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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#288: A Perfect Storm

Whenever I look out my window these days, it always seems like the weather won’t get any better. Blustery winds, heavy rain, thick fog, the occasional snowfall… When the temperature has dropped this low, the last thing I want to do is step into the freezing outdoors. But during the moments when I can stay home and wrap myself up in a warm, thick blanket, there’s nothing better than reading a book or working on a story as the sound of rain keeps me company… 


This week’s prompts are inspired by chilly weather. Whether it’s the haunting stillness of a snowy evening, the whisper of wind through ancient willows, or the gentle pitter-patter of perpetual rainfall, let the cold seep into your writing, and see where it takes you.

This week's prompts

Start or end your story with a breeze brushing against someone’s skin.

Short Story – 70 stories

Set your story during — or just before — a storm.

Dramatic – 144 stories

Write a story where the weather mirrors a character’s emotions.

Dramatic – 61 stories

Start or end your story with someone standing in the rain.

Dramatic – 93 stories

Set your story in a place where the weather never changes.

Short Story – 48 stories

Stories

“The Fog” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #288

The first people to descend into the valley claimed it was verdant green. Said there were red and yellow flowers sown into the hillside over Mayberry Marsh, and you could stand in the bushes in the sunshine and hear cuckoo bees flitting to and fro, or watch ibises fly in V-shaped skeins against the clouds. When the sky was still blue instead of bone white. Before the drizzle began and never ceased, maddeningly light and insubstantial, an eternal spritz that soaked the ground gray and turned the roads into soup. Before the...

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“The Coin” by Terry Maris

Submitted to Contest #288

A cold breeze caressed her cheek, stirring the falling leaves around her and the deeply buried sorrow and regret that had haunted her since "that day" so long ago. Captain Jessica "Jess" Michaels, RN, stood alone in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, her eyes fixed on the white marble headstone that bore the name of a young American soldier who had died in 2011. The late fall light was muted, as if the day itself mourned, and the quiet rustling of brittle, copper-hued leaves underfoot seemed to echo the memories of a life lost t...

5 comments 5
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“This Boy Doesn't Cry” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #288

The rain crashes down upon him with a seemingly icy indifference. He saw it through the dirty lens of a neglected window. He supposes that the window is his now. As much as a window can belong to anyone. He feels no ownership over anything in the world around him. He’s doing all he can to own himself, but he doesn’t know whether he can. There are forces greater than him. Variations on the gravity that cleaves him to this place. He is torn by them, whether he stands still or moves in the direction that promises the least pain, he is gripped a...

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“Fear of Storms” by Ashley Lauren

Submitted to Contest #288

      Cara had always hated storms, as long as she could remember. She was never entirely certain of why, but she had some ideas. A lot of people assumed that it had something to do with how loud it was, but she didn’t think that was it. She felt like there had to be something more than that, something that triggered the hatred of the storms. Her therapist said that maybe something traumatic happened that she didn’t remember, and that that was what had triggered it. And Cara thought there might be something to t...

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“Station 51 Winter Ball” by Misty Chadwell

Submitted to Contest #288

The first Saturday of February was the fire station "51" Winter ball at the town's fire hall. Two weeks left of getting everything planned and set. This was the first event that Cruz had been to since he first started the department. While trying to answer calls while being on duty, the local firemen volunteer try to decorate the hall. It's been slow and quiet kind of day for the town so far. Cruz and Herman have been the bestest friends since the day they met. Besides working at the Firestation, these two never spend tim...

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“The First Nor'Wester” by H.e. Ross

Submitted to Contest #288

The First Nor’Wester I wanted to know more. Being around sailors most of my life I wanted to know more. The oceans have scared me and brought me to the height of ecstasy and I still wanted to know more, so I started writing stories about others’ experiences as a way of life. Collecting and experiencing and mixing the both a lot. Here, on San Sebastian Island, there was an abundance of sea tales spilling from the sun cracked mouths of old time sailors. My column in the local magazine, Islands Chronicle, was about those who those who had ...

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“The Incident of Mars Hill ” by Ralph Aldrich

Submitted to Contest #288

In 1954, Chester Candler built a log cabin in a quiet little meadow at the foot of Mars Hill Mountain, Maine. His daughter and granddaughter live there today, although it has undergone many modern-day improvements. The homestead lies about six miles from the center of town.Madelyn Collins, a trim 39-year-old, is busy looking through the junk drawer for the keys to the truck. She stops when she hears the weather report come on the radio.“Well, folks, it looks like we’re in for a big one! The snowstorm that was beginning to...

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“The Devil Came West to Kansas” by Jack Shoemaker

Submitted to Contest #288

“Run, get inside! It’s nearly on us!” My father’s voice barely carried across the yard through the din surrounding us. In the distance, I could see uprooted trees colliding with buildings, great clods of earth torn from their places and scattered to the wind. Over a mile away, and still its roar drowned out his voice at a hundred feet. He was standing at the door to the root cellar, beckoning me with one arm while holding the hatch with his other. The flimsy corrugated sheet steel wobbled and flapped as if it were made from crepe paper, bu...

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“The umbrella” by Corey Richards

Submitted to Contest #288

In the pouring, soaking, sodding rain I stood. Like an absolute lemon. Frozen in place for twenty...thirty minutes until eventually some old lady stopped and prodded me.'Everything alright, love?' she asked with a tone that reminded me of my nan. Warm, concerned.'Huh?' I mumbled, still dazed.'You've been standing there quite a while, since before I popped into the shops.'By 'the shops', she meant the little Tesco Express just behind us. Its bright, white hospital lights bounced off the rain-soaked streets, sparkling across each droplet like ...

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“To Be Great” by Jylo Mylo

Submitted to Contest #288

Years and years ago, in a lesser city somewhere beneath the eternal rain and amidst the blue plant life of Rainland, is a young man, only five years old at the time, and with Rai blood flowing through his veins. His name is Windel Rai, and his dream is to become the next General Rai. An ambitious goal for a child his age. Women thought him cute, the way he’d follow his father around, training with him as if doing so would make him a general by the time that he was a teenager. No one took him seriously, no one had to, he was just a toddler af...

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“The Dark Figure” by Mike Matkin

Submitted to Contest #288

There he was, standing in the rain. The dark figure that had haunted me for so long. I had never seen his face before, he always managed to keep it hidden in the shadows. Anytime he appeared, I knew something bad was going to happen. The rain poured down sounding like little pebbles pelting my roof above. I had only come to make sure it wasn’t hail crashing down outside due to the severity of the rain. That’s when I saw him, standing across the dark street. He just stands there, watching my house. It looks like he is wearing a long black tre...

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“Child of the Storm” by Jes Oakheart

Submitted to Contest #288

Nettle darted around the mountainside, desperately trying to stuff as many mushrooms as she could find into her basket as the first snow of winter rolled in from the west. She expertly sliced the fungi at their stems with her curved knife as snowflakes swirled around in the howling wind and landed on the carpets of moss blanketing the forest floor. Just a few more she kept telling herself, knowing that once nightfall came and the storm swept over the land, whatever remained would perish in the ice. Winter always came early at this elevation,...

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“Sea-Witch” by Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #288

       Hence the storm came, and tore across the endless wastes of the sea.  Green glass shattered, frothed, billowed at the seams.  Guls cried along the growing winds, their voices going lost in that plutonic gloam.  Waves the heights of mountains rose to block the setting sun—that great, orange sore upon the world.  Its heat was yet irous, grown jealous of that blossoming cold which set upon encroaching night with the speed and wrath of a forlorn specter.  ...

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“The Hero Of One Hope” by Helen Murat

Submitted to Contest #288

Grunting and pulling, Ajani invested all his strength attempting to turn the wheel. Many had tried, but it never budged. The Suok desert had not seen rain for so long, no one remembered a time when such a thing existed. In fact, there had been no storms in all that time, no rain, wind, or even sandstorms. Throughout the years, life had slowly been dying off. There were no more cacti growing out of the ground, no lizards roaming the scorching sand, not even birds had been seen flying up near the clouds—there were no clouds. Now the final dro...

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“Pharos of Alexandria” by JAY JONES

Submitted to Contest #288

There it is again… I strain hard as I’d been doing each night since my awakening a week ago, trying to catch the music drifting in the sea breeze. A song without words, hauntingly familiar yet strange. A melody – no, it was more than that. It was an enchantment that no mortal man could resist. I knew the singers, or at least, I knew of them from my father, the noble Sostratus of Cnidus who had learnt of them from none other than my God-King, his Divine Majesty Ptolemy I Soter, may he rejoice forever among the Gods. As ever, I mourn my lost ...

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$250

Prize money

416

Contest entries

164

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Feb 07, 2025 EST

Won by Christina Marie 🏆

Title: Motherhood

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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Prompts | Big Blue Hand | 2024-11

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