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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#224: Night Owls and Early Birds

I’ve never been much of a night owl. I can stay up late, but always live to regret it the next day, and you’re unlikely to ever find me burning the midnight oil. Instead, if there’s something urgent to attend to, I’d rather do it in the quiet calm of a pre-dawn morning.

It’s interesting how, as a species, our preferences vary so wildly in this regard. Some of us are up and moving before the rest of the world has even rubbed the sleep from their eyes, while some of us rarely are awake during daylight hours. Two people’s waking windows may only overlap at dawn and dusk, before going their separate ways. This week’s prompts are a celebration of the night owls, the early birds, and anything in between.

🥇 Winner

“Goldfish ” by Mallory Jones

🏆 Winner of Contest #224

4 pm Miss Lucy and Dr. Singh are letting me visit my house tonight! Normally I get to go home for twelve hours on holidays, and an aide comes with me to monitor my equipment, but today is different. It’s not a holiday, it’s not my birthday, it’s not even the weekend— but I’m going home! Mommy says Lily will be home too even though she goes to college in Iowa. She’s coming home just for me for my special visit. And Daddy says we’re getting my favorite food ever which is Chinese takeout from The Golden Dragon. I never get to eat Chinese in th...

146 comments 146

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“Major M.K. Grayson V.C.” by Chris Miller

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

“Wake up, Sarge. It’s half-past-four.” Catherine walked away from me across the village green. It was a Sunday in May and we had nothing to do. Swallows cut the clean spring air into cloudless curves. She was carrying her shoes. She looked back at me and opened her mouth to say something. “Sarge! Wake up. It’s half-past-four.” “Thank you, Grayson,” I said, stretching a hand out from my cocoon of grey wool to take back my watch. Grayson was a black shape in the burrow of the dugout. The tiny stove gave off just enough light to ma...

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“Dad Errands” by Audrey Knox

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

These days as an adult, I cannot even convince myself to get out of bed unless I know there is coffee waiting for me. When I go on vacations, I set my alarm by the time the nearest coffee shop to me opens, and I still end up sleeping much later than that because it’s still so far away and how am I supposed to shower, get dressed, dry my hair, and do my makeup without caffeine? I can’t get out of bed without it. Despite all this, I still consider myself a Morning Person. The 5-9am hours are when I am the most productive—as long as that pro...

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“A Mourning Time” by Jean Widner

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

I lie in a dying man’s bed. Awake before dawn as always, these days. My husband snores quietly beside me. I get up and toss on a sweatshirt and tiptoe downstairs. All is silent in the house. Every day I’ve set this pattern as we all have gathered in the vigil of watching my brother-in-law, die. Mike, or Mikey, as we call him, my husband’s best friend and brother - mine too - is winding down his horrific journey with cancer. At only forty-four, for the past eleven years he has endured a gliosarcoma/astrocytoma brain tumor combo (you want fr...

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“Early Bird” by PJ Town

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

If a killer awakes before dawn and puts his boots on – to paraphrase a famous song – you know it means trouble. If the killer happens to be the Slough Slasher, then it's ‘Trouble’ with a capital 'T'.No one knows who the Slough Slasher is, naturally. If they did, then they’d call him by name. But the newspapers like to give serial killers a dramatic moniker. I don’t know which paper coined this one – most probably The Sun or some other tabloid – but it soon caught on and now it’s on everyone’s lips.Especially those belonging to the poor resid...

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“Nature's Soft Nurse” by Mike Isbell

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

NOTE: THIS STORY CONTAINS APOCALYPTIC THEMES AND SOME SLIGHT CURSING.2031 AD01001001/01000011/01000001/01001110/01010100/01010011/01001100/01000101 01000101/01010000Aric leaned over Doctor Drue Bruwell’s shoulder. With his dyslexia, he didn’t even bother trying to make sense of the ones and zeroes.“What did it say?” he asked. Drue stared at the binary digits inquisitively, clearly seeing something within them that Aric could not. Without looking down, she wrote something on a small notepad in front of her. After a long time, she let out...

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“The Masked Trumpeter” by Siegfried Pueblitz

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

The Masked Trumpeter A cloudless night like this Can set the spirit soaring: ...

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This week's prompts

Set your story before dawn. Your character has woken up early for a particular reason.

Fiction – 94 stories

Write a story about two people living together who have opposing sleep cycles, and only cross paths at dawn and dusk.

Character – 49 stories

Start your story with someone saying “I can’t sleep.”

Dramatic – 87 stories

Write a story about someone pulling an all nighter.

Fiction – 35 stories

Write about someone who can’t sleep due to jet lag, and decides to set out and explore their new city at night instead.

Adventure – 20 stories

Stories

“Goldfish ” by Mallory Jones

🏆 Winner of Contest #224

4 pm Miss Lucy and Dr. Singh are letting me visit my house tonight! Normally I get to go home for twelve hours on holidays, and an aide comes with me to monitor my equipment, but today is different. It’s not a holiday, it’s not my birthday, it’s not even the weekend— but I’m going home! Mommy says Lily will be home too even though she goes to college in Iowa. She’s coming home just for me for my special visit. And Daddy says we’re getting my favorite food ever which is Chinese takeout from The Golden Dragon. I never get to eat Chinese in th...

146 comments 146

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“Old Man Buckhart” by David Sweet

Submitted to Contest #224

The mugginess of night receded. A thin veil of blushing daylight clung to dark ridge tops under weakening clouds. A swift storm had moved through a few hours before. In its wake, soft gray shrouds rose among the hollows to greet the gathering dawn like resurrected spirits from some ancient sepulcher, accentuated by the ghostly refrains of an L&N steam engine pulling through nearby London, Kentucky. Lefty lay awake most of the night, mesmerized by the lightning but also lulled to drowsiness from time to time by the rain on the tin roof ...

104 comments 104

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“Confidence Cab” by Michał Przywara

Submitted to Contest #224

The last thing Ren wanted to do was to pull another night shift, but Mr. Driedger politely reminded him about his outstanding debt, and how a payment was due, and “I’m sorry son, but we must all play by the rules,” so Ren parked his cab beside the terminal. He could never say no to Mr. Driedger – his money was the only reason Ren’s sister, Amanda, was still alive. He just prayed they wouldn’t need another surgery. He yawned. When he glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror, all he saw was eye bags and sallow skin. When was the la...

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“That Last Little Piece of Straw” by Aeris Walker

Submitted to Contest #224

I open my eyes to sunlight trickling through the curtains and my little sisters standing in my bedroom doorway. “Mama says you got to wake up. The fire’s going out.”I groan and stumble into a pair of long johns, then head into the living room. Ma is crouched by the woodstove, poking at the dying fire and muttering something under her breath about me getting enough beauty sleep. Both girls are running in circles chanting a nursery rhyme until Kate stops and presses her doll’s face to Ma’s ear, making it pretend to talk in a singsong voice. “M...

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“Night Falls - Day Breaks ” by Livana Teagan

Submitted to Contest #224

T/W: Mentions of sex, suicide, child abuse, mental illness, offensive languageHow many ways are there to suffocate? It’s a question I lock inside a cage in my mind and pretend it isn’t there. I do this on the drive home from work. It’s a mundane trip on the same streets Monday through Thursday. Images of gnarled trees rush past my car windows with twisted arms and sagging bodies. Early morning joggers hit the trails underneath them with spirit in their steps. Toward the end of my commute there’s a pedestrian bridge with an ebony river runnin...

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“Pillow Talk” by Chris Campbell

Submitted to Contest #224

“I can’t sleep… Raymond, I can’t sleep. Are you awake? Raymond?” “I am now.” “I can’t sleep.” “So you keep saying, Meg.” “Help me get to sleep.” “You woke me up just to ask me that?” “I thought you’d want to know.” “How very thoughtful of you. Now, can you please let me get back to sleep?” “But I can’t sleep!” “What do you want me to do about it?” “Can you rub my back, please? You know that always relaxes me.” “I’m tired, Meg, and I was just in the middle of a great dream.” “What was it about?” “I can’t remember.” “Don’t you hate that.” “Wh...

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“Carry Me” by AnneMarie Miles

Submitted to Contest #224

“I can’t sleep,” I whisper.I am seven, standing at the foot of my parent's bed. My father is snoring, and the rain is pounding steadily onto concrete. I imagine the worms coming up for a swim somewhere in the grass.“I can’t sleep,” I say again, but I only hear the bed squeaking as my mother shifts to her other side. I can’t tell her I’m scared. I can’t tell her my brothers shoved me in the linen closet when we were playing hide-and-seek and left me there. It’s dark in my parent’s room, and I know it’s silly, but I am frozen, too scared to ge...

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“Major M.K. Grayson V.C.” by Chris Miller

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

“Wake up, Sarge. It’s half-past-four.” Catherine walked away from me across the village green. It was a Sunday in May and we had nothing to do. Swallows cut the clean spring air into cloudless curves. She was carrying her shoes. She looked back at me and opened her mouth to say something. “Sarge! Wake up. It’s half-past-four.” “Thank you, Grayson,” I said, stretching a hand out from my cocoon of grey wool to take back my watch. Grayson was a black shape in the burrow of the dugout. The tiny stove gave off just enough light to ma...

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“All the Angels, Singing to Me” by Delbert Griffith

Submitted to Contest #224

I stare at the alarm clock. It’s a superfluous thing in my life. I never use it as an alarm clock because I’m always awake before it activates. 3:27 am. I wait and watch. The minutes feel like decades. I wonder – and I do this every morning – why a minute feels like an eon. I won’t get out of bed until it reads 3:30. For some reason, it feels like a sin to be up before 3:30. The clock hits the magical moment and I get out of bed. Sometimes I have an adrenalin rush when I do this, and no coffee is needed, though I still drink unbelievable amo...

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“308 Years Later” by Herman W Clarke

Submitted to Contest #224

“Just listen, don’t talk. You need time to wake up, for your eyesight to return. Everything will be a little hazy and you might not remember how you got here, but you need to focus on my voice. My name is Dr Yadav."I tried to lean forward, but my body felt as if it weighed 100 tonnes. I barely moved an inch before I slumped back into the bed.“This is going to be a lot to hear at once, but it’s important that you know these things right away. In 2043, your body was suspended in an experimental bio-amber, freezing your body until woken. You pa...

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“Sales Pitch” by Amanda Lieser

Submitted to Contest #224

MLM spoof with a twist. You’ve been warned. Molly pushed open the door of the conference room. It was a loud, heavy, metal one that left her fingers smelling of dust. She brushed them on her colorful leggings. The conference room wasn’t well lit, but it was in a cheap motel on the side of the highway, so Molly hadn’t expected much. It smelled of stale coffee and sugary pastries that were piled like faux gold on the table pressed against one wall. Sadie turned and smiled at her. The women embraced each other. “Thanks for comin’ out, Beau...

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“Hang It On The Moon” by Mary Bendickson

Submitted to Contest #224

Hang It On The Moon There was once a little girl born under a waning crescent moon. Her father, an amateur artist, presented her mother with a custom hand-painted art work of the infant sound asleep cuddled on the arch. The picture hung over her bed all of her childhood years. She carried it to her college dorm room and to her first home when she started adulting on her own with the first job of her career as a space scientist. While others romanticized about the full moon she felt an unwavering attachment to that slender hook of a moon. Per...

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“Dad Errands” by Audrey Knox

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

These days as an adult, I cannot even convince myself to get out of bed unless I know there is coffee waiting for me. When I go on vacations, I set my alarm by the time the nearest coffee shop to me opens, and I still end up sleeping much later than that because it’s still so far away and how am I supposed to shower, get dressed, dry my hair, and do my makeup without caffeine? I can’t get out of bed without it. Despite all this, I still consider myself a Morning Person. The 5-9am hours are when I am the most productive—as long as that pro...

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“Jasmin's Panacea” by Tom Skye

Submitted to Contest #224

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny …” — Isaac Asimov After thirteen hours of work and forty-seven minutes of sleep, Jasmin peeled her forehead off the desk and sat back in her chair. The glare of dawn through the window dazzled her momentarily before she lowered her eyes and began rebuttoning her lab coat. As she rose from her seat, she shrugged away the aches and stiffness from her shoulders and neck and walked across the laboratory, muttering under...

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“Third Shift” by Jonathan Page

Submitted to Contest #224

“Third Shift,” Jimmy says. “Up and attem.” I rise from my bunk and dress. Jimmy trudges through the bunkhouse jackhammering the wooden paneling with his heavy steel-tipped combat boots. The last rays of divine light dim to a palette of unnumberable oranges, sunset crashing through the bunkhouse windows. The bunkhouse is like that. Noise and beauty. Frenzy and leisure. Holies play cards, watch videos, and chat at the feet of the bunks, while their brothers sleep just feet away.“Big night tonight, moonie,” Jimmy says. “You’ve got two souls to ...

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$250

Prize money

285

Contest entries

135

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Nov 17, 2023 EST

Won by Mallory Jones 🏆

Title: Goldfish

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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