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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#220: Out of Place

The air’s beginning to chill and goosebumps are rising on your skin like mushrooms on a log. With Halloween not far off, everything’s beginning to feel a little… strange. It’s got me thinking about all things odd, and one of the most unsettling sensations of all — noticing something that’s out of place.

From things that shouldn’t be where they are, to protagonists far from home, this week’s prompts explore the bizarre, and the uncanny feeling of things being where they don’t belong.

This week's prompts

Start your story with a character walking through a desert landscape, when they stumble across something unexpected. “That shouldn’t be there,” they muse.

Dialogue – 50 stories

You arrive at a destination you promised an old friend you’d visit after they passed, only to find them there too.

Mystery – 65 stories

As a child you’re helping your grandparent bake. When you’re sent to the pantry to fetch an ingredient, you discover something odd.

Mystery – 41 stories

Begin your story with a protagonist taking shelter under a bridge during a thunderstorm. An animal scurries past which shouldn’t exist. Against their better judgment, they decide to follow it out.

Fantasy – 50 stories

You’re awakened from your nap by someone asking, “Are you hungry?”. You fell asleep somewhere else entirely.

Mystery – 45 stories

Stories

“Under the Rock” by Fernanda Prieto

Submitted to Contest #220

Under the rock. By Fernanda Prieto I walk down a little sand mountain, well, not walk, just letting myself fall, so it feels like surfing. Once I am down, I go directly to my favorite spot, a big rock in the middle of all this nothing. When I have finally sat down, and placed my umbrella in the little hole I have cut in the stone with several days of work in the past, and taken out all my snacks and books out of my back pack, I breathe better. I’ll take my diary out of my pocket in a few minutes. I really need it, especially today, I...

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“Don't Tempt the Sky” by Anise Kaljmyer

Submitted to Contest #220

Not again. Many sharp rocks are lying guiltily on the path behind my bike, too many to accurately identify the culprit responsible for the hole in my front tire. Some shortcut that was. Making the practical choice is not in your DNA, you say. Well, this is good evidence. Yet how is it that your mother’s impractical choices led to heroism, and yours just lead to inconvenience? I take off my helmet and pull up the hood of my coat. At least my ears won’t freeze now. I straighten up my bike and start walking it towards the observatory. ...

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“Ice-Sand and Glass” by Nik Alxndr

Submitted to Contest #220

Windswept grains of coarse blue-black sand pelted Liam's layered bung-bison pelt coat and thick scarf. Granules rained horizontally on the goggles he inherited from Elder uncle Myro. The straps had been recut from cured hide, but the glass was too old to put a number to it. Countless family members had worn it, until death or retirement. “Oye! Why are you out here? This is my section!” That voice; Dirk Skymark was working the ice-sands too. Of course, he was. “Sand doesn't have sections Skymark. Just as how the sky doesn't have marks, but h...

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“Forgotten Flowers” by Lark Bailey

Submitted to Contest #220

Matilda was quieter than usual on the way to the hospital. Normally, she loved long car rides with her husband, as it meant a chance to catch up with her better half without the interruption of one of her toddlers demanding every quarter-ounce of her focus. Even now, seven years after their wedding, she still craved that unstructured time with Will, that time when they had nothing but time, before the twins changed everything. There was no question of the depths of her love for her beautiful family, of course. Those two little girl...

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“An Old Friend” by Jared Meeker

Submitted to Contest #220

Warning: mild bloody imagery I finally arrived at the small wooden cabin at the top of the mountain where Jay and I were hiking two years ago. I couldn’t help but recall the incident in my head–his broken legs, his screams of pain, the blood on his clothes and on my hands. I almost stopped at the base of the mountain, thinking about what had happened almost caused me to break down right then and there. He had been my closest friend for many, many years, and to see him die in my arms had, admittedly, traumatized me. I can still remember t...

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“Before It Gets You” by D. G. Knies

Submitted to Contest #220

Gravel crunched beneath his tires as he pulled to a stop in the empty lot. It took a few tries to build the momentum to exit the car. He stood, taking a few deep breaths. Jason tried to gather himself, but how could he? It hadn’t even been a week since they buried Nathan, and just thinking of what happened to him tied Jason’s stomach in knots. Wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, he blinked away tears and took a determined step toward the graveyard. He tried to distract his mind by thinking back to the reason he’d come he...

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“Breaking Bread with the Past” by Liz Lallak

Submitted to Contest #220

---(SENSITIVE subject matter about the Holocaust) The foul odor is overwhelming and inescapable, and it is one of my earliest memories. The smell is indescribable, and it clings to my clothes and permeates the walls like an evil spirit guarding its territory. The putrid smell comes from the strange ingredients my grandmother Astrid uses in her family's secret bread recipe, which she keeps in a high cupboard out of reach. She sifts the fine powder from an old mason jar and grinds the harder bits down the garbage disposal to produc...

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“The trip” by Kina Niboroh

Submitted to Contest #220

“Why can’t I go? Is it because it is too expensive? I don’t understand why Mother is so against it! She says I should concentrate on my studies instead! But I am already a good student and I keep telling her this language trip to Germany can only be beneficial for my future. Please Grandma, be on my side for once! After all, she is your daughter, you must know a way to make her change her mind? All my friends are going, I have to go too.” Feeling somewhat sorry for myself, I was now calmly perched on a stool by the rustic table in Gr...

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“Caretakers” by Jon Kaplan

Submitted to Contest #220

I didn’t know it at the time, but Grandma Stevens was getting me ready to take on a new role. I’m still not sure why it was me and not one of my siblings, her other grandchildren or her own children. I suppose that, in time, I may learn why. After all, there are many things that haven’t yet been revealed to me. I’m learning to be okay with that. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I loved going to my grandparents house. It was a magical place, especially when we were all little kids. I probably started going when I was a baby, but I started h...

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“Never Too Sweet” by Samayra Slade

Submitted to Contest #220

Gran taught me all I know about baking. She was the best baker in the world, as far as my family was concerned. As far as I was concerned. I found myself in the kitchen with Gran most weekends, learning all the secrets and tricks to making the ideal peach cobbler. I enjoyed baking, but I think it was only because it was a reason to spend the day with Gran. I enjoyed telling her about my day and watching her face light up as she told me of her own youth, before she met my grandfather. This day was such a day, and she was going to teach me how...

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“A Day of Rage” by Kevin Calder

Submitted to Contest #220

Six months out of the year, it doesn’t rain at all here. Then one day to your astonishment, heavy drops begin to fall. First only one, then another. You hold your breath in reality-check mode as if that’s all it takes to silence the world. Two more hit the ground, so hard they almost shake the earth—footsteps of a dinosaur upon catching your pheromones all the way from a chapter not yet written, the chapter about you.So much is a matter of time and place in the Lebanon. For example, after a fiery, cloudless summer, when the rain appears, ima...

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“Kendra's Discovery” by Andrea Corwin

Submitted to Contest #220

I’m screaming in between the cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning. Spears of fire are hitting the ground in rapid staccato strikes and split an Elm tree nearby. Lightning hits the edge of the bank and the creaky metal bridge. One strike lands in the river, sending an electrical current through the water and into a metal girder of the bridge. I can hear the hissing; the electrical current moves like an arrow, the steel brightening like a branding iron. I am sobbing, hugging my knees, totally immobile from fright...

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“Storms and Anxiety” by Matthew Morse

Submitted to Contest #220

A bead of water collided with a page of the book that Ben was reading, exploding with a pip and shattering outward in a tiny circle. It was followed by one, two, three … several more drops which was beginning to dampen both pages rather quickly. “Ah frick!” Ben griped, swatting away as many droplets as he could before slamming the book shut and wedging it up into his armpit to shield it from further damage. Ben rolled his eyes and sighed as he began thinking about all of the books on his shelves back home. Some with warped, wavy covers and...

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“Trauma Bonding” by Sylvia McDonald

Submitted to Contest #220

The girls trip I waited months for was finally here! Growing up a southern girl in Mississippi, nature was indeed calling me! After Being in New York for so long I really had begun to miss the country life. I moved to NY fresh out of high school, because I was offered my dream job before I even graduated at a very popular I.T. company called "Logic I.T". One of the youngest CFO's the company has had. Who would have thought, me, Kita Chase, would be a CFO? That was 4 years ago. My parents hated the idea of me moving A 1,000 miles away to work...

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“Eating Him” by Rachel Bunting

Submitted to Contest #220

Eating Him I’m not a day sleeper. I have to be almost dead to have that luck. On New Years Eve day, 2015, I was indeed almost that dead. We were at a dinner party that should have led straight into tipsy, midnight countdowns, yet today, a wisdom tooth was making the calls. Specifically, tooth #32, lower right molar. After I arrived and took my coat into the bedroom, the host was showing us her ice cream machine and explaining that she’d made gelato with crushed nuts in it. I was standing there, a thirty-two ...

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$250

Prize money

251

Contest entries

129

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Oct 20, 2023 EST

Won by D. Grimes 🏆

Title: Fae Touched

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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