Only the youngest children are absorbed into the shelter, the older ones are treated no different from the adults. The humans proceeding before me are not healthy. They are dangerously dehydrated, of course, and that results into a sum of conditi...

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“Best Thing I Never Had” by MJ Dover

Submitted to Contest #120

"It's been a year, Jo. A whole freaking year. How are you still upset about this?" I was mumbling to myself as I stepped into my apartment, a laugh leaving my lips, though there was absolutely no humour behind it. I wasn't crying, but I felt that tell-tale lump in my throat that indicated that there was a sob hidden there somewhere, waiting for the right moment to surprise and ruin me. I wanted to let it out as soon as possible. Cry about it some and then bury it in the back of my mind, forgetting it until whatever else triggered it onc...

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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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