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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

“Live at the Five Spot” by Marty B

Submitted to Contest #224

Ethan assumed he dreamt the jazz club and the beautiful woman, until he saw the revolver on the floor of the basement. He looked down at his hand, his knuckles scraped and raw, and smiled. It had all started because of the damn gray wall. Earlier that morning, he had stood at the edge of the basement, blinking the sleep away. Four hours only made it worse somehow, his body craved rest. The basement, cluttered with scraps of metal and wood, stank of damp mold, bringing back memories of high school...

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“Crepuscular” by Louise Rock-West

Submitted to Contest #224

Crepuscular I wake, phone alarm jangling, covered in a sheen of sweat. The jagged edges of a bad dream still keenly felt, but the details fading. I hate sleeping, but somehow it always claims me for a few erratic hours before dawn. I sit up, take a few calming breaths, snatch up my water, turned night-metallic in the glass. I grimace at the taste. Reaching for my running clothes, I dress quickly in the lonely bedroom. A few moments later, I’m out the front door, affixing a wide band over my fringe and pulling the rest into ...

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“Passing Ships in Parallel Lives” by Sarah Martyn

Submitted to Contest #224

When you get married, you have this naive expectation that you’ll just cuddle a lot, see each other in constant quality time, and have ideal work schedules that never conflict with meals and date nights. Not so much. Maybe at first, but not for long. It’s brief and sporadic at best. It’s not naive in the way that in marriage (as you share a home and combine lives) you will inevitably rub shoulders and keep company more often, but you forget that adulting and real life interrupt those moments more often the older you get. *** “Hon...

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“Soon” by Eric St. Pierre

Submitted to Contest #224

“I can’t sleep” Abigail muttered. The clock said it was 3:15am. Abigail was not happy about this. She climbed out of bed and headed towards the bathroom for the third time that night. Abigail was eight months, three weeks, and two days pregnant, and she felt it. With the baby due within a matter of days she was having all sorts of trouble sleeping. If it wasn’t a full bladder that troubled her it was cramps or back pain. Carrying a developing human being for several months had put a great deal of strain on her back. Abigail was ready to...

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“The New New World” by Josephine Harris

Submitted to Contest #224

r/OuterSpace2000 - Posted by u/BaseTrekker 12 hours ago Anybody out there? I can’t sleep.Relief crew is overdue. We’re supposed to swap out every two weeks. They haven’t arrived and I haven’t heard anything. What’s worse is I’m by myself. The navigator got sick. They turned around and took him straight back home when they dropped me off. Ground control just says solution on its way. Hang in there. I’ve adjusted the heat...

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“George Hides from a Shark” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #224

The shark has promised that when George leaves the church, it will swallow him up. George sits in one of the pews and tries to remember a prayer from childhood. He believes he knows the standard ones, but he’d like something more specific to his current situation. While he knows there is definitely not a prayer about being trapped in a church while a Great White Shark waits outside, he seems to recall a prayer about an enemy at the door. A long night of the soul. Suffering and sleeplessness. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and George ...

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“Covert Exploration” by JR Lane

Submitted to Contest #224

She rolled over in the lumpy, twin-size bed. A splitting headache from the dehydration made it impossible to relax. She sat up, took another big gulp of her water bottle, and looked down at her agency-issued Tudor watch. The illuminated watch hands read 12:15 a.m. Her mind told her it was still 4:15 p.m. back in Washington, D.C. She walked over to the window and drew back the blackout curtains, exposing the warm glow of the Arabian metropolis below. Lively banter between shawarma vendors and hungry customers produced a steady backdrop o...

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“Whose Girl?” by Kaitlyn Wadsworth

Submitted to Contest #224

“Why do you want to see him again? We’ve been going out for six months and now you’ve arranged to meet with your ex? I just don’t get you, Verity. Everything is going so well between us.”Verity twisted in her seat. She had never said anything nice about her ex, Laurence. “He pleaded with me to have dinner with him. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told him to meet me at Healthy Cravings, where you work. He doesn’t even know about you. I’ll feel perfectly safe if you are there.”“What about him? If he upsets you, I’ll want to go over and knoc...

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“The Humming Cicada” by Jorge Soto

Submitted to Contest #224

“I can’t sleep.”The man tossed around under the sheets, tried every segment of his pillow, and contorted his body to several adventurous yoga shapes in an effort to quell the restlessness.Finally, he called it. Looking at his watch to determine the precise time of death, it read: 1:42 AM. The fight was over, so like other nights, he retreated onto his back with his hands folded over his chest, looking at the ceiling blankly. Now in his 5th year of living alone, he had taken to the habit of occasionally talking to himself. If a thought v...

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“Freddy the Frog” by Janet Severn

Submitted to Contest #224

Freddy the Frog was very sick. He perched on the rail of the Corniche and looked out at the dark water. Frogs are supposed to like water, but seeing that much of it always confused Freddy. He always felt it looked threatening, like a monster waiting to rise up and eat him. He would stare at it for hours, waiting for it to attack him.There were some panthers walking behind him. And some monkeys, and buffalo too, going down the pathway of the Corniche. Sometimes, when he was on a ledge like this, animals would push him from behind and into the...

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“Clara and Joshua” by Kate Hughes

Submitted to Contest #224

Clara‘I can’t sleep’ came a voice from the other side of the bed.‘I know darling’ I replied, placing my hand softly on his shoulder. Josh had a big presentation in the morning and had been like this all week. More anxious than usual, restless, and perhaps I was imagining it but quieter in the evenings too. Tonight, we had tried everything I could come up with to encourage just one night of undisturbed sleep. I’d made our favourite meatballs (which had required two trips to the shop and an ...

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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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“Dreams & Nightmares” by Jack Keenan

Submitted to Contest #224

“I can't sleep.” Jaemi spoke the words out into the void as if they might come corporeal and fetch out an answer, a solution to her insomnia from the hidden corners of shadow around her, but no such answer came. She sat curled up in her bed, her knees to her chin, just as she had ended up on the many nights that came before this one. Her eyes stung. Her body felt slow, laden with the lack of rest. Her hearing oversensitive, on alert despite her safety and need for sleep, picking up every slight noise as if her ears were those of a skit...

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“Our boy” by Becca Jane

Submitted to Contest #224

“I won’t sleep tonight.” Audrey says, throwing her purse across the room and tossing herself right on top the couch. She goes crashing into the cushions with a smile. Audrey’s husband, Anthony, sighs, finishing up the dishes in the kitchen, “Why not, honey?” ”Because.” Anthony chuckles, sliding a clean plate on the dish rack, “That’s not the answer I was looking for,” He says, “That’s not an answer at all, actually.” Audrey huffs, peeking her head over the the couch, face barely seen, “Because my baby’s gonna be on TV tonight. I ca...

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“Our Son” by Andrew Gibbons

Submitted to Contest #224

Content Note: This is a story placed during contemporary times, in a fictional America at war with itself. At its core it’s a family war drama, that being said this story will mention and describe gun/knife violence, and what one would describe as evil actions against men, women, children, elderly and disabled (nothing sexual at all). War crimes, plain and simple. I feel they are necessary when discussing a mature theme like war and how it changes people, how we think of family. My intent was to do so in an artistically necessary and tastefu...

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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.

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