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#127 Gut Feelings

Most people know December 31st as New Year’s Eve, but did you know it’s also Make Up Your Mind Day? Unfortunately for many of us, making your mind up is more easily said than done. I always want to make a considered decision, but oftentimes wind up relying on gut instinct alone.

This week's prompts are all about intuition, and the strange way we sometimes know what to do without understanding how we know it. Whether you believe intuition is a sign sent from the universe, or the workings of your own subconscious, it’s time to trust your creative instincts and get writing for the very first contest of 2022. Happy New Year!

🥇 Winner

The Problem Is

Dena Linn

Winner of Contest #127 🏆

CW: terminal illness It was day four hundred and fifty-eight for Paul. He weighed in at fifty-eight kilos, down from a strapping ninety-three. He was also fifty-eight years and counting. His doctor prognosed it and Paul felt old, sick, and wasted, his body no longer his own, and tomorrow would be 1999, another absolutely nothing new year. It was years now, he’d asked Matt what Silence equals Death meant. He’d be the first to admit to being a simple guy, the one whose IQ matched his shoe size - a running joke back at...

169 likes

109 comments 109

⭐️ Shortlisted

The 1%

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

Her name was Cece, short for CC31415926. She, or at least her model, was created specifically for quantifying all types of matter, from the number of white hairs on your head to the volume of water that lay trapped under Saturn’s moon. She was a novelty AI, and for a time, had been quite fashionable among the galaxy’s upper crust. It meant having enough money to delegate even the most mundane tasks to an Intuition model. The trend didn’t last though, and just a year after its release, WIRED Magazine included it in their top 10 list of least ...

38 likes

Coma

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

CW: suicide, child deathThe first thing you notice is the noise. It assaults like rain beating on a tin roof, or a group of restless teenagers chattering in church. You hear voices, but the words are indistinct and whispery. You start to differentiate machinery sounds; the soft hum of a floor buffer, the buzz of fluorescent lights, and, behind your left shoulder, the steady beeping of the electrocardiogram unit.Your body begins to demand acknowledgement. You are cold, very cold. This is not the chill of a brisk winter walk. You have not retu...

37 likes

A Single Rose

Phil Manders

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

“Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, but the trains keep moving. Life is the train, not the station.”Paulo Coelho.Unrelenting darkness crawled over the empty platform as the last train rocked its way wearily into the station. The engine wheezed and hissed, sending sheets of diesel-stained snow sliding from its roof onto the icy tracks. A solitary light bulb hung defiantly above the station’s café refusing to give in to the night, illuminating the snowflakes as they whirled around it ...

37 likes

Esper for Hire

Patrick Borosky

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

The outer rims of her irises were a majestic copper, and their metallic veins turned to a bright yellow as they trailed inward before plunging into the black abysses of her pupils. The eyes bewitched Kara, but she had to focus. To do her job today, she needed to take in everything she could from the photograph while she still had time. Sadly, as she navigated away from the eyes, she couldn’t help but become ensnared by the flames that awaited above: fiery red hair that threatened to lash out and burn anyone who dared to touch it without pe...

27 likes

This week's prompts

Begin your story with a character having a gut feeling they cannot explain.

Thriller and Suspense – 75 stories

Write about a character whose intuition is always right — until one day it isn’t.

Horror – 21 stories

Write a story about a problem with no good solutions.

Angst – 31 stories

Write about a character learning to trust their intuition.

Character – 27 stories

Your character makes a living faking psychic powers. One morning, they wake up with real ones.

Fantasy – 63 stories

Stories

The Problem Is

Dena Linn

Winner of Contest #127 🏆

CW: terminal illness It was day four hundred and fifty-eight for Paul. He weighed in at fifty-eight kilos, down from a strapping ninety-three. He was also fifty-eight years and counting. His doctor prognosed it and Paul felt old, sick, and wasted, his body no longer his own, and tomorrow would be 1999, another absolutely nothing new year. It was years now, he’d asked Matt what Silence equals Death meant. He’d be the first to admit to being a simple guy, the one whose IQ matched his shoe size - a running joke back at...

169 likes

109 comments 109

Silver Sunflowers

Shaivi S.

Submitted to Contest #127

TW: Death When I heard Mummy call me home for lunch, I felt a little twinge in my stomach. It wasn't because I was hungry, that sort of throb was more of a call, like a car honk from my stomach, telling me I needed food. This ache felt like a soft warning, like a black cat, scampering up the street. I've always heard those were bad luck. Or perhaps not.Something seemed wrong, but I couldn't explain it. Was this guilt? Sasha told me that guilt feels like a monster is scratching at my feelings, burying me from inside. But what did I feel guilt...

52 likes

The Old Tattered Sign

Melony Beard

Submitted to Contest #127

They were poor. Dirt poor. An old tattered sign stood in the yard advertising Maxine's services, yet hardly anyone stopped by. Most locals knew that Maxine, better known as Maxie, knew absolutely nothing about the future. So, Maxie and her husband, Danny, depended on the occasional drunk or curious traveler to stop by and hand over money for a reading into the future, even though the only future Maxie knew was her own. With each unknowing customer, Maxie knew her future held at least a paid bill or a few groceries.When the morning sun beamed...

44 likes

A Feeling for Rain

Submitted to Contest #127

The fierce midday light accentuated the fissures in the baked earth around our farmhouse, making them look like the collapsed arteries supporting a cadaver’s withered heart.At the rear of the property, Pop was wrestling with our water well’s crank handle, as if he was a deranged organ grinder extracting music by force from some obstinate contraption.Inside the kitchen, I could hear the mournful tune of the aluminium bucket as it clunked and clanked its way down the rough-hewn shaft. It had the dreadful chime of a lost wai...

40 likes

Show Time

Submitted to Contest #127

“C’mon! Let’s get this show on the road, Nat. The movie starts in ten,” Levi tapped his watch from where he stood near the door. Nat shook his head. “This isn’t another one of those animated ones is it?” He grabbed his coat off the back of the sofa and started to shrug his arms into the sleeves. The last action movie involved a stay white puff marshmallow hero who walked around with bacitracin healing powers or some such nonsense. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into movies. Why not just stay in? Order take out? Watch a hockey game ...

38 likes

The 1%

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

Her name was Cece, short for CC31415926. She, or at least her model, was created specifically for quantifying all types of matter, from the number of white hairs on your head to the volume of water that lay trapped under Saturn’s moon. She was a novelty AI, and for a time, had been quite fashionable among the galaxy’s upper crust. It meant having enough money to delegate even the most mundane tasks to an Intuition model. The trend didn’t last though, and just a year after its release, WIRED Magazine included it in their top 10 list of least ...

38 likes

Coma

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

CW: suicide, child deathThe first thing you notice is the noise. It assaults like rain beating on a tin roof, or a group of restless teenagers chattering in church. You hear voices, but the words are indistinct and whispery. You start to differentiate machinery sounds; the soft hum of a floor buffer, the buzz of fluorescent lights, and, behind your left shoulder, the steady beeping of the electrocardiogram unit.Your body begins to demand acknowledgement. You are cold, very cold. This is not the chill of a brisk winter walk. You have not retu...

37 likes

A Single Rose

Phil Manders

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

“Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, but the trains keep moving. Life is the train, not the station.”Paulo Coelho.Unrelenting darkness crawled over the empty platform as the last train rocked its way wearily into the station. The engine wheezed and hissed, sending sheets of diesel-stained snow sliding from its roof onto the icy tracks. A solitary light bulb hung defiantly above the station’s café refusing to give in to the night, illuminating the snowflakes as they whirled around it ...

37 likes

The Curse of the Fortune Teller

Submitted to Contest #127

"Run wherever you may, Arvin. Hide however you wish. You will end up with my kind. I curse you that from this day, your life will serve a purpose only for others, and you will wander here to there without a home." She said, thrusting him out of the hut and slamming the door on his face."Please, try to understand, Sira. Do you think I'll live happily without you?" He pleaded, rushing over to the window. "I am a simple boy from an unimportant family, and you are.., You know what you are, right! This town will never accept our union once they f...

33 likes

What Comes After

Shuvayon Mukherjee

Submitted to Contest #127

I’m alive as a gentle breeze that pulls strands of hair across her face and ruffles the flowers in her hands. I coax out the sun from behind a cloud and touch her softly on the shoulder. I want to tell her that everything will be okay, but I can’t - not anymore. So I settle for caressing her cheek with the wind. I know my wife well enough to understand what it means when her lips press together and the creases form on her forehead. She’s ruminating again. She’s thinking back to the day when I doubled over in pain and staggered to the ba...

29 likes

Hypno the All-Knowing Heretic

Submitted to Contest #127

I wonder if it's actually anyone's ambition to join the circus. I know it wasn't mine; and yet, here I am. I am the premiere psychic at Madame Malraux's Moonlight Circus, a troupe of individuals—or freaks, as we are often affectionately called—who perform in the bayous of New Orleans. We never perform during the day, hence the name "Moonlight Circus." Our audience consists mostly of tourists with too much money, emptying their wallets and clawing their way to the front to get a glimpse of the bizarre. Madame Malraux says people aren't a...

29 likes

Drift

Story Time

Submitted to Contest #127

There’s a spot of blood on the dog’s right ear. Scout, Sheila’s pride and joy, is so unnerved by her erratic driving that his little body flits about only long enough for her to notice the red dot in her rear view mirror, but not long enough for her to snatch him up and examine where the blood could be coming from or whether or not it belongs to her. Her hand is still bandaged and gripping the steering wheel tightly brings about a slow throb that’s exacerbating her already heavy breathing. She tells herself that if anything happens to her,...

28 likes

Esper for Hire

Patrick Borosky

Shortlisted for Contest #127 ⭐️

The outer rims of her irises were a majestic copper, and their metallic veins turned to a bright yellow as they trailed inward before plunging into the black abysses of her pupils. The eyes bewitched Kara, but she had to focus. To do her job today, she needed to take in everything she could from the photograph while she still had time. Sadly, as she navigated away from the eyes, she couldn’t help but become ensnared by the flames that awaited above: fiery red hair that threatened to lash out and burn anyone who dared to touch it without pe...

27 likes

He had the guts !

Gbeenro .

Submitted to Contest #127

Borborygmi? Nah, it seemed like my tummy was rebelling against my very existence, shittt! Arghh, maybe I just needed to do that, would have relieved me of that unbidden discomfort.Heading towards the lavatory made me ponder on the unusual feeling I had been experiencing all morning, now this? "What if physiology and psyche coalesce? I mean, thoughts, feelings and emotions are products of chemicals, the D.O.S.E. Physiology has chemicals at it's core, so it's plausible that they interact. “Whoa! I'm hitting on the next Nobel Prize, too much se...

26 likes

Déjà Vu

Christina Reynolds

Submitted to Contest #127

Life, at its very core, can be broken into two categories: the tangible, things seen and felt and heard, and the intangible—intuition, instinct, feeling. His list of the tangible things read like the plot of a Hallmark movie, dream wife, dream house, dream job. Everything a man could ever want. So why did he wake up in the morning with his heart racing and with cold sweat drenching his pillow? Why then, in his soul, in the area of his spirit known only to him, did he feel a sense of malevolence? Why did his gut tell him to run?He watche...

26 likes

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Contest #128

This contest has ended. Thank you for your submissions.

$250

Prize money

217

Entries

134

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jan 07, 2022 EST

Won by Dena Linn 🏆

Title: The Problem Is

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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