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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 Kevin Broccoli

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 ...

136 comments 136 WINNER 🏆
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⭐️ Shortlisted

“The Mistakes We've Made” by Zack Powell

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 final...

43 comments 43 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“The Tumbleweed” by Amanda Lieser

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 l...

32 comments 32 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“Postcards to Nowhere” by Kelsey H

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 ...

15 comments 15 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“Footprints on the Edge” by ROBERT Ellis

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 ...

9 comments 9 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“The Seed Sown” by Dan Goff

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 ...

6 comments 6 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“Green Gremlins” by Bettina Karpathian

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 i...

9 comments 9 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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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 – 54 stories

Set your story beyond our own world.

Science Fiction – 51 stories

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

Character – 32 stories

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

Narrative – 65 stories

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

Science Fiction – 28 stories

Stories

“The Hovering Age” by Kevin Broccoli

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 ...

136 comments 136 WINNER 🏆
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“The Preacher” by Dustin Gillham

The weather turns overnight. With the fall, the sky grows bluer than the preacher has ever known or can remember. He sits for an hour in the windy sedge with the sun on his back as if he is storing the warmth of it against the coming winter.  The leaves on the hardwood trees on the mountain burst into colorful flames, and then, ultimate nakedness. An early winter falls. An old wind sucks beneath the black and barren branches. The preacher is alone in the empty house and watches the bone-colored moon come crawling over a black...

53 comments 53
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“Few and Far Between” by Deidra Whitt Lovegren

“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—wha...

67 comments 67
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“Scorpions” by Alex Sultan

If the heat didn’t kill him, the scorpions would. Zeyr drank from his canteen. The water tasted hot and stale. Above, the blazing sun beat down on his robes, and he kept moving forward, his leather footwraps pushing into the burning sands with each step. If he hadn’t come to do a job—one that needed to be done—he would’ve avoided the region entirely. As he approached the gates, a young man raised a bow and pulled back on the string. He looked down at Zeyr from a guard tower and called to his brethren. They rushed to their po...

42 comments 42
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“The Light of Day” by Hannah P. Simmons

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 ...

36 comments 36
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“The Mistakes We've Made” by Zack Powell

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 final...

43 comments 43 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“Where the Shepherd Dogs Lie” by Daniel R. Hayes

(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...

36 comments 36
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“The Tumbleweed” by Amanda Lieser

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 l...

32 comments 32 SHORTLIST ⭐️
Read story

“Postcards to Nowhere” by Kelsey H

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 ...

15 comments 15 SHORTLIST ⭐️
Read story

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

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 w...

19 comments 19
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“Dancing Colors” by Patrick Borosky

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 -...

13 comments 13
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“Eye Spy” by Katharine Widdows

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 ...

26 comments 26
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“Broken” by Jonathan Blaauw

[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 chu...

22 comments 22
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“The Forsaken World” by Howard Halsall

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...

15 comments 15
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“The Land of Fairytales: The Lonely Unicorn” by Melony Beard

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 Nowher...

10 comments 10
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$250

Prize money

230

Contest entries

135

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Feb 25, 2022 EST

Won by Kevin Broccoli 🏆

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.

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