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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#31: The Ordinary

The very last line of the NBC sitcom The Office is spoken by former receptionist Pam Beasley. She says: "There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?"

This week's writing prompts embrace that sentiment, and challenge you to write stories that take ordinary, everyday tasks and turn them into meaningful pieces of short fiction.

🥇 Winning story

“The Memory Garden” by Ariel Kalati

In sixteen years, she will leave the garden. She will tell the buyers of the house how to tend each patch and plant, carefully, and they’ll do it for a while and then the garden will fall apart, because they have other concerns. The soil remembers, though. The soil always remembers. In eleven years, her firstborn child will pick unripe blueberries in mid-spring, try to taste them and recoil from the sour. She will ...

53 comments 53 WINNER 🏆

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This week's prompts:

Write a short story about someone doing laundry.

General – 102 stories

Write a short story about someone tending to their garden.

General – 85 stories

Write a short story about someone cooking dinner.

General – 62 stories

Write a short story about someone going to the corner store to buy an everyday item.

General – 74 stories

Write a short story about someone heading home from work.

General – 89 stories

Stories

“The Memory Garden” by Ariel Kalati

In sixteen years, she will leave the garden. She will tell the buyers of the house how to tend each patch and plant, carefully, and they’ll do it for a while and then the garden will fall apart, because they have other concerns. The soil remembers, though. The soil always remembers. In eleven years, her firstborn child will pick unripe blueberries in mid-spring, try to taste them and recoil from the sour. She will ...

53 comments 53 WINNER 🏆

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“I, Chocolate” by Naveena Srinivas

I was neatly packaged and sent to this hideous supermarket in a very non-public atmosphere. I sat in the second row of the first column in the chocolate aisle. I was happy that I wasn’t placed in the back, along with the unfortunate few others, which was probably covered in cobwebs. Perhaps the deadly ants might even find a chance to creep through the neat packet we were covered in. The h...

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“The Practice of Half Memories” by Abigail Airuedomwinya

She puts a pot on the stove and watches as the flames burn their orange and blue flames through it. She has a half-empty cup of tea beside the kitchen table. Tea, already cold and tasteless as it struggles being caged in the unwashed cup. She puts it in her lips again and lets the brown liquid slip into her sore throat. The flames keep flaring up as the empty pot sits calmly on it. She stares at the smoke already rising up from the pot. In her mind, she tells herself she isn't ready to do this yet and then she pours water into...

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“Ljúfur and the Singer” by Zilla Babbitt

Ljúfur was a fierce Icelandic woman with big bones who took no giggling from anyone. She lived in New York in a large flimsy apartment building with a half-thousand other degenerate human beings. She hated all of them and would tell the plant on the windowsill that they were all stupid and the people in Iceland were a hundred times better.Ljúfur talked to plants. She had no family, no friends, no one ...

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“The Laundry Room ” by Najwa Zandlo

Your mother is in there - in the laundry room - washing your clothes right now. She’s sorting out the darks from the lights, and she’s making neat piles on the floor of your dirty clothes. Let’s face it - they’re more than dirty,

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“Taking Orders” by Riley Cross

My first cup of the day is ready. It’s a decaf skinny vanilla latte drowning in milk with a dusting of cinnamon. I glance at the door while trying to create a mocha-colored heart against the backdrop of milky foam.She smiles at my artistic attempts. Every morning at 5:45, she strolls into the lobby and stops at the Coffee Express counter, waiting with a sense of urgency that rivals my most caffeine-crazed customers. Even on the days when she is in a rush for her elevator ride, she never skips her latte ritual...

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“I'll Be Home in Five” by Unknown User

I sigh, putting the key into my run-down car and opening the door. It had been a long day at work, and I wanted nothing more than to go home and see my cats.BUZZ BUZZI look down at my phone: Two missed calls from Rob. I turn on the ignition.‘Hey babe, just got in the car, what’s up?’ I send, setting my phone beside me and pulling out of the parking lot.

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“Use Cold Water” by Phoebe Barr

When my sister left, I thought my first text to her would be something sweet. Something like I miss you or the neighbors ask how you’re doing. Or at least something coherent like

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“ A PARTNERSHIP WITHIN THE GARDEN” by Shirley Medhurst

A modest little house stands alone, surrounded by a disorderly sea of green. Not that its garden is completely unkempt, but it is hardly a neatly regimented English garden, nor is it a beautifully manicured Mediterranean oasis. It is chaotic, colourful and cheerful. Behind the house, small square paving stones lead upwards past a pergola which leans over t...

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“Roast Beef and Antifreeze ” by Najwa Zandlo

I don’t even like roast - I feel the need to stress that. I hate it, actually. I hate the way it smells. I hate the way the meat tastes after cooking in its own juices for hours. I hate the vegetables - the carrots get soggy and the potatoes turn into mush. I hate that it takes all day to cook a good roast. I hate the way people turn...

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“Susannah's” by Jennifer Stone

Susannah. She was quite old, indeed, a delicate woman that blows on her warm coffee, not once, not twice, and not three times. It was four, big blows, and still sometimes is too hot on her tongue. She blew this time, exactly five deep ones. She took a sip — then started to fan her mouth immediately. She burned her tongue, her tongue that was more fragile than a lizard’s. She steadied herself. I mustn’t be in shame in front of my children, she thought.Susannah walked gracefully toward her cottage with three children....

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“Bax.” by Zilla Babbitt

The aspen trees up north were just beginning to shed. The city watched the trees as they emerged from their cocoons of drab green into beautiful red-and-yellow butterflies, leaves bending and twisting to produce the radiant autumn. Bax walked home on Lorax Lane after work because it was lined with aspen trees. The wind chimes of the cat lady on the corner brushed the breeze as it went by and added melody to the wind. Her apartment w...

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“Of Bees and Queens and Cobwebs” by Zilla Babbitt

Steam rose from the vats boiling by the black shore. The stench was of dead fish and strange innards, of silk and spider’s venom and a burned spoon or two. The dark sand next to the cauldrons was scattered with dazed fish’s eyes and reeking green strings of fish organs, and silver and orange and blue scales were mixed in with the sand and washed away in the oily tide.The jade mountains that reached high above the ocean and the volcanic sand were still and silent. Not a creature move...

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“The Washing Machine Perspective” by Joseph Worrell

It has always amazed me how seldom these humans wash their outer skins. Although I liked all of the different patterns and colors they would shed and put back on after letting me wash them. My favorite thing is when they would come back with bags and bags of new skins to wear. A lot of people buy nice skins. Sometimes I think people buy them just because they were cheap or something. I've heard them use the word "buy" before; the dryer helped explain to me what it meant one day. He told me that they use paper, like his dryer shee...

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“The Wood's Voice” by Jennifer Stone

“Out of milk again?” Madeline sighed as she opened the refrigerator door. Tanya smirked. “It’s right behind you.”Madeline turned around, embarrassed. But the milk wasn’t behind her. “Just kidding,” Tanya said, laughing. “If you want milk, get it from the corner store. The… what’s it called? The Corner Shop?”Madeline dropped her jaw. “The Corner Shop? That place was alive for over for like a thousand years! The whole place is like nothing but trash and wood! The milk there is always expired! I’m very surprised t...

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$50

Prize money

515

Submissions

Ended on 23:59 - Mar 06, 2020 EST

Won by Ariel Kalati 🏆

Title: The Memory Garden

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