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#298 In Full Bloom

Spring’s finally here, bringing with it a sense of rebirth and hope. Say goodbye to dreary winter days and hello to sunshine-filled moments in parks, gardens, and all the other lovely places where flowers bloom and nature thrives.

This week, draw inspiration from spring and write tales about growth and change. Whether it’s a journey of self-discovery, healing, or a fresh start, let your characters blossom alongside the season.

This week's prompts

Write a story about someone trying something new.

Short Story – 47 stories

Center your story around someone finding acceptance.

Dramatic – 61 stories

Write a story about someone hoping to reinvent themself.

Short Story – 62 stories

Center your story around two (or more) characters who strike up an unlikely friendship.

Short Story – 76 stories

Write a story about someone seeking forgiveness for something.

Dramatic – 77 stories

Stories

The Corpse Flower's Bloom

Shortlisted for Contest #298 ⭐️

Content notice: this story contains allusions to dementia.Clare watched Rupert looking down at the snake plants, an expression tender as the Virgin. He wouldn't know they were hardy little blighters. The only thing he regularly nurtured was his investment portfolio. The plants lined the entrance walkway, emerald leaves edged in chartreuse, a row of cobras en garde. He regarded them with hand on heart.‘Of course, we’d have to put in a reinforced walkway, and some kind of barrier, maybe a Security Guard.’He motioned down the glasshouse pathway...

17 likes 19 comments 19
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Kintsugi

Submitted to Contest #298

I didn’t go to Japan to find myself. That’s too neat a narrative. If I’m honest, I left because staying felt like decay. It wasn’t that I hated my life—it was worse. I’d grown indifferent to it. Every morning felt like crawling back into a suit of someone else’s skin. I wasn’t running from trauma or heartbreak, not exactly. I was just eroding. Quietly. Invisible to others, and maybe, finally, to myself.I needed to be nowhere. I needed to be no one. I needed to stop pretending to know who I was. So I chose a place whose language I didn’t spea...

16 likes 5 comments 5
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Eggshells

Submitted to Contest #298

**Author's note** This story contains the death of a child and suicide. Words cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again and neither can superglue.Even if every puzzle piece of shattered eggshell was perfectly placed back to its correct spot, the cracks would remain visible, and even if by chance the cracks were no longer visible, Humpty Dumpty would not be structurally sound. The glued bits make him weaker, susceptible to breaking all over again, although my wife and I have not even attempted to put him back together; we haven’t sought ...

16 likes 18 comments 18
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The Last Waltz of Lady Evangeline

Submitted to Contest #298

The carriage wheels crunched against the gravel drive, their melodic beat slowing as the grand facade of the formidable Ashcombe Hall finally came into view. Evangeline Marchmont… but no, Miss Evelyn Marsh, the music tutor now, she reminded herself, as she pressed a gloved hand softly against her stomach, as if to still the raging butterflies that had stirred the moment Hampshire’s misty countryside gave way to the looming silhouette of her former life in the form of his imposing house. The estate hadn't changed at all. The Ivy still clung s...

16 likes 6 comments 6
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A strong act by a strong person

Submitted to Contest #298

Olya took her own life at the end of May, right before exams—on the twenty-first—and almost immediately, they canceled them for us. No one said it out loud (after all, we were expected to perform the tragedy), but deep down, we were relieved. Maybe we were even grateful for the gift she unknowingly gave us. We didn’t care how it happened or why. The news was met with the same calm indifference as if someone had announced we’d have seven classes tomorrow instead of six. A whisper passed through the desks—and that was it. It felt inevitable, u...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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The Apology Tour that Never Was

Submitted to Contest #298

It gets exhausting, this compulsion to apologize for every stupid thing that comes out of my mouth. Okay, maybe not stupid—more like thoughtless. It seems that no matter what I say, or how gently I try to couch my words in an uplifting tone, I manage to offend, annoy or generally piss people off.My efforts at keeping my thoughts to myself, or at least severely toning them down for general consumption, are failing miserably. It seems that every other word out of my mouth is some epically failed attempt to make nice. It might be time to accept...

15 likes 14 comments 14
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The south facing window

Submitted to Contest #298

*some sexual content*Daisy looks out across the grey concrete landscape below. Her coffee’s gone cold and the sparrow that’s been flitting about on the window ledge all morning, has gone. Daisy can just about make out cherry blossom on the trees below, the only bit of nature deemed appropriate for the residents of Elizabeth Towers. Spring is beginning to bloom in all its glory, and Daisy, a systems analyst, is working from home in a cold, east facing flat that the sun only touches with its weak rays in the earliest hours of the day.It’s midd...

15 likes 21 comments 21
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How to Catch A Squirrel

Submitted to Contest #298

Bill discovered, to his utter amazement, that writing was hard.He stared at the empty screen, willing the words to come out. He knew his novel would be great, award winning, and an Amazon Best Seller. He just had to write it.An idea flickered in his mind, a beautiful scene of grace, and meaning. As it traveled down his shoulders through his arms, he considered it; was it too elaborate of phrasing, too strong an opinion, too suggestive of a verb? Would anyone like it at all? He edited the scene, cutting out what didn’t work as it moved throug...

15 likes 17 comments 17
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Someone to Talk To

Submitted to Contest #298

The cemetery sat on the edge of town, behind a cracked wrought-iron gate that never quite latched. Gerald liked it that way. If the gate squeaked open late at night, it wasn’t his business. The living came during the day. The others never gave him any trouble.He came in early each morning with a thermos of coffee and a slow limp, settling into the caretaker’s shed for a minute before starting his rounds. The grass always needed trimming. Leaves always needed raking. Headstones leaned more each year, like tired old men. Gerald found comfort i...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Too Late To Say Goodbye

Submitted to Contest #298

I’ve lived a long life—one filled with goodbyes, unexpected turns, and silent wounds. But nothing shaped me more than the summer I met Zara.I was born in 1945. My mother raised me by herself. She had a lover once, but when he learned she was pregnant, he vanished, or at least mom told me that. She never saw him again. I never had a chance to meet him. And, over time, that became okay.It was 1959. I was thirteen when Mom and I left our quiet town behind and moved to New York City. To say I felt lost would be an understatement. I ate alone, ro...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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Peonies and Fireflies

Shortlisted for Contest #298 ⭐️

To say that the chicken coop was in turmoil would be an understatement. It was in cacophony, at war, filled with the casualties of trauma. Feathers filled the air as if a down pillow had been hit with a shotgun. The terrified squawking of hens sounded like a siren’s choir. Shadows scattered every which way as the hanging lights swayed violently in the whirlwind of flapping wings. On the outside of the coop, a single fox observed the chaos, a dead chicken clamped in its jaws. The porch lights flicked on at the farm house, and the fox turned a...

14 likes 26 comments 26
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Tree Therapy

Submitted to Contest #298

Depression is real. It’s not something that anyone wants or chooses, and a simple “snap out of it” is never the answer. In fact, that kind of flippant advice only makes one feel more isolated and misunderstood.She had tried multiple forms of therapy, changed her diet, exercised, and experimented with prescription meds. There were occasional good results, some feelings of relief, but nothing ever lasted. Inevitably, the downward spiral always returned to drag her into its pit of despair.Again and again, she saw the catch phrase while scro...

13 likes 8 comments 8
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Silly and Lily

Submitted to Contest #298

Chapter one The sun slowly rises on the horizon above a lush forest. Colorful birds begin singing as they hop from tree to tree in search of food. One of them lands on a green leaf high above. It is Lily, the most beautiful leaf in all the forest. She stands tall and wide, glistening with dew left by the morning fog. The bird sticks its tongue into one of Lily’s veins and quenches its thirst. It then dives down, causing her to sway gracefully, a swaying that resembles the regal wave of a queen.The giggling sun peeks at Lily from behind a clo...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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So There Was This Clown in a Coffee Shop

Submitted to Contest #298

Note: References to sex I sat in the stuffy car, watching and waiting, drinking room temperature La Croix. My fingers drummed randomly on the steering wheel and shortly came away with remnants of the bean burrito I had been eating moments before. It was gross, but I licked my fingers anyway. Refried beans were only good while they were warm. As soon as they cooled, they took on the consistency of ear wax, which triggered my gag reflex—which was also why I didn’t eat hummus. Hummus actually did look like ear wax. Another car pulled up next to...

13 likes 10 comments 10
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The Friendship of Fey

Submitted to Contest #298

I admit to using a human to fairy translator from LingoJam.com for one line in the following story.She was standing at the edge of my yard staring at the flowering tree in the front of my house. I had never seen her before and I was a little concerned about the way she was staring at the little tree. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was going to be my best friend in all the world. There wasn’t anything suspicious about her demeanor, nor was there anything about her that cried out. I watched her admiring my tree with that smile crinkling...

12 likes 8 comments 8
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