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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#30: Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami's books have been international bestsellers and translated into over 50 languages. His stories are often surrealistic and melancholic, frequently dealing with themes of loneliness, and giving readers the feeling of being in a dream.

After publishing a Haruki Murakami reading guide this week, we were feeling inspired by this fiercely imaginative Japanese novelist. And that's why this week's prompts all feature an element common to Murakami's writing. We hope you'll feel just as inspired!

This week's prompts

Write a story in which someone finds a secret passageway.

Mystery – 68 stories

Write a story about someone who loses their cat.

Sad – 62 stories

Write a story about someone who receives an unexpected phone call.

Dialogue – 63 stories

Write a story in which the lines between awake and dreaming are blurred.

Fantasy – 125 stories

Write a story about a character experiencing déjà vu.

Nonfiction – 39 stories

Stories

“Poetry and Criminals” by Angelina G

Submitted to Contest #30

The first thing I noticed about him was the hair. It was viciously blonde, almost platinum. The kind of hair that makes you wonder whether it's natural or from the box. Nevertheless, I would never be bold enough to ask him. We were in completely different domains, like an eagle and a dolphin. Never to cross paths. At least that's what I thought. Of course, becoming involved with a person like him would be bad business. I wasn't exactly known for being a goody two-shoes, but my crowd and his were still worlds apart. I happened upon him by cha...

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“Ms. Fox and the Hawk” by Cory Pines

Submitted to Contest #30

Skylar was walking home from work when she felt the familiar vibrating of her phone in her back pocket. She took it out to see that someone was calling her. Skylar didn’t recognize the number, so she assumed that it was probably a spam call or one of the political polls. She declined the call and continued on her walk. Seconds later, her phone began to buzz again, the same number. If someone was calling her twice, she assumed that it was important. “Hello, this is Skylar,” she answered. “Skylar, listen to me closely and under no circumstance...

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“Behind the hedge” by Baiba Liepina

Submitted to Contest #30

“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” he said to himself and took a watch out of his waistcoat pocket. He looked at it and then hurried on.# After another long day at work, Felicity was on her way home. She was walking down the street when she suddenly had a feeling someone was following her. She turned around but there was no one there, so she kept walking. And then she heard a timid voice just behind her. “Wait . . .” It was a young girl with shoulder...

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“The Ladies Who Look For Cats” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #30

That’s what we call them in our town. Or sometimes the ladies who look after cats. Or both. They tend to appear at dawn or dusk. Not every dawn, not every dusk, and not exclusively at those times. But if you want to stand a reasonable chance of encountering one of the ladies who look for cats, then it’s best to venture out into the little market square before the stalls have even been put up, or after they have been packed away. Of course, when it is midwinter and dawn comes late, or when it is midsummer and daw...

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“The Great Cat Crusade” by Hannah Carter

Submitted to Contest #30

“Okay, Minerva.” Jupiter sprawled out on her stomach, legs in the air, dress bunched around her bottom. If her aunt saw her, Jupiter was sure to be scolded about how “unladylike” her position was and how she was showing her underwear to all of Cocatrali Island—but why everyone on the island would bother looking at her underwear, Jupiter couldn’t say. Minerva—who’d recently celebrated her fourth birthday—looked at her sister with serious eyes as well. “Jupey!” &...

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“Interruption of a dream” by Len Mooring

Submitted to Contest #30

An interruption of a dream.“God here. I know you wouldn’t have believed me if I’d come to you in a dream, or one of your whacked out sessions on the weed, but you do believe in telephones, and a ‘land-line’ at that. I thought you might be a suitable guy to do me a favour, particularly as you don’t believe in me, it might be a giggle for you.” This call came in whilst I was in the most fabulous lucid dream I’d had in years. I had a compliant woman, no strike that, an enthusiastic sexual participant - yeah, yeah, my lucid drea...

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“Hunted” by Fowzia A

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #30

I should’ve known better. I blame instincts. The call was answered and the phone brought up to my ear before I could process anything. “Hello?” A shuddering voice came through the other side. My brain had caught up to what my treacherous hands had done but it was too late. Everyone knows you can’t hang up now. “I’m so sorry.” The woman said. Her voice was rough like she had been crying for hours. I assumed she had been. Even now I could hear her trying to stifle her sobs. For a moment neither of us said anything. Her ...

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“A Dream Heist” by Iona Cottle

Submitted to Contest #30

The jewellers lay dark and quiet, as sound asleep as the people in the buildings all around. Gone midnight in the middle of the week; hardly the time for party animals to be abroad. It was however the perfect time for Lisa to be about. In her all black outfit with her oversized hood pulled low she was little more than a deeper shadow moving in the darkness. This was always the bit that gave her the biggest thrill. The start, when anything was possible. Maybe, just maybe, this time she’d be caught, but that wasn’t likely. It certainly wasn’t ...

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“The Penny Whistle” by Karen McDermott

Submitted to Contest #30

Mel took in her surroundings as she shrugged off her coat. Horse brass on the walls, selection of ales and another selection of more ales, a gaggle of 60-something males taking up all the bar stools, their flab rolling over the seats, reminding her of a slaughterhouse with a more pungent smell. Goddammit, another waste of a good dress. Was it too much to ask that one of these online hook ups might take her to a ...

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“Haunting Purple Eyes” by Tiffany Tullos

Submitted to Contest #30

The sky was blackened with ash as the fires raged around her. Trees and foliage alike were blazing with flames of blue that flickered into shapes of unknown creatures. She gazed at the scene and felt as though nothing was out of the ordinary in the forest. Walking closer to one of the flames, she raised her hand and felt the warmth that emitted off it. Her mind going blank as she reached her arm towards the fire, not even caring if she was to be burnt by the heat. As her fingers were just a few centimeters away from touching the fiery blaze—...

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“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” by Peace Nakiyemba

Submitted to Contest #30

Some things happen in your life and change the projected course of your life in an instant. Some of them are big and attention worthy like an earthquake, or the death of your favourite pet, or a terminal illness diagnosis. Some of them are small and negligible like getting a pimple on picture day, forgetting your own birthday or not following the dress code for a high-end party. Some of them fall in between. I think mine is an ‘in between something’.I am sitting in the airport, taking inventory of everything I have carried against everything...

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“The Sea Between Us by Sue Monkress ” by Sue Monkress

Submitted to Contest #30

1417 Ain’e gazed at the ship, far down below the rocky cliffs, swaying on the Irish Sea. Before today, she would take such pleasure in this breath-taking view from her precarious perch; she’d always longed to take a voyage – a long one, somewhere to the other side of the world. Today, she grieved. O Keegan! The British flags on the tall mast fluttered, she imagined, in a personal farewell to her. Though the fierce north win...

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“Cursing at Murals” by Chantel Chamonix

Submitted to Contest #30

Yvette ran her hands through her hair. It was dark around her. And cold. And she was pretty sure the man in the mural across the street just winked at her. She had not needed that last shot of tequila. Screw Milo for messing up her night out. How was it fair that she got kicked out of the nightclub when Milo was the one accidentally falling and groping every woman he passed. He really shouldn’t have been surprised when she accidentally dented his face in after he accidentally pulled down her top. Fuck little boys with big connections. She kn...

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“The Escalator Affair” by Albert Zygier

Submitted to Contest #30

It’s silly I know, but I fell in love with a man on an escalator in Macy’s Department Store, the problem was, I was going up, and he was coming down. As we passed, our eyes met, and Hallelujah Chorus rang in my ears. When I got upstairs, I watched as he got off thinking he would follow me, but all he did was look up with a smile and walk away in a hurry. That was about fifteen years ago, and of course, I never saw him again. I was eighteen and just starting college. But my life had to go on. I went to graduate school and majored in journalis...

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“Magical Evening with Haruki Murakami ” by George Georgerfrost@gmail.com

Submitted to Contest #30

I’m never sure which book by Haruki Murakami is my favorite, Wind Up Bird Chronicles or Kafka on the Shore when it starts to rain slugs. Both books have an appeal for me since I like fiction that contains a magical component to it. Like Stephen King, I read every Murakami book I can get my hands on. The Japanese literary tradition is filled with magical and mythological images that are vibrant and memorable when God communed with man and beasts, giving each of them a distinct identity and character. While Occidental thought trie...

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$50

Prize money

357

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Feb 28, 2020 EST

Won by Marte Van Der Linden 🏆

Title: The Traveller

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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