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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#134: Look Up

This Friday, the 18th of February, marks the 92nd anniversary of Pluto being discovered — and though it’s no longer considered ‘big enough’ to be an official planet, it will always have a big place in our hearts. With it’s hot-to-cold cycles and snow-capped mountains, this almost-planet almost looks like home. (That said, we still wouldn’t recommend it for your next vacation!)

To mark the occasion, this week’s prompts are a love letter to our favorite forgotten planet, and the spirit of discovery in general.

🥇 Winner

“The Hovering Age” by Story Time

🏆 Winner of Contest #134

She’ll come down when she’s ready. My mother used to say when you reach the hovering age, it’s important to take your time. Don’t feel as though you need to keep yourself on the ground if your body wants to do something else. I hit the hovering age at thirteen. The first time I slammed the door in my father’s face, I looked down, and I was three inches off the ground. Always felt useless to me. Not to be able to fly--just hover. So I stopped right away. I didn’t have any interest in being an impractical person. My first boyfriend told me...

137 comments 137

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“The Mistakes We've Made” by Zack Powell

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

Content warning: Some swearingThe only problem with breaking into your neighbor's house is if someone else beats you to it.The Mastersons are gone for the month, summering in Fiji or Acapulco or wherever people go when they're filthy rich and can afford to flaunt it by using words like "summering." Before leaving, they'd asked me to watch their house. For free, of course. I smiled and told them they had nothing to worry about. It wasn't until their blue Bugatti sped down our dead-end street that I finally uncrossed the fingers hiding behind ...

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“The Tumbleweed” by Amanda Lieser

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

This story deals with homelessness and death. The Tumbleweed had blown into the bar. It was a busy Friday night because the “somewhere” in the phrase, “it’s five o'clock somewhere” was finally here. Men in fancy button downs with watches the size of their fists approached the women with bright, red, glossy lips who flipped their hair extensions over their shoulders lazily at them. Music blared loudly. But not as loudly as some of the women attempting to laugh at lame pick up lines. This modern saloon was an oasis for all gathered. The ...

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“Postcards to Nowhere” by Kelsey H

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

Six weeks after his father left, the first postcard came from him. “A postcard,” his mother said. “Where’s the return address? Where’s the goddamn cheque?”The postcard read Greetings from Perth in a swirling printed cursive. That was all the address they got. Three months after that they moved out of their house and went to live by the graveyard. At night he kept watch through the gaps in the metal slats of his blinds. He could see the high steel gate black and gleaming in the glow from the streetlight, a shadow falling all th...

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“Footprints on the Edge” by ROBERT Ellis

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

The most rational of men, Josh Rowbotham founded an entirely new scientific field which he named “Astro-Biochemistry.” When Astronomy magazine, in a four-page puff piece complete with photos of Josh and his lab, asked him to describe Astro-Biochemistry, he poetically responded, “Seeking the footprints of life at the edge of the universe.” Josh used telescope spectroscopy to identify the building blocks of life on exoplanets revolving distant stars. He observed light shifts occurring billions of years ago, signs of the joining of elements i...

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“The Seed Sown” by Dan Goff

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

The farmer was a proud and solitary man. Though his neighbors were nothing but kind to him, the farmer had always held them in a sort of contempt and rejected all forms of friendliness, until he gained the reputation of an unlikable hermit obsessed with his crop of corn and nothing else. The farmer was fine with the verdict; he would have described himself this way, too. He often entertained an unspoken dream of living alone on a desert island, with just his plants to keep him company. But now he was on the verge of losing his plants, his on...

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“Green Gremlins” by Bettina Karpathian

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

It’s my last day of gazing up at the blue sky, spring foliage and blossoms. Instead of a grassy meadow, I am lying on a hard, cold steel table which could belong in a morgue. The only sound is the whirr of the machine. No birdsong or spring breeze here. Every now and then the tech’s disembodied voice reverberates with instructions. Move, don’t move, hold your breath, breathe. She is safely ensconced somewhere out of sight. I picture the malignant cells in my breast as little green cartoon gremlins, squealing and running for cover as the invi...

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This week's prompts

Your character, by chance or habit, peers through a telescope. They see something unusual — what is it?

Dystopian – 53 stories

Set your story beyond our own world.

Science Fiction – 50 stories

Write about a character who has a ‘hot and cold’ personality — or is affected by someone like this.

Character – 30 stories

End your story with a character looking out on a new horizon.

Narrative – 63 stories

Write from the POV of someone, or something, that experiences gravity differently.

Science Fiction – 27 stories

Stories

“The Hovering Age” by Story Time

🏆 Winner of Contest #134

She’ll come down when she’s ready. My mother used to say when you reach the hovering age, it’s important to take your time. Don’t feel as though you need to keep yourself on the ground if your body wants to do something else. I hit the hovering age at thirteen. The first time I slammed the door in my father’s face, I looked down, and I was three inches off the ground. Always felt useless to me. Not to be able to fly--just hover. So I stopped right away. I didn’t have any interest in being an impractical person. My first boyfriend told me...

137 comments 137

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“Few and Far Between” by Deidra Whitt Lovegren

Submitted to Contest #134

“He fell again,” my husband mouths to me, then returns to his phone call with his-brother-who-I-cannot-stand. “No, no. I’m right here. I can be there in twenty minutes.”Of course he’s going out in an ice storm in the middle of the night. Of course he’s the one my father-in-law calls, a man who patently favors my husband’s inept older brother and overindulges his younger one. Of course he’s riding to the rescue. That’s what martyrs do. My husband paces, phone still in hand. “Did the doctors say anything else—what caused the fall?” D...

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“The Light of Day” by Hannah P. Simmons

Submitted to Contest #134

Three rules, if you wanna live. One. You sleep at dawn, and rise at dusk. Two. If the Thing finds you, don’t hide, RUN. There will be enough light somewhere. Three. You can’t save no one, except yourself. That’s what I’ve figured out so far. That’s what’s been keeping me and Noah alive. There weren't that many people in Presvern to begin with. Maybe a couple hundred. The Thing made quick work of whittling that down. It hit the hospital first. Wasn’t like anyone in there could really get away. The poli...

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“The Mistakes We've Made” by Zack Powell

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

Content warning: Some swearingThe only problem with breaking into your neighbor's house is if someone else beats you to it.The Mastersons are gone for the month, summering in Fiji or Acapulco or wherever people go when they're filthy rich and can afford to flaunt it by using words like "summering." Before leaving, they'd asked me to watch their house. For free, of course. I smiled and told them they had nothing to worry about. It wasn't until their blue Bugatti sped down our dead-end street that I finally uncrossed the fingers hiding behind ...

Read story

“Where the Shepherd Dogs Lie” by Daniel R. Hayes

Submitted to Contest #134

(Content Warning: Fantasy Violence, Mild Language.) Lee Oswald awoke to the sound of a shrieking moan not more than ten yards from his bedroom window. Without contemplation, his feet hit the cold floor running, knowing that his cattle were in danger. Rushing through his cabin, Lee eyed his double-barrel shotgun hanging above his fireplace and grabbed it. The weapon was always loaded for occasions just like this, and for a brief moment, Lee was glad he had it. Wearing nothing but white long johns, he exploded outside, ready for combat....

Read story

“The Tumbleweed” by Amanda Lieser

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

This story deals with homelessness and death. The Tumbleweed had blown into the bar. It was a busy Friday night because the “somewhere” in the phrase, “it’s five o'clock somewhere” was finally here. Men in fancy button downs with watches the size of their fists approached the women with bright, red, glossy lips who flipped their hair extensions over their shoulders lazily at them. Music blared loudly. But not as loudly as some of the women attempting to laugh at lame pick up lines. This modern saloon was an oasis for all gathered. The ...

Read story

“Postcards to Nowhere” by Kelsey H

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #134

Six weeks after his father left, the first postcard came from him. “A postcard,” his mother said. “Where’s the return address? Where’s the goddamn cheque?”The postcard read Greetings from Perth in a swirling printed cursive. That was all the address they got. Three months after that they moved out of their house and went to live by the graveyard. At night he kept watch through the gaps in the metal slats of his blinds. He could see the high steel gate black and gleaming in the glow from the streetlight, a shadow falling all th...

Read story

“I Don't Know When I'm Coming Home Again” by A.R. Eakle

Submitted to Contest #134

This is where the day started: ice cream, root beer floats, and pancakes for breakfast. Followed by three hours of cartoons, forts, and hide and seek. I was it, of course. By noon, both girls were down for a nap. But me, I cleaned the kitchen, picked up the living room, and starting preparing lunch. Frozen pizzas. By the end of this weekend, the girls wouldn’t want anything other than to live with me. It was after lunch and we were watching a show Aubrey picked, the five-year-old. She was twirling her curly, blonde hair around a finger...

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“Broken” by Jonathan Blaauw

Submitted to Contest #134

[TW: Child loss] She was broken when I found her.I first glimpsed her frail form at the edge of the beach, where sand gives way to sea. The dauntingly unchanging vista, the site of my nightly penance, had become indelibly etched into the dark crevices of my soul, so it took a moment for me to register something was amiss with the scene that fateful night.When the fact of her pitiful presence lodged itself firmly into my consciousness, I hastened forward, a sick, familiar dread churning in my gut. Hampered by the gusting wind, I crossed ...

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“Dancing Colors” by Patrick Borosky

Submitted to Contest #134

Unending loneliness. "Okay, honey. I've got to go. Can I get you anything to drink before I leave for the day?" asked my dad even though he knew the answer all too well. Granted, my throat was dry, and it was practically begging for a nice, cold glass of ice water, but I really only wanted one thing from my father. Like him, I knew the answer all too well before I even asked the question -- one that was borderline begging. "Do you have to go? Can't you just stay a little longer?" His warm expression paled and became a pained frown as h...

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“Beyond The Silver Line” by Echo Sundar

Submitted to Contest #134

The trees dance in the wind. Their pale purple leaves fall off of long golden branches whose roots stretch deep beyond the pale bluegrass and deep into the core of Ziniriya. The trees sing their songs and whisper secrets in your ears, the soft melody filling you up. Birds with long silver tail feathers fly over cotton candy skies, their chirps echoing like ringing bells and laughter making you wish you were in on the joke. A stream runs throughout changing from yellow to pink to green as it bounces over rocks splashing the rocks with its swe...

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“Eye Spy” by Katharine Widdows

Submitted to Contest #134

Pete’s feet stuttered through the shop doorway. His hands arced out and caught the corner of the wooden counter before gravity could floor him. Shoulders stiff, head turned away from danger, his knees bent and narrowly missed banging the floor. The stocky pawnbroker in front of him erupted into raucous laughter, one hand over his mouth, the other on his hip.‘Oh, Sir,’ said the infuriating man between giggles. ‘You’re the third one today to trip over that. ‘ere, let me take it up before someone sues me.’ He reached out a chubby hand. Still be...

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“The Land of Fairytales: The Lonely Unicorn” by Melony Beard

Submitted to Contest #134

Not so long ago, far away from the Land of Fairytales, Loki, the Unicorn, lived in the Land of Nowhere in a field of tall grass and wildflowers with brown, black, and tan horses. Like the horses, Loki had four legs, a mane, and a tail, but Loki just didn't fit in. He had two things the other horses didn’t have, a single horn on his head and wings on his back.One day, Loki felt so lonely. He ran away and left the field of tall grasses and wildflowers behind. He galloped through the forests and plains of the Land of Nowhere, looking for a new ...

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“Who Let the Dogs Out?” by Kathleen Fine

Submitted to Contest #134

Chandra Lal peers through his telescope at the deep, ebony sky. It’s a clear night, his favorite kind of night for star gazing. Although he’s in an attic and not outside like he would prefer, he’s pushed open the window to get a clearer view above him. He focuses the lens to get a better look at two of the four Jovian moons which rotate around Jupitar. As he turns the tube towards Saturn to see if he can get a glimpse at any of its visible moons, he hears a couple dogs barking below him. He checks his watch to see how much time he has left b...

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“The Forsaken World” by Howard Halsall

Submitted to Contest #134

Vladimir adjusted his heavy winter jacket as he trudged up the icy metal staircase outside the observation tower. He’d always aimed the Agency’s electro-telescope outwards, beyond the known solar system. Tonight is different. The observatory’s entire structure creaks as its viewing dome rotates one hundred and eighty degrees. Vladimir refocuses on a glimmering blue orb thirty-four million miles away, his home planet’s closest neighbour.#It had been almost two thousand years since the exodus from the third planet. Earth’s ten thousand survivo...

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$250

Prize money

223

Contest entries

128

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Feb 25, 2022 EST

Won by Story Time 🏆

Title: The Hovering Age

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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