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#313 Hidden Threads

Lately, I’ve been loving stories that don’t give everything away up front. You know the kind — where you’re picking up on little details, holding onto a line that feels important, and then somewhere near the end, it all clicks. Or maybe it doesn’t, and that’s what sticks.

This week, let’s write stories that hint, suggest, and slowly unravel. Let the meaning live between the lines, and see what happens when you leave a little to the imagination...

🥇 Winner

Dibble Dop

Rose Brown

Winner of Contest #313 🏆

Content warning: This story includes themes of grief and the death of a child. “Are you there, God? It’s me. Help me break her heart today. And can you bring back the sun?”But the clouds burst. I breathe in earth and taste mineral tang, wet wind whipping my face. I should’ve known not to come—should’ve stopped when the steeple down the road knifed dark clouds. But she begged, and I couldn't refuse. Not today.I fumble with an umbrella before the wind yanks it, tossing it against the monkey bars. I leap from the bench. Bigger kids shriek and r...

86 likes

⭐️ Shortlisted

Muscle Memory

Elizabeth Hoban

Shortlisted for Contest #313 ⭐️

Muscle Memory It was the kind of quiet you only notice in high-end department stores on weekday afternoons, with its low lighting, plush carpeted floors, and overhead speakers playing a song you used to love. Most of the items were well out of Madelyn’s price range, but this was the store the engaged couple had chosen for their gift registry. The wedding invite was from an old college friend who was seven months pregnant and marrying her longtime boyfriend. Madelyn was excited for her friend but only agreed to attend if she didn’t have to b...

33 likes

Seeds

Shortlisted for Contest #313 ⭐️

Will lifted the bread roll towards his mouth without cutting it. The plate was too far away, as usual, and he moved without care, as always.A trail of poppy seeds marked the path his hand took from porcelain to mouth, puncturing the surface of the white tablecloth like a blood splatter. He was marking his territory. Lording over everyone else. He owned the space. He could do as he liked.Of course, he’d simply think she was fussing. Reading too much into it. It’s only a few bloody seeds, Sophie. She looked up, and their eyes locked over the s...

18 likes

This week's prompts

Write a story with an open ending that leaves room for your reader’s own interpretations.

Dramatic – 93 stories

Start your story with a non-visual sense. Use a certain scent, texture, sound, or taste to ground the beginning before continuing the narrative.

Short Story – 66 stories

Write a story where two characters talk around an important subject without ever mentioning it directly.

Short Story – 60 stories

Begin your story with someone saying, “Are you there, God? It’s me...”

Short Story – 69 stories

Hide something from your reader until the very end.

Dramatic – 121 stories

Stories

Dibble Dop

Rose Brown

Winner of Contest #313 🏆

Content warning: This story includes themes of grief and the death of a child. “Are you there, God? It’s me. Help me break her heart today. And can you bring back the sun?”But the clouds burst. I breathe in earth and taste mineral tang, wet wind whipping my face. I should’ve known not to come—should’ve stopped when the steeple down the road knifed dark clouds. But she begged, and I couldn't refuse. Not today.I fumble with an umbrella before the wind yanks it, tossing it against the monkey bars. I leap from the bench. Bigger kids shriek and r...

86 likes

On Cold Concrete

Breanna Dawn

Submitted to Contest #313

I awoke with a tremor running throughout my body, coldness had seeped its way into every limb of my body. The kind of cold that seized every muscle and caused my body to curl into itself seeking any bit of warmth. When my body shifted my head whirled crashing me back down onto the rough concrete I was laying upon. I felt the sticky puddle that had formed around my body, soaking my skin and clothes. I tried to blink against the darkness that surrounded me, blinking against the nothingness that smothered me. I lifted my stiff arm to my head ...

39 likes

The Runaway Wife

Submitted to Contest #313

I hate matrimonial cases, especially runaway wives. They always remind me of Tara. Charlie was wearing red high heels, white capri pants, and a top that left nothing to the imagination. The smile on her face was of a woman that knew exactly what she wanted. The man next to her was mid-50s, tan, wearing a short sleeve linen button-down, jeans, and loafers. He put his arm around her as they walked down from Pier A and into the W Hotel in Hoboken. Keeping a safe distance, I managed to get a half dozen shots off with my Canon SX620. I waited in ...

36 likes

Alfie

Mary Bendickson

Submitted to Contest #313

Alfie Ariel felt his titillating caress as if he was wanting to make love to her. She leaned into his touch willingly and...nearly toppled off the bed!What? Where was she? Where was he? Oh, yes! The horror of reality set in.She's back in her home town after being gone for twenty-five years ready to collect her father's remains. When she was notified of the discovery she hadn't waited for the local sheriff to tell her it would be a few days and he would let her know when to come. No, she rushed immediately across country to deal with it. Now ...

33 likes

God's Voicemail

Jim LaFleur

Submitted to Contest #313

“Are you there, God? It’s me again. Yeah, still dead. Sorry to bother you.” I tap my fingers against the rotary phone’s receiver, listening to the endless dial tone. The white room hums with fluorescent light that comes from nowhere and everywhere. No windows. No doors. Just me, this bolted-down chair, and a glass table with a vintage telephone that only dials one number. God’s voicemail. “Look, I get it. You’re busy. Running the universe, answering prayers, deciding who gets cancer and who wins the lottery. But it’s been… I don’t know how l...

33 likes

Muscle Memory

Elizabeth Hoban

Shortlisted for Contest #313 ⭐️

Muscle Memory It was the kind of quiet you only notice in high-end department stores on weekday afternoons, with its low lighting, plush carpeted floors, and overhead speakers playing a song you used to love. Most of the items were well out of Madelyn’s price range, but this was the store the engaged couple had chosen for their gift registry. The wedding invite was from an old college friend who was seven months pregnant and marrying her longtime boyfriend. Madelyn was excited for her friend but only agreed to attend if she didn’t have to b...

33 likes

Not in front of the boy

Raz Shacham

Submitted to Contest #313

Mom steps into the house, arms stretched long with grocery bags pulling her down.Dad stands right away. No words. Just gets up and walks over.He takes the bags from her, one at a time, and places them gently on the counter—like always.They don’t see me.I’m right here on the floor, next to the kitchen door, legs folded, my Lego plane resting in my lap.It’s an F-16.Dad got it for me a long time ago—Back when we used to build planes together.We’d sit cross-legged on the rug, pebble pieces scattered all around,slowly snapping them into wings, a ...

28 likes

Technomancer 29: Blood & Prayers

KCW Foster

Submitted to Contest #313

Guns, blood, guts, gore, death, faith, rape mentioned but not shown"Are you there, God? It's me..." Masa whispered, her voice wavering beneath the weight of her nervous breaths. Her handgun rested on the top of her bag. The sound of gunfire echoed in the distance at the far side of the settlement, followed by the screams of women, men and children. Using the weapon meant the possibility of saving them. It could also harm her child. Another scream, and she reached for it with her shaking hand, heart pounding at the risk she was taking. "I kno...

24 likes

Big Little Man

Submitted to Contest #313

The curtains were drawn against the mid-June light. The heat it brought to this London afternoon was uncomfortable, within and without. A woman in a nursing uniform sat near the window, knitting a baby’s layette and marking the rows on a cylindrical counter at the end of her needle. The other woman, on the other side of the bed which divided them, was reading a newspaper and tutting at its content. ‘I swear there’s going to be another war,’ she said to the nurse opposite. ‘And then there’s our erstwhile king living abroad with his American w...

24 likes

The space between the beats

Penelope Stansfield

Submitted to Contest #313

A spider only knows that you’re lying if the moon is in its first quarter and the cat’s milk has turned sour overnight. That’s what my great aunt always said when she suspected me of telling less than the facts. Though it always confused me as to the purpose of a spider and the divination of the truth. Six tall pine trees waved skywards towards their cloud companions that summer as I idled away the hours at my Great Aunt Dorothy’s large house. She was accompanying an elderly friend on a long desired excursion to Egypt and with no children of...

24 likes

Blind

James Scott

Submitted to Contest #313

“Are you there, God? It’s me…” Alice whispered.Her knees pinched on the polished timber flooring of her bedroom, but the expensive linen sheets under her elbows were a soft reprieve. The rough callouses of her palms pressed together, her overused hands finding a brief recess with only each other to sense. It’s something no one ever told you about being blind, how abused your hands would become.“I’m here, Alice.” God said, his commanding voice reverberating from above.She laughed with joy, soft tears running from her clouded and broken eyes. ...

22 likes

The Person You Changed, but Never Knew

Submitted to Contest #313

Dear my friend, I doubt you remember me. Probably not. In all honesty, I would never expect to cross your mind, and this letter might be the weirdest thing that's happened to you all week, or ever. But even then, likely not. I guess you can just read and label that for yourself. We only talked a few times in college, and although most of it was small talk, we had one deep conversation. It was outside of Richards Hall, in those two metal chairs under the shade of some huge oak trees. I'd been on the way back from class, and I'm pretty sure ...

21 likes

Lavender Season

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #313

It started with the scent.A gust of late summer wind rolled down the slopes of Hvar's hinterland and drifted into the small coastal town of Stari Grad, stirring dust, salt, and memory. But above all, it carried the unmistakable scent of lavender—thick, sharp, and nostalgic. It crept through the open shutters of Kuća Šime, the old stone house on the edge of the olive grove, and settled over Lina's skin like a question she hadn't asked in years.She stood barefoot in the kitchen, her fingers deep in a bowl of dough. The texture was sticky—wrong...

21 likes

Culinary Deviant

Nivethine Mahendran

Submitted to Contest #313

The door to the manor’s third floor private chamber creaked as it opened, revealing a frail silhouette lit by the soft glow of beeswax candlelight. Alice Read crept through the unoccupied room and awoke the dormant hearth. Sweat glistened off the young girl's tired face as she sat at the foot of the large oak bedframe to catch her breath and calm her nerves in front of the growing fire. Though Alice was many moons away from womanhood, a life of poverty and servitude had robbed her of her youth. Her hardened face had long abandoned its he...

21 likes

The Search

L.R. Black

Submitted to Contest #313

Memory, Drystan had learned, was the cruelest of cartographers.Each time he traced her face across the maps of years, she emerged transformed—not by time's honest erosion, but by the terrible alchemy of loss that transmuted recollection into hunger, fact into desperate mythology. Her eyes might hold the amber of late harvest wine one day, the storm-grey of northern seas the next. The delicate geography of her hands shifted between tellings: here, marked with the honest scars of an illuminator who had known quill and pigment as intimate compa...

20 likes

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Contest #313

This contest has ended. Thank you for your submissions.

$250

Prize money

409

Entries

143

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Aug 01, 2025 EST

Won by Rose Brown 🏆

Title: Dibble Dop

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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