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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#192: Something Borrowed

As the very existence of thrift stores proves, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. A cultural push for sustainability has made thrifting a popular option for the fashion forward, and encouraged us all to look for the potential in yesterday’s cast offs.

This week, let’s take those forgotten items out of their corners, dust them off, and give them a new lease on life. Among all the strange tchotchkes and ugly sweaters, you might just find a diamond in the rough — or an actual diamond!

🥇 Winner

“Strawberry Jam Under the Sea” by Aeris Walker

🏆 Winner of Contest #192

I am swimming, thrusting my arms through golden water—golden like oil. The water grows thick and syrupy, then it pulls me under. I’m in a bottle, glass sloping above me. Someone tilts and pours, and I slide onto a pan, palms burning from the heat. I slip and roll in the slick spill. Steam rises off my wet hair. Then I am smothered under the sticky weight of raw meat. “Mommy, can I sleep with you?”The voice startles me, a breathy whisper in the dark. Then it comes again.“Please? I had a bad dream.” Jack’s lisped dweem melts my heart, and I ca...

157 comments 157

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“Moving Mum” by Howard Halsall

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

It had taken them six months of gentle persuasion to convince mum to leave the house she’d lived in for sixty years and relocate to a nursing home on the other side of town. Mum’s Victorian villa with its three floors of generously proportioned rooms had become too large for her to manage. It was a cluttered arcade, displaying keepsakes collected over a lifetime and way beyond her powers to keep clean. It would be unkind if I described mum as a hoarder, but there were knickknacks and oddments littering every horizontal surface and she’d ador...

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“How to Break Up with The Best Boss Ever” by Amanda Lieser

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

Step 1: Write the Letter of Resignation.Keep it short and sweet and to the point. List the things you loved about the place. If you can’t think of any, then LIE. 5 sentences or less.I write the letter in five minutes flat. Then, rewrite it and agonize over it for an hour. I slam my laptop shut in a fit of fury before pacing around the kitchen for fifteen minutes. I grab the tube of chocolate chip cookie dough from the fridge, cut that sucker in half, knowing I’ll eat both halves before the end of the day, and stomp to my couch. The TV takes ...

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“Words by Fives ” by Darya Silman

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

I liked to learn words by fives: Jerry, Perry, scary, betterment, elephant. 'An elephant! Look, look!' I shouted in excitement. A elephant, a child of twilight, slowly plodded between bare trees across the road. Its tusks were not white as I saw in movies about animals but more like unhealthy grey. One tusk's end was broken. Elephant's eyes didn't look bright. They were dull as the tires of cars that passed beneath my window. I looked back toward the bathroom. There were no familiar sounds. I climbed from the stool and walked to th...

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“Ghost Writer” by Crissie Dittrich

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

Bridget was clearing the table when his phone chimed. She did her best not to react and busied herself brushing non-existent crumbs from the placemat. Matthew didn’t notice. He never noticed anymore. He sheepishly palmed his phone and made an exaggerated yawning motion, acting as if he wasn’t struggling with every second he couldn’t look at the phone. She knew it was killing him not to jump from the table. She savored that time, moving slowly, brushing every last invisible, non-existent crumb. As Bridget walke...

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“Afloat” by Payton Lundgren

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

As the brakes squeal and the truck comes to a stop, the hot summer air creeps its way through the open window. Despite the early hour, the sun still beats down on us, forcing me to squint and turn my head towards the inside of the truck. My mother sits behind the wheel rummaging through her bag, looking for the key to the padlock she insists on adding to the back of the truck. Between us sits the family photos we’d taken out of their frames, since “every penny counts,” and on top of the pile sits a picture of my father, smiling with the same...

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This week's prompts

Write about someone finding a treasure in an unexpected place.

Adventure – 50 stories

Set your story at an antique roadshow.

Dramatic – 26 stories

Write a story about someone trying to reinvent themselves after spending a long time in a rut.

Fiction – 38 stories

Write about someone stuck in an endless cycle who finally manages to break free.

Fiction – 67 stories

Write about someone rediscovering something old they thought they’d lost.

Fiction – 67 stories

Stories

“Strawberry Jam Under the Sea” by Aeris Walker

🏆 Winner of Contest #192

I am swimming, thrusting my arms through golden water—golden like oil. The water grows thick and syrupy, then it pulls me under. I’m in a bottle, glass sloping above me. Someone tilts and pours, and I slide onto a pan, palms burning from the heat. I slip and roll in the slick spill. Steam rises off my wet hair. Then I am smothered under the sticky weight of raw meat. “Mommy, can I sleep with you?”The voice startles me, a breathy whisper in the dark. Then it comes again.“Please? I had a bad dream.” Jack’s lisped dweem melts my heart, and I ca...

157 comments 157

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“First Rule of Time Travel” by Michał Przywara

Submitted to Contest #192

By far the worst thing about time travel is saving Hitler’s life. Now don’t you yell at me, Monica – in my defence, I am saving him from myself. Earlier I did kill him first so that’s got to count for something, right? Well, it turned out to be a bad idea because I ended up breaking reality. Just a smidge. You can’t really hold it against me, because you didn’t exactly train me for this. But I can fix it. I step through the time portal onto the roof of the Hotel Kaiserhof, in Berlin of 1932, and I see myself – my earlier self – by the edge. ...

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“How to Kill Someone after You're Dead” by Delbert Griffith

Submitted to Contest #192

I didn’t know my murderer, and he didn’t know me. Carl Bronson was his name. He killed me with a 2021 Ford Mustang. The man was drunk and ran a red light, going at a speed not meant for city streets. The impact was terrific. I felt intense pain and I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. All I could do was groan weakly and suffer; fortunately, the pain quickly dissipated. A sort of dull euphoria overtook me, a washing away of pain, replaced by a tiredness and sleepiness that felt soothing and natural. And then…permanent oblivion. Or so I thoug...

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“Moving Mum” by Howard Halsall

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

It had taken them six months of gentle persuasion to convince mum to leave the house she’d lived in for sixty years and relocate to a nursing home on the other side of town. Mum’s Victorian villa with its three floors of generously proportioned rooms had become too large for her to manage. It was a cluttered arcade, displaying keepsakes collected over a lifetime and way beyond her powers to keep clean. It would be unkind if I described mum as a hoarder, but there were knickknacks and oddments littering every horizontal surface and she’d ador...

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“The Red and Black Boa” by Viga Boland

Submitted to Contest #192

The red and black boa startled me. I gasped in surprise. I never thought I'd find this! It was exactly what I needed for that feathery costume I wanted to make for my 6-year-old grand-daughter. But who had put the boa in this old basement trunk? My mother? When would she have worn it? And why? Though mom had often dreamed of being on stage, I knew she’d had never stepped foot on one. Yet, this red and black boa was just the kind of thing a dancer or performer would wear. For a second, I closed my eyes envisioning mom dancing around bene...

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“Lost Kisses” by Michelle Oliver

Submitted to Contest #192

The first indication that this was not an ordinary day came when Dad called me to ‘come here’, lead and harness jingling in his hand. The harness means ‘car’, but ‘car’ can mean many things. Some are good, like ‘beach’, and ‘park’, and ‘home’. Some are not good, like ‘vet’, and ‘bath’, and… ‘vet’. But ‘vet’ is not all bad, they give treato’s for the goodest doggos. I’m always the goodest doggo. I’ve never bitten the vet lady, even when she sticks the coldest thing up my… well, never mind!However, today we do not go t...

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“How to Break Up with The Best Boss Ever” by Amanda Lieser

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

Step 1: Write the Letter of Resignation.Keep it short and sweet and to the point. List the things you loved about the place. If you can’t think of any, then LIE. 5 sentences or less.I write the letter in five minutes flat. Then, rewrite it and agonize over it for an hour. I slam my laptop shut in a fit of fury before pacing around the kitchen for fifteen minutes. I grab the tube of chocolate chip cookie dough from the fridge, cut that sucker in half, knowing I’ll eat both halves before the end of the day, and stomp to my couch. The TV takes ...

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“Kill the Messenger” by Geir Westrul

Submitted to Contest #192

"Sweetie, look, this was just delivered. It's from ...," my wife reads the card while unboxing the birthday present, peeling off red gift wrapping, "... your Aunt Salomé." "That's nice — wait, Aunt Salomé? But — " The red gift wrapping blooms into an orange fireball. The shockwave pushes me, shoves me, throws me hard into the wall. The screams from my wife's birthday-party guests are muffled, as if I'm submerged in water, deep below the surface. Aunt Salomé. Only I know that 'she' is not real. 'Aunt Salom...

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“The Cove” by Joe Sauers

Submitted to Contest #192

Catching sight of a silfrix flock, some twenty-thousand strong, passing overhead on a cloudlessly clear day like today, can, without warning, take one’s breath; snatching it away, to the verge of faint. Their deep yellow plumage against vibrant blue sky arrests the soul as would a lover’s desirous gaze. With the sun at their side as it now resides, shadow play across the burly fowl as they fly is a feast for the eyes. Their elegant, forward sweeping wings carry them along, alternately extending and drawn to, revealing flashes of sapphire, az...

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“A Different Type of Air” by Delbert Griffith

Submitted to Contest #192

It happened practically overnight. The Disaster, mother called it. Apocalypse, father said. My brother called it Ruination, but he always was a drama queen. And me? I didn’t call it anything until seven years later. Now I call it Salvation. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Amy was not a person who woke up with anything approaching grace. She felt that alarm clocks were her personal enemies, and rising before 10:00 A.M. should be illegal and immoral. It was now 4:30 A.M.; the desire to smash the digital monster whining at her was barely subdued. Again. ...

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“A Diamond in the Trough.” by Chris Campbell

Submitted to Contest #192

“Sink me!” The loud exclamation echoed through the air. “I reckon’ if you be serious about hiding your treasure, then this be the place where not many would dare to look.” Captain Horatio Cutlass and a handful of his crew peered into the deep cesspit of the island village’s main latrine. Following the procurement of a pillaged treasure map’s directions - sloppily left open on a tavern table by a drunk sailor, Cutlass quickly rallied his crew - leading them on a hunt for what was believed to be the lost treasure of The Ortega – a Spanish Gall...

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“Monotony” by Mary Bendickson

Submitted to Contest #192

Ridin’ around in my automobile. Tryin’ not to fall asleep at the wheel. Round and round and round I go. Where I’ll land nobody knows.Caught in a spin cycle. Spinning my wheels. Never any end in sight. Think I’m getting ahead then some guy on a steel horse passes me by. Heck, the rate I’m going even that construction guy pushing the wheelbarrow is catching up to me.Endless, I’m tellin’ ya. Hopeless. I put in my paces, smile at the faceless faces hiding under haute hats all so I can chase that elusive money bag, pick up my salary and get on th...

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“Heirlooms” by RJ Holmquist

Submitted to Contest #192

The TimepieceJim Coyfield clutched his battered pocket watch as his worn out body wracked itself, his diaphragm heaving, his trachea spasming, his lips forced open in a ragged “O.” Three hundred years the watch had passed from Coyfield to Coyfield. And now, there was no one left, no one he could give it to, no one he could tell the secrets.Old man Coyfield coughed again and bloody phlegm splattered the moldy carpet of his desolated trailer.He was the last and the worst of the proud Coyfields. Last because his progeny had been too ...

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“George's New Life” by Bernie Rhodes

Submitted to Contest #192

George stared at the pink slip his foreman handed him and each crew member, stating they would be laid off at the end of the day. George was forty-six years old and had worked at a rock quarry in Stone City since he was sixteen. The quarry would be closing permanently. He dreaded going home to tell his wife, Edith, a temperamental woman. At the end of their final shift, some of his coworkers met at the Hairy Goat Saloon. George hesitated to join them, but he didn’t particularly want ...

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“DEATH WITHOUT END” by Susan Catucci

Submitted to Contest #192

**WARNING** Contains themes of violence; disturbing images.Amen. That’s how it always begins. I say a silent prayer, then lean over to kiss Brad, my husband, good night. Before I can turn around to turn off the light, Brad takes my face in his hands, looks deeply into my eyes, and then kisses me, fully and deliberately. We haven’t made love since the baby.Something grips me in that moment. I hadn’t known how it would be, had become timid and slightly removed, anxious around my husband. Now, recognizing the urge...

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$250

Prize money

248

Contest entries

144

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Apr 07, 2023 EST

Won by Aeris Walker 🏆

Title: Strawberry Jam Under the Sea

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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