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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#255: The Five Stages

It's a commonly held belief that, when we grieve a loss, we go through five emotional phases: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Science tends to disagree; there's no actual evidence that we go through these stages, or at least not in a neat, linear fashion. But despite this, the model remains a part of our popular consciousness, and is frequently referenced in art, literature, and day-to-day conversation — perhaps because the idea of having a map to our grief, a way to organize and compartmentalize our most complicated feelings, is so alluring.

This week's contest is inspired by the model, and by the feelings described within it. Your characters don't have to be grieving a loss of some kind; they may simply be navigating the challenges of life in general. Whichever route you choose, begin with one of the five stages.

🥇 Winner

“Some Peace and Quiet” by Phoebe Barr

🏆 Winner of Contest #255

For the record, I really wasn’t trying to kill myself. I know what it looks like. I grew up in the northeast; I should have known the dangers of a February night and a lakeshore buried in snow. I do remember being little, maybe five years old, and hearing my parents (bright, young, sober) discussing a boy who had frozen to death by my school. They said it was a soft, painless way to go, and that was what made February dangerous: you felt, there at the end, like you were calm and safe and even warm. You had to be smart to keep yourself from s...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“Cheers, Mom.” by Trudy Jas

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

Cheers, Mom. One morning before sun-up, I stand in the shower shampoo threatening to drip in my eyes, my heart sinks, my gut clenches and cold sweat breaks out all over my body, only to be mercifully washed away. The thought, ‘Oh, my god! I have to do this 35 more years’, paralyzes me with fear, loathing and despair. I, a virtual princess, should not have to suffer through thirty-five years of indentured servitude. I had, to my surprise, allowed myself to be swept up in the idea of a professional education, never fully understanding that I’d...

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“The red tie” by Sally Atl

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

For the last fifteen years of our marriage, my husband always wore the same blue tie. Today, however, when he appeared for breakfast, he was wearing a different color. He sat opposite me and grabbed a fork. I stared at the tie. Red, so alarmingly bright. It was bothering me. “Everything alright?” he asked. It was not a big deal. Maybe I had just gotten too used to seeing that blue tie and didn’t like the change. But inside me, a small voice protested. “Yeah,” I said and took a sip of orange juice. It left a bitter aftertaste. I tried to eat ...

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“A Guide to Surviving Your Corporate Execution” by AR R

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

The first thing you'll think about today is how Monday is the Ringo Starr of days—often overlooked, but essential to making something important whole.But on this particular Monday, with layoffs looming at the company you work for, instead of letting the burden of this knowledge combined with the perennial angst of shuttling kids to school and getting yourself situated for another week of laborious meetings and sports practices and dance recitals, you will make the spontaneous decision to be extra patient. Instead of dreading the number of ho...

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“Mandy Could Shoot” by Frances Gaudiano

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

Mandy could shoot. She could shoot better than any girl she ever met, any man too, but you didn’t go around telling men that. Men around here wouldn’t date a girl that was better than them and she did like going out on dates – getting all dolled up with her best outfit and putting on make-up. She liked when they picked her up in their newly cleaned truck and took her to dinner, or the cinema and they paid her way. Men around here were old-fashioned. That was fine with her. She’d smile, showing off the dimple in her left cheek and say, ‘Sure ...

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“The Silence and The Noise” by Carol Stewart

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

***References to violence, hints of sexual abuse of minors***Reach a certain age, and who doesn’t wish for the quiet life? Peace and calm and tranquility, no bumps in the road, no dramatic spikes. You left all those behind you in your youth, glad as you were to step from that roller-coaster ride and take your place behind the wheel of your brand new family saloon which the kids think smells like balloons, and in which your wife (your second, much sweeter but less exciting wife) proudly sits, as you cruise along the straight and narrow, A to ...

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“The Gravity of Being Upright” by Akhilesh Mehra

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

I think it had started to happen a long time back—bit by bit—but I only noticed it this morning. Gravity was dead. Like Queen Elizabeth. Both of them. Yesterday, it was just Anurag bhaiya’s little music box—a walnut cuboid with burnt-umber filigree on its corners, and a knob the size of my fingernail to play Christina Perri’s You Are My Sunshine—floating a few inches above his desk. Today, it was me. I woke up to find myself levitating. It wasn’t as fun as Miss Dua Lipa may have led you to believe. It felt more like demonic possession than a...

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“Wardrobe Space” by Sharon Williams

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

As she drove down the slip road onto the dual carriageway Nic said, ‘Pick a space. Accelerate or slow down into it.’With a little hesitation, she joined the stream of traffic and was wedged between a white transit behind her and a mini in front, other vehicles moved rapidly past in the fast lane. ‘Only a couple of junctions and then you reach the turn-off.’She was gripping the steering wheel tightly and could feel...

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This week's prompts

Write a story about a someone who's in denial.

Character – 68 stories

Write a story about anger.

Angst – 64 stories

Center your story around a character bargaining for something that's important to them.

Dramatic – 43 stories

Start your story with a character in despair.

Dark – 91 stories

Write a story about someone finding acceptance.

Character – 99 stories

Stories

“Some Peace and Quiet” by Phoebe Barr

🏆 Winner of Contest #255

For the record, I really wasn’t trying to kill myself. I know what it looks like. I grew up in the northeast; I should have known the dangers of a February night and a lakeshore buried in snow. I do remember being little, maybe five years old, and hearing my parents (bright, young, sober) discussing a boy who had frozen to death by my school. They said it was a soft, painless way to go, and that was what made February dangerous: you felt, there at the end, like you were calm and safe and even warm. You had to be smart to keep yourself from s...

Read story

“Grieving Yourself” by Harry Stuart

Submitted to Contest #255

Richard had ignored the signs. His had been a demise that crept upon him slowly, his self-worth stolen in the lonely work hours, validation kept from him at home. If it wasn’t the expectations of his career peeling back the last of his resolve, it was his high-strung wife with her exhaustive demands. She taxed him to the brink of collapse. His three children had pushed him to the edges of bankruptcy with their private schools, designer clothes, and rehab stints. He loved them, but they had drifted from his reach, caught in the rip current of...

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“Jane Says” by Hazel Ide

Submitted to Contest #255

CW: Suicide, addiction, sexual assaultI had no idea at the time that I was falling in love with a dying man.Head resting on the glass window pane as I drove silently through the night, he slurred more to himself than to me, "St. Christopher sent you. You're my very own patron saint. I don't deserve you."The more he mumbled in appreciation, the more I wanted to scream. He was right about one thing, he didn't deserve me. A few years clean when we met, I didn’t know he struggled with a lifelong addiction until he relapsed. By then, it was too l...

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“Gorephans” by Derrick M Domican

Submitted to Contest #255

A day.Mummy and Daddy left me. They went away and left me on my own, in this scary place with sharp and spiky stones that stab my feet. I don’t want to cry, on this beach, if it is a beach, because the only sound is that of pebbles crunching beneath my toes and my voice sounds weird, like an echo. There’s nothing to see except the wispy grey fog that folds around me. It feels like I’m by the sea, because of the stones and that disgusting, salty smell, but I can’t hear any waves or people splashing. If it is the seaside, a boring s...

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“Cheers, Mom.” by Trudy Jas

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #255

Cheers, Mom. One morning before sun-up, I stand in the shower shampoo threatening to drip in my eyes, my heart sinks, my gut clenches and cold sweat breaks out all over my body, only to be mercifully washed away. The thought, ‘Oh, my god! I have to do this 35 more years’, paralyzes me with fear, loathing and despair. I, a virtual princess, should not have to suffer through thirty-five years of indentured servitude. I had, to my surprise, allowed myself to be swept up in the idea of a professional education, never fully understanding that I’d...

Read story

“She's okay, she loves me” by Julia Buzdygan

Submitted to Contest #255

The plans I had today were important to me, but I knew I couldn’t go until I cleaned up a little in the flat first. I started with the bathroom - the shower had sick in it from last night, so I rinsed it with water first and then sprayed with bathroom cleaner. It was lucky I still had a face mask in one of the drawers that I could put on, as the smell was awful in there.I quickly wiped the toilet and squeezed the last bits of bleach inside. Then moved onto the sink, wiped the limescale as much as I could, and rinsed the cloth.As I walked out...

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“My Father's Words” by Daniel R. Hayes

Submitted to Contest #255

“When life throws you crackers, you have to deal with the crumbs.” Straight from my father’s lips to my inner soul, I never understood the meaning of those words until now. He first said them to me on the banks of the Tygart Valley River on a cool summer morning just before the humid heat had a chance to bake the day. The fish weren’t biting, and I remember icy daggers stabbing my heart. Somehow, he knew how I felt. “It’s okay,” he would say. “It’s not about the fish.” I remember those long walks home after a hectic day at Jennings ...

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“Rain Moon Dreamer Writes About Visitors from the Afterlife ” by Kristi Gott

Submitted to Contest #255

Journal Entry -My growing puppy, Coos Bay Bear, smiles at me. His white teeth are gleaming and light shines from his eyes, framed by his midnight fur. His tail waves and I smile back at him. Coos makes every day playful and joyful.The air of a light breeze feels cool on my skin. We are hiking in the rainforest wilderness, next to a smooth lake, at the foot of the steep mountains.The light wind bears fragrances of salty sea air and fir boughs. A stream bubbles and laughs over smooth river rocks. The afternoon light is turning golden. This wee...

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“Marlie In The Darkness” by Myranda Schustz

Submitted to Contest #255

Everything is black behind Marlie’s eyes. She was floating in the blackness, the darkness, the nothing. She was nothing anymore. Terrible things lurked here in the darkness, she could hear them moving around her. She tries to scream but the blackness has no ears to hear her. She begins to struggle as she realizes that she can’t breathe. She tries to inhale but she chokes on the absence of air. She’s stuck in the suffocatingly dark, blackness of nothing. She wonders if she’s dead and if this is what death is like. She tries to remember where ...

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“After Amy” by Helen A Smith

Submitted to Contest #255

TW. Mentions of abuse.There are as many forms of grief as there are love.My first real hug came when I was forty-nine. Before then, I had closed myself off to human affection and hugs were things to be endured. I’d never hugged anyone or allowed anyone to hug me in a meaningful way; when my children were babies I held rather than hugged them. But before you condemn me, I need you to know I’m not some kind of cold-hearted monster. I brought my children up well. They were clean and well fed; I provided for their physical needs, mostly without ...

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“Fair Lady II” by Mary Bendickson

Submitted to Contest #255

Fair Lady IISir Riley Fenwick paced back and forth wringing his hands. “Hurry up, Ole Chap! We'll never find her again if you take all day getting your shirt back on.”“Don't despair, Mate. In this crowd she can't be moving very fast. Help me tie this confounded cravat. The least this boxing venue could have done is provide a mirror back here if they expect a gentleman to strip to his bare chest to participate in a match. How is one ever supposed to go out in public again half dressed?”“Don't need to get fancy, Carlton. We're not headed to a ...

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“Well, You See, We Sorta Like Outside” by Daniel Rogers

Submitted to Contest #255

Oakaford, the captain of the Stumper Guard, stood in front of Lady Nimmo's desk with a confused look, hoping Lady Nimmo would change her mind. "Do we have to?" "Don't you want a home? I mean, everyone wants a home," she could hardly believe what she was hearing. She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. It pained Oakaford to see Lady Nimmo frustrated, "Well, you see, we sorta like outside." He nervously tapped his twig fingers on his sides. "But homes are a place of peace and safety. Protection against the elements." She paused on t...

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“You Need Me” by Brian Haddad

Submitted to Contest #255

I found him sitting in his car out in the parking lot outside the bank where he worked. I stood beside the car for a minute, gazing inside, soaking in the way he stared off into space, trembled, sobbed, wiped his tears, rinsed, and repeated. The whole cycle made my ears burn red hot. I clenched my jaw and fists, imagining what it would feel like to bash his window in with a rock and dive inside to strangle him with my bare hands. Instead I took a deep breath, counted to five, and approached the car to let myself in.I ducked inside quickly. T...

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“Curtis and The Critical Cog” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #255

He turns the creature almost imperceptibly, with the slightest tremor. His fingers steady as he brings the knife to its throat. He now is intently focused, and fails to register as the first, second, third droplets splatter into the folds of his trousers.Gradually, it becomes. It ain’t about speed, Pop pounded home time after time. Careful strokes, the pare, the push, the pull; let the grain, the knots, the imperfections guide you.Mr. Bronheim?It’s one of THEM, the one who brought him the dry chicken, the yellow gravy, the peas, the pills. T...

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“The Pi Day Pie Baking Contest” by Marty B

Submitted to Contest #255

If pi is an irrational number, does that make pie bakers irrational too? Jasmine certainly believed so, as she eyed the other bakers swirling around the church auditorium. Irrational maybe, but not ghosts, though somehow her dead Grandma had come back from the grave to enter her famous strawberry rhubarb pie.The Pi Day Pie Baking contest didn’t have many rules, the entries just had to be round, homemade and with a pastry bottom. Jasmine Dumas walked along the long tables looking at the competition, the entries glowing under the fluorescent l...

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$250

Prize money

365

Contest entries

142

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jun 21, 2024 EST

Won by Phoebe Barr 🏆

Title: Some Peace and Quiet

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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