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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.

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

“Smoothing Wrinkles In The Dark” by Asa P

Submitted to Contest #224

Somewhere in or near Seoul circa 2011“There are others who are sleeping in this room.” Mr. A called from the doorway. Without asking what he was talking about, I ceased my grunting and teeth grinding. It took some effort on my part as I struggled to hold my jaws apart. Like many things in my short but rather intense life of 15 or 16 years, depending on the aging system used, it was an unconscious quirk. I folded my two blankets, one to lay on on the spartan room’s floor and the other to cover my exhausted body during my brief sweat-dren...

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“A Dog's Thoughts” by Chris Baum

Submitted to Contest #224

It was 4 AM. I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing after a vivid dream of which I could remember only fragments. Everyone else was asleep—my wife, the kids and the dog. Normally we all got up at 5:30 on the weekdays since we lived way out in cow country but today was Saturday. No alarms were set on the weekends. I didn’t want a headache and knew I would get one if I even tried to stay in bed. So, I quietly crept downstairs and got some cold water from the fridge to coat my somewhat dry throat and got the coffee brewing. When I sat down in t...

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“The Darkness is Light” by Jennifer Stowell

Submitted to Contest #224

Euphoria, such a genius word to describe the type of happiness most people strive to attain. I am one of the lucky ones who experiences it daily. It would not seem so while waking up before dawn, the outside world still dark and quiet. There are parts of my day which do not seem very euphoric, especially when I first meet new people, but it never takes long for others to see why my job is better than it seems. Two years have passed since I began this job and journey. I can’t say I technically asked to do this, but when you’re specifically ...

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“The Nest” by Ora Lawrence

Submitted to Contest #224

I passed the nest every night.So I said that to the stranger: a sort of young thing. “These owls have lived here longer than me. Isn’t that perfect?”The park bench stretched wide between us while she waited for the bus, probably surprised to be confronted by an unfamiliar, older man. Her wide, glossy eyes told me it was more fear than wonder. Apprehension, maybe. Old fabric creaked as I sank further into the wooden bench, holding my binoculars up again. There they sat, high up in a moonlit oak tree, taller than any barn or building in t...

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“Why Am I Awake?” by Rae Perrin

Submitted to Contest #224

Why am I awake? I am an early bird but every morning my internal alarm clock opens my eyes during the 4 o’clock hour and I just didn’t understand why. My husband has already left for work and I have the entire bed to myself but for some reason, I can’t enjoy this time by sleeping until my actual alarm clocks goes off at 7am. So again, why am I awake this early every morning? Is it the millions of things I have on my mind that consists of bills that need to be paid, my son’s basketball schedule, my business that is definitely in the vall...

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“Sisyphus' List” by Brett Kube

Submitted to Contest #224

When his hand autonomously reached to snooze his phone’s 5:00am alarm, it encountered the sticky note he’d stuck on the screen the night before in anticipation of this moment. With the blurred eyes and clumsy movements of a delicate newborn, he peeled the sticky note off his phone and read what last night’s guilty conscience wrote to this morning’s beleaguered reality: “Get out of bed and get your shit together.” He had been unemployed for months now, and this was the first time he’d woken up before dawn since the last day of his old jo...

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“A WORN SPOT ON THE PAVEMENT” by Regina Martin

Submitted to Contest #224

I can't sleep... I sit motionless, in front of an abandoned brick storefront, occupying the same spot of pavement, for the longest six months of my life. I keep my eyes cast downward, focusing on the gaping hole in the toe of my frayed sneaker, so as not to notice people passing by, staring so blatantly. I pretend these stares are warranted because I am an attractive human being, even though I know differently. These stares are really an inquisition as to why a young woman is sitting here, without a home to call her own, with an old, rusted ...

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“A not-so-run-of-the-mill hero ” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #224

At 7 p.m. on the dot, Herbert Brown, age thirty-eight, a surveillance officer at NoIntrusion Inc., opens the door to the control room and settles down for the night shift. Although the title sounds imposing, Hebert will only press buttons, watch fifty monitors, and try to stay awake for the next twelve hours. Because, frankly, the job is mind-numbing. Since he started three months ago, no would-be intruder has tripped off a single alarm in any of the Montecito, Santa Barbara mansions he is tasked with watching. The combination of sp...

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“there's this tree.” by Mira H

Submitted to Contest #224

There’s this tree. A fig tree. Awful stuff, really. I learned about the tree in high school English, the hardened plastic of a decades-old chair digging into my spine as I picked through the pages of another mandatory reading. Sylvia Plath and her bell jar. Obnoxious chewing on my left. A dirty sneaker balanced precariously against the metal legs supporting my weight. Sylvia was now speaking to a generation of young kids who couldn’t give two shits. I rolled my eyes and counted down the minutes to lunch, bored. And then I fell...

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“SLEEPWALKERS” by Henry Harris

Submitted to Contest #224

SLEEPWALKERS Russell Overstreet awakened before dawn to a brave new world. He could barely sleep. A libertarian candidate had never been elected President of the United States. He smiled wistfully as he sat on his king-sized bed, propped against its headboard. As campaign manager for the President elect, he played a key role in the historic victory. Now, he could finally relax after an arduous campaign that propelled his friend and libertarian candidate, Prince Witherspoon, to the highest office in the land. I...

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“Awake” by Morgana Lightraven

Submitted to Contest #224

It's always the same story. Three am in the morning, pitch dark outside, and I fall awake. It seems funny to say it that way, but it happens EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, like clockwork. No need to look at the clock to see what time it is, although I must admit that I did, at first. Now, there's really no need. In the beginning, I thought of it as a mystery, and wondered at the punctuality of the time when it happened. Now I see how it is. To elucidate for those who may not know it, the hours between two and five in the morning, those early hours b...

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“The Devil's Hour” by Joseph Cillo Jr

Submitted to Contest #224

A sacrifice of twins, at the devil’s hour, on the night of a second moon, an incantation in ancient Samarian, in a demonic dialect unuttered since the time of the flood—the ingredients for a most dangerous spell. He had used a discernment spell to discover its meaning—the curse of death and fire. He, High Wizard of the Western Coven, would dispense with that meddler in the person of the Carpenter and the chapel he had consecrated across the street from the unholy temple of the coven, the clinic.When last had the ancient words been uttered? H...

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“Cold Silence” by Lenester Williams

Submitted to Contest #224

Crash! Marcus shoots up in bed scanning his dark room, only slightly illuminated by the glow of the streetlight outside. His eyes shift over to his alarm clock resting on the nightstand reading 5:15. He knew there was no reason for anyone to be awake at this time. HomeAlone was fresh in his mind from the night before, so the idea of an intruder sent a chill down his spine. “Dad!” No one called back to him. His imagination began to run wild with the worse possibilities. Even that his parents may be in danger, but he was a kid what could he ...

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“An Old Habit For a Young Boy” by Emma MacDonnell

Submitted to Contest #224

5:30 am. That's what time the stupid damn dog gets me up at. 5:30 am. Everyday. Of every week. “Come on, ye stupid dog. Get outside.” But I know he’s at the door already, I ain't even gotta look. I didn't want the damn dog, never did. For my twelfth birthday I wanted a motorbike, the big neon green ones that you could drive through off-wheeling in the woods. But no, here's a dumb dog for you, Sawyer, that you have to take care of Sawyer, that you have to feed and walk and train and look after so you can’t hang out with those no-good...

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“Back to the Sun” by Sage M.

Submitted to Contest #224

I am not an early riser. Not in the productive sense anyway. I’m an insomniac, so if I manage to sleep at all it’s inconsistent and rarely restful in the way I wish it was. I have never been able to be an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type of person. I have never even been able to be a consistent night owl, staying up late and sleeping in. I sleep when I can, and when my brain allows, and then I usually wake up feeling no better than when I fell asleep. Today, this doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I slept fitfully and that I’m not even s...

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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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