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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#204: Wild, Wild West

The days of the old American West have long held weight in the collective imagination of storytellers. There’s a mythic power to it. Tales of survival, revenge, and itinerant gunslingers still draw us in, whether for a bit of adventure or to ask deeper questions about morality and philosophy.

The desolate desert landscapes, the struggles and conflicts between settlers and Native peoples, the wandering heroes, all these elements and more have inspired writers across genres, from George Lucas to Stephen King. Perhaps the best thing about a Western is its malleability and creativity: its ability to be set anywhere from America in the 1800s to a galaxy far, far away. So this week get your cowboy hats (or space helmets) ready as we go to explore the great unknown.

Plus, you're invited! 🎉

The second issue of PROMPTED, our literary magazine, is coming soon — and to celebrate, we're holding a live online event next Thursday! Find out more and get your free ticket right here.

This week's prompts

Write a story about a stranger coming to town and shaking up the order of things.

Character – 56 stories

Set your story in a desert town.

Adventure – 52 stories

Write a story about someone undertaking a long, dangerous journey.

Adventure – 39 stories

Write a Western-inspired story in a new genre or setting (e.g. a space western, fantasy western, etc.)

Fiction – 78 stories

Write a story about someone seeking revenge for a past wrong.

Dramatic – 73 stories

Stories

“Jistu's Way” by Russell Mickler

Submitted to Contest #204

Many Content Warnings.Please Read my Afterword in the Comments. Twenty-six stars sewn into a blue field alongside a cage of red and white hung listlessly from a guidon. Grungy, sweat-stained, and hungover, the standard bearer leaned precariously in his saddle as he escorted a column of three hundred indigenous captives across an arid, nameless wasteland. The sun had baked the soil to clay, trampled to dust by their passing. Farthest to the rear, Nazshoni’s skin burned. Her every parched breath inhaled the land of her people. She resolved to ...

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“Martian Navy Project Darwin” by Graham Kinross

Submitted to Contest #204

TW: Surgery and swearing. “Your legend precedes you, Thao.” Admiral Randal Jacques smiled the smile of a transparent sociopath. He waved his hand to the sturdy metal chair in front of his desk. “I’ve heard plenty about you as well,” she said with a similar show of teeth. “Good, then we don’t have to waste any more time with niceties. I want you to join me.” All hints of pleasantry were gone. He gave her the stare a butcher gives a slab of meat as they raise the knife. “For?” Her invitation had been vague. Be part of Mars’ future. A file la...

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“The Marine Super Computer” by Shahzad Ahmad

Submitted to Contest #204

The blue carpet of water hanging over the ocean surface pretty much resembled a beautiful wrapping paper that enlivens its appearance before the recipient, drowning him into dreamy visualizations at least until the moment of actual sighting. But what lies buried under the huge mass of water has been the subject of innumerable speculations with the character of its appealing or debasing properties far from being settled! The content inside, potentially burgeons with countless mysteries and episodic installments of monumental human interfere...

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“Hope on the Mescalero” by Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #204

The young man lay staked out, his arms and legs spreadeagled. He’d been dead for some time, chewed on by wolves.Jeb'd been tracking near three days on the Mescalero high desert. Endless flat grasses, peyote cactus, sagebrush, and an uncaring wind under a blistering sun. At the end of the third day, with the sun dropping in a pink, cloudless sky, he loped over a low rise and found the young man.He studied the ground. Then he pushed up his brown sweat stained Stetson, exposing a stark white forehead beneath a receding hairline. He spit, and us...

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“MEDESTO HAD TO DIE” by Susan Catucci

Submitted to Contest #204

“Wake up, Christo. We’re about to land.”Christobal stirred, though his eyelids barely moved.“Love, you’re exhausted. I hope this trip there will be time for you to rest.”“We will see, Jovana.” Christobal yawned and stretched.“Little Havana. Do you know how long it’s been?”“Almost to the minute, Cielo.”“Thirty years, Christo.”Jovana’s voice drifted, along with her thoughts. Her husband took her hand and brought her back.“Let us see how Little Havana has grown.” Christobal and Jovana were soon escorted out of thei...

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“Her Final Day of Sadness” by Shannon C.

Submitted to Contest #204

The dawn was starting to make its appearance over the hills with the breath-taking colors of God as far as the eye could see. The pinks and the oranges mixed and swirled with the clouds, and the songs of the early rising birds filled the air.Last night’s dew was evaporating into a fine mist that made the prairie look as if a thousand spirits were dancing and stretching up to the sky.This is my favorite time. It’s quiet and it’s peaceful. No one is stirring yet, so I embrace the silence. The town is still now. The chaos of the night having lo...

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“The pianist” by James Larder

Submitted to Contest #204

‘What’s going on?!’ The Master asked, as he woke, prematurely, from his hourly nap.‘Forgive the intrusion, Master,’ the maid said, as she shook the Master’s ruggedly handsome face, ‘But I thought you’d want to see this.’ The maid pointed over at a shadowy figure, who stood in the doorway of their humble household. ‘He’s been there for some time. Just looming, he was, on our delicate little porch.’The Master came to his senses and peeled himself off the chair, before stumbling towards the stranger, with trepidation. ‘Is he armed?’‘Two.’‘I’ve ...

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“Varnacular” by Caleb Oney

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #204

THE WESTERN SUN blazed-a-glory. Heatwaves cast against the parched brown grass rose from the caramel sea spanning across Desierto de Chihuahua. The land inhaled and exhaled torrents of brown dust, lifted like twisters reaching for the heavens, forever remaining unsuccessful. The soft wind which whisked against the silence was deafening. Patches of tumbleweed flew in tandem with the floating dirt. Engulfed in these congested clouds were three silhouettes, each stiff and still like a spooked fox confronting a lion. Ain’t he something. One of ...

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“Lady of the Black Irons” by Jamie Campbell

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #204

In the end, Man destroyed the heavens and the earth.Man said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. It fell from the heavens and rose in mighty plumes and consumed the earth in fire, and a great poison swept across land and sea.And on that final day, Man ended his work which he had made. Thus did Man destroy nearly every living thing that moveth, and shroud the earth from the firmament, so that day and night were as one.And when the age of silence had passed and the earth had shed its poison, the ancient abominations – which God di...

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“Eid Mubarak” by Anne Shillingsburg

Submitted to Contest #204

CW: Description of animal slaughterThe countryside is not exactly green at home, but the dusty cedars and holm oaks, the upland cherry orchards and irrigated fields of young wheat in oblong patches flanked by the piled boulders dug out to make them possible are some kind of midpoint between the lush Appalachian onslaught of unrestrainable vegetation of my youth and the red-dune Sahara we’re driving into. As we slide out of the forested hills, we go through a spectrum: the fruit-tree green turns to graying olive as the red-tiled roofs become ...

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“Worth His Weight in Gold” by David Ader

Submitted to Contest #204

The saloon doors swung open followed by a frigid wind and a quick accumulation of snow. A rude chorus amounted to a demand for the stranger to shut the doors. He did so, taking his time, and brushed the snow off his fur hat and shoulders. In the heat of the room, warmed by a blazing cast iron stove, the melting ice on his long beard dripped to the floor. The saloon stunk of stale cigars, cheap whiskey, and filthy miners. “Well if it ain’t Stonewall Jackson himself,” said a black mustache with a man behind it. He was leaning ba...

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“It Had Always Been Thus” by John Werner

Submitted to Contest #204

It had always been thus. The old sign hung upon the mortician’s door had been placed there so long ago that its weathered edges were rounded entirely and the lettering on its front needed constant darkening with soot and ash to keep it legible. The wind whipped through Graydon’s Gorge at an almost relentless pace and the townsfolk were happier for its protection. Tales around these parts say that Graydon himself was the first to set up shop at the mouth of the gorge and folks around here think that mighty peculiar, as it isn’t often that...

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“On the Plains of Venusia” by J. D. Lair

Submitted to Contest #204

*Brief violence and some minor gruesome details* The thunk of a hatchet into dry wood was the loudest sound Astor wanted to make in the wilderness tonight. He hesitated making a fire in the first place, but it was frigid out here and he needed to eat. A rabbit he caught earlier in the day hung from a makeshift spit. One side of the stick rested in a crevice on a large boulder. The other side sat tied to the wooden pole holding up the sun-bleached canvas he called a tent. Astor hoped the boulder and tent would provide enough cover from pr...

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“Hate is for the Faint of Heart” by Carina Caccia

Submitted to Contest #204

White walls, white chairs, white gowns, white noise. Melissa sat cross-legged on a single bed, on cool, silk sheets, sea surf emanating from a little grey speaker on the bedside table. A long glass of water sat atop it, clear and pure, enclosing the white walls, chairs, gowns in this reflective and rippling universe. Melissa took a sip. “Are you sleepy?” asked Nora. Melissa nodded, adjusting her eye mask. “Yield. We need you in Theta to bypass the left hemisphere.” Nora leaned back in her chair, running a bare foot through the flu...

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“The Interstellar Murder Hobo” by Cecilia Englishby

Submitted to Contest #204

First Trooper Lundrin Morrissey; Constabulary Grid 7H6 of Earth’s Solar Militia ,woke drowsily from what felt like a thick fog tinged green with a mild sense of nausea. He wasn’t uncomfortable, but understood the night was over; and his hangover was coming, slowly creeping into his body from a distance. Hmmm, what did I do last night? I remember the girl Adrian sent… and drinking, so much drinking… He didn’t feel much concern over his lack of memory; it wasn’t his first black-out. Some memories always returned, and there was the foot...

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$250

Prize money

298

Contest entries

94

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jun 30, 2023 EST

Won by Katy B 🏆

Title: The Ungentling

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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