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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#214: The Fall of Summer

For both kids and adults, summer is a time for dreams, freedom, and a break from routine. The scorching summer months offer new beginnings, new experiences, vacations in exotic places (real or backyard imaginings), new friendships, and perhaps even new romance. It’s when memories are created, and when ‘growing up’ happens.

Except there’s never enough time. The days fly by, the memories stack up, and pretty soon Fall’s got a stranglehold. To celebrate the last throes of the season, this week’s prompts encourage you to delve into your memories of the summer we’ve just had, and of summers long past.

This week's prompts

Set your story on the eve of the first day back at school.

Kids – 34 stories

What was meant to be a great bonding vacation turns sour when an uninvited guest tags along.

Summer – 43 stories

Now, as an adult, your character looks back on this summer as the summer when they grew up.

Character – 40 stories

Each year, your character's family goes on the most exotic vacations. Finally they discover why — their family are assassins.

Funny – 36 stories

It’s the last evening of your vacation and you’re watching the sunset with your friends/partner/family, wishing summer would never end. But just as the sun dips below the horizon, you notice it returning in reverse.

Science Fiction – 49 stories

Stories

“A Leg Up” by Andrew Spangler

Submitted to Contest #214

The golden light of sunset bathes the calm forest surrounding them. Ray takes a deep breath of the forest air before opening another can of beer. "Summer is coming to an end boys, and we only have tonight left out here." Jimmy fishes out a new beer for himself before plopping down next to Ray. "If we can make the beer last that long." Jimmy laughs, accompanied by his three friends. After taking his first sip, Jimmy points to the west. "If we go now, we'll be able to watch the sunset from the cliffs. Wouldn't be a bad end to our first day of ...

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“saccharine.” by Eliysheba Yisrael

Submitted to Contest #214

My twin and I are all packed up for our trip to London, England. We've been planning this trip for what seem like forever! and now...it was finally happening. this will finally be a chance for our family to be together in one place. "Paris did you pack extra panties?" my twin sister London shouted. "yeah!" I said from across the hall of our house. I always pack extras of everything. My family even nicknamed me mom 2.o. because I was so careful about anything. My mom suddenly burst into my room. "sweet bean, I need to talk to you and your sis...

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“A Tiny Problem” by Sydney Crago

Submitted to Contest #214

My ears filled with the sound of the refrigerator thrumming as I rearranged the freshly purchased goods on its shelves. I let the chill travel up my arms, a welcome relief from the blazing heat of late July. The noise of the appliance and the game of grocery Tetris kept my from registering the sound of the car pulling up to the house. My mother, however, did hear the car. She marched past me, slapping her flip flops against the laminate floor as she made her way to the front door. “They’re here!” She squealed. I let the refrigerator door c...

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“The Assassins' Family Holiday” by Chantal Hyde

Submitted to Contest #214

I heard a click as my mom undid the safety, her eye millimeters away from the lens of the gun’s scope. “This is so much better than last year, man that was tough. Waiting around, all of those meetings. What a boring life. Poor sucker. I guess it’s over now!” My dad chuckled. I stood with my back flush against the hotel room wall. My palms, sweaty and sliding on its cool surface. I didn’t know what else to do, but to stay there like spiderman, making myself as unnoticeable as possible, as my parents prepared themselves to kill a man. M...

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“Plain Janes” by JuDom MiJeYah

Submitted to Contest #214

If her cuticles didn’t grow up and lay nice by eighth grade, Tamrya was seriously gonna lose it. It didn’t matter that her acrylics extended far too long for normal typing. Text to speech apps handled her homework just fine. Typing is pretty much the way of the past anyway, more of a Millennial's thing. Where are they?Mils. Speaking of, would Mom ever get her nails done? She was an ok looking mom, but it was like she could care less about those fingertips. Did she just not get it? People judge that sort of thing. And by consequence, Tam...

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“A Drop of Blood” by John De Sousa

Submitted to Contest #214

The end of the world began with a single drop of blood. While not a very large drop, it clung tenaciously to the back of my father’s trousers as he moved around the living room. Bright and wet, the offending blotch had to be fresh. Father was too meticulous about his appearance to have missed it. But his ability to keep the stain sandwiched between himself and the wall of our vacation suite, away from the eyes of the Parisian police was masterful, if not deeply disturbing. He glided from fireplace to stairwell, from window to radiator...

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“Assas-son” by William Simon

Submitted to Contest #214

“Are you joking?? This is a joke. This is a really weird, really bad, really not funny Joke, right?”, said John gesturing to the array of guns and ammunition laid out on the hotel bed. His parents, Antonio and Heather, shook their heads. Nina, his younger sister, lounged on a chair so big she could have curled up and slept on it. She appeared deeply engrossed in her book and was clearly trying to ignore the scene unfolding. John took a pause, “But, assassins……….. that makes no sense. I didn’t even know assassins was like a real thing an...

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“"Dusk"” by Brownbread Fred

Submitted to Contest #214

My wife and I sat watching the grandkids play on the last day of our vacation as the sun was clocking out for the day. They were swinging from an outcropping into the lake on a rope, blaring music from their boomboxes, laughing as they splashed into the green lake. My wife nudged me with her elbow and motioned for me to look to the left of the splashing, where the sun was about to meet its reflection in the lake's mirror surface. "It's beautiful, don't you think?" she said as she placed her hand on my thigh. I looked at her thin, sharp fa...

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“That One Summer” by Holi D

Submitted to Contest #214

The fresh, salty air… I smelled as I sat on the beach, listening to the waves crash, it was so nice, and so much better than back home. The summer was coming to an end, as we were going to go back to Massachusetts tomorrow. Every summer, my family, and my moms’ best-friends’ family stay somewhere new. This year, it was Miami, Florida. This summer was going perfectly. The weather was very balmy. How could anyone want it to end? Especially when we go back, it's time for school, and I need to get a job. “What are you doing, loser?!” I heard my...

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“Left the 99” by Winnoa Bird

Submitted to Contest #214

Left the 99 I pressed my face up against the window with a joyous squeal as trees and neighborhoods blurred past me. My sister Bridget, just as overly excited, was hopping on her booster seat, grinning so hard you could see the missing space of her first tooth. “Alright you two!” my mom laughed from the passenger seat. “Settle down or you will be exhausted by the time we get to the airport to meet your Aunt Kim.” Uh oh! We cannot have that now! I used every ounce of self-control my 10-year-old body could muster and sat down. My sister...

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“Dear Anya” by Caoimhe McG

Submitted to Contest #214

Dear Anya, Your eyes were blue, weren’t they? The colour of a hundred uninterrupted summers at the lake, its shallow waters forever churning under the persistent, gleeful splashing of tiny feet at the water’s edge. Or maybe not. They were green, the colour of thousands of leaves bursting overhead silently, a rich emerald canopy so thick the sky couldn’t stick its sapphire head through, however hard it tried. Maybe they weren’t. I now realise that they were brown. You’ll have to excuse me: my memory is not what it use...

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“The Gravity of Summer” by Joseph Kunkle

Submitted to Contest #214

The Gravity of Summer Josie woke in an eerie darkness, where neither starlight, moonbeam, nor sunshine ever entered. The only light is fashioned to the Red Hermit’s head. Grudgingly, he’ll exchange this bottomless darkness for another form of gloom - by dying - by poison. Josie says, “What's that sound?” The Hermit jerks his head. Carbolic light transits away from Josie’s face. It pierces and then hovers like a UFO in the cavernous vault of deception. Something is there. Frozen. In a side drift. A rat? No. It’s a pareidolia articulated f...

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“Finding the Ground” by Taylor Mack

Submitted to Contest #214

There’s something about soft, warm lighting that comforts the soul. Perhaps it’s the coziness it welcomes in, but the feeling seems stronger than that. A sense of safety? Who knows, but it ignites a creative force in the woman. She takes to writing at the desk in her bedroom. This past summer has been the first time in her life she’s felt grounded; the first time she has ever acknowledged her own presence and felt it meant something. Yes, the past months had been some of the most difficult but, more so, they had also been some of the most ...

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“Be Nice Or Else” by Todd Duddka

Submitted to Contest #214

“When the summer started, I knew my mom and dad would be killing people but I never knew how delightful my vacation would be.” Sitting at the laundry mat, bored out of my gourd, I was texting my girlfriend back home but apparently, my internal monologue was turned off because I could tell that the elderly lady next to me, folding her bloomers, suddenly turned her head toward my direction. Oops. That sentence even sounds weird to me so I can only imagine what she was thinking when she heard those words emit from my vocal ...

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“In The Dark” by Low-Key Daddy

Submitted to Contest #214

Submerged in crystal seas, to escape the fervent embrace of the sun; treading velvety carpets of sand, and witnessing the dazzling tapestries of golden sunsets; spectating the matrimony of sun and horizon, one could say I've seen it all. Every seasonal escape I was bestowed from the imprisonment of school, I was often swept away into the arms of a foreign paradise. Tropical beaches, picturesque structures haunted by the memories stored within their walls, and flashing neon lights added yet another piece to the growing puzzle of my ex...

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$250

Prize money

202

Contest entries

94

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Sep 08, 2023 EST

Won by Emily Holding 🏆

Title: Departed, Return

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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