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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#50: A Moment Like This

Throughout this contest, we’ve read wonderful entries that provide sweeping overviews of characters' lives (such as "The Tree"), as well as submissions that offer glimpses into distinct life-phases (like "Time Bomb"). We’ve also been captured by stories book-ended by the start and end of one particular moment in time: such as "The Price of a Nice Guy" (a woman gets a flat tire and parks on the side of the road), "Who Speaks to Death" (a story told through a single text conversation), and "To You" (a 50th birthday party).

In the spirit of those last three examples, this week's prompts challenge you to embrace the short story's ability to really dive into and explore one single scene.

🥇 Winner

“Life in the Trees” by Emily Hemmings

🏆 Winner of Contest #50

“What did you want to do? Like, in general I mean.” This is the first thing either boy had said in about an hour and a half. Approximately forty-five minutes had been taken up sharing a cold can of beans in the Dulchet’s tree fort. Both the treehouse and the beans were free for the taking, now that Mr. and Mrs. Dulchet had passed away. Waylon and Matthew passed back and forth the can of beans between them in complete silence, in the kind quiet contemplation something as utilitarian as beans usually demands. Matthew had been the first to bre...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“One Man Show” by Emily Hemmings

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #50

When I first saw her, I assumed that she was an anxious mirage, a type of unkind specter here to haunt my play. After all, Clarissa coming to my show, my first show, mind you, would be such an incredible cruelty to me that I was obviously skeptical about the authenticity of the person in the audience, three rows in, four from the left, reading the program. She had moved to New Jersey, hadn’t she, to be with that big man, the one who was always wearing a rotating universe of different hats? Gun to my head, I couldn’t have picked him out of a ...

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“Portrait of Time, Personified” by Aidrielle R.

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #50

Brian was already inside, mocking me from the doorway. He had to duck to even fit. Below him, I was trying to inch my way to the top. Every step I took seemed to send the rope ladder swinging.“Come on, old man!” he shouted from up above. I could practically hear the grin in his voice.“If I remember correctly, you’re older than me,” I panted in between steps. “By three months.”His laughter was swept away by the summer breeze. “Shame your memory’s not as good as your legs.” I eventually made it to the top. Brian scooted further inside to ...

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“Sparrows” by Henry Garrison

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #50

There are three baby birds underneath your treehouse. I hear them before I see them, their cries only becoming audible as the wind drops. Gentle cheeps coming from the grass somewhere below me. I use each squeak like a blip on a radar, homing in on them. They’re tucked round the back, hidden out of view from the house, underneath the nest that has fallen on top of them. I crouch down and gently lift the mishmash of twigs and leaves away, revealing the three creatures below. They can’t be more than a few days old, with only a fe...

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This week's prompts

Write a story about a proposal.

Valentine's Day – 211 stories

Write a story about an argument that seems to be about one thing, but is actually about another.

Dialogue – 121 stories

Write a story about a person experiencing pre-performance jitters.

High School – 162 stories

Write a story told entirely through one chase scene.

Thriller and Suspense – 143 stories

Write a story about a summer afternoon spent in a treehouse.

Summer – 303 stories

Stories

“Life in the Trees” by Emily Hemmings

🏆 Winner of Contest #50

“What did you want to do? Like, in general I mean.” This is the first thing either boy had said in about an hour and a half. Approximately forty-five minutes had been taken up sharing a cold can of beans in the Dulchet’s tree fort. Both the treehouse and the beans were free for the taking, now that Mr. and Mrs. Dulchet had passed away. Waylon and Matthew passed back and forth the can of beans between them in complete silence, in the kind quiet contemplation something as utilitarian as beans usually demands. Matthew had been the first to bre...

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“In the City Of Love” by Batool Hussain

Submitted to Contest #50

One.I am in Arizona out for a weekend. I look down and pick at my tangled hair. It touches my lap and looks like there are eggs caught on my locks. Standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon Park, I see a slender man. He looks like he is in his late twenties. His front tooth is chipped. His hair is held back by gel. He takes out a ring, gets down on his knee, and murmurs something. The woman he has knelt before cheers. Yeah, she practically cheers. Ah, they are getting married. The woman is very beautiful. Her hair is blonde. A fairy tale ki...

253 comments 253

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“Love you, love you not” by Monica G

Submitted to Contest #50

They say time flies when you’re doing something you enjoy. Well, the opposite is just as true. I’ve been waiting for him for over twenty minutes now and with every minute that goes by I am more tempted to leave. It feels like hours. I’m embarrassed and the waitress is getting moody. But I can’t leave now. That would be even more heartbreaking than what is about to happen. You see, he never takes me anywhere. EVER. We’ve been together for 5 years and I can’t remember the last time he took me out on a date, so I obviously grew suspicious when ...

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“Orange-Coloured Sky” by Deborah Angevin

Submitted to Contest #50

“How are you?”Sitting at the grass, enjoying the blue sky slowly turning orange, I turn my head at the familiar sound. In front of me, a man stands with a white short-sleeve shirt and khaki pants. Black rectangular-framed glasses sit on the bridge of his nose, covering his dark brown eyes. I blink my eyes twice, making sure he is the same man that I know. “Kevin?”The man flashes a wide smile. “You still remember me?”“Of course!” I answer, still feeling surprised. I did wish to meet him, yet it never occurred to me that we could ever mee...

195 comments 195

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“Waiting at Airports” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #50

Airports are a place devoid of time and existence. Life stops once you step onto the unloading curb, the thick smell of car exhaust and hot tarmac burning your nose. Flights can be as late as they want and you have no control. Drinking beer at 9 a.m. is totally acceptable, because time doesn’t matter at the airport. My 1800-calorie diet doesn’t exist within the airport walls, I eat a cheeseburger and a bag of Doritos. Everything that matters happens before, or after the airport. &nbs...

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“What We Used to Be” by Phebe Emmanuel

Submitted to Contest #50

I climb up the ladder nailed to the old tree in my parents’ backyard. The nails hang out of the wood and I give them a worried glance, wondering if they will give way or hold my weight. I’ve put on quite a few pounds since I was last here. The golden treehouse - that we built as a family years ago - towers over me, blocking the sun from stinging my eyes. As I scale the few rungs that it takes to reach the top, the memories of bounding up this same ladder as a 7-year-old girl with pigtails and striped bows flash before me. It brings a smile t...

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“Recreating Memories” by Doubra Akika

Submitted to Contest #50

The thing about cancer is that it doesn’t come with a warning. There’s no way to prepare for it before it happens. Like most things in life anyway, cancer ambushes you in many forms and sometimes it feels like there’s no way you can hold it back because there really is no way so, it consumes you and you can’t fight it. Sometimes though, the cancer gives you space to breathe, like just for one moment of your life, you can pretend you don’t have it. The thing is that you don’t know how many moments you’ll have like that before it destroys you ...

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“The Glass Box” by Nancy Drayce

Submitted to Contest #50

The sound of birds caresses my ears; because of the same sound, my heart is bouncing at the same rhythm as the summer song of a free creature that admonishes me with its song. I'm sitting in a small mouldy room muffled with the dense thick canopy of the old oak tree. I wrapped my legs with my thin, pale arms that have very little strength in them. I closed my eyes to allow other senses to take over my body. The smell of sea salt is itching my nostrils while the sound of the waves of the same water is sinking me into deeper thoughts.I remembe...

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“Redemptions and Promises I Can't Make” by Doubra Akika

Submitted to Contest #50

Have you ever seen a movie where the good guys don’t win? I’d bet anything you haven’t. But, I’m certain you’ve seen one where you’re so sure the main character can’t die, but everyone else can. In those movies, the main character isn’t always the classic definition of ‘good’, and the movie is usually about their redemption and when their time to be redeemed does come, they die because everyone dies, eventually. Movies just don’t tell us that every time. But death is something fantasy and reality have in common, it just seems prettier in the...

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“Taking the Same” by Phoebe Barr

Submitted to Contest #50

“She’ll take the same,” he said, in a voice so careless, so quiet and easy and unconcerned, that it made me want to scream. It was the first time he’d openly referred to me since we’d formally met half an hour ago. He hadn’t turned to me, hadn’t looked at my face, hadn’t stooped to ask me a question himself; he gestured with his long, elegant, ring-bedecked fingers behind him and to his right, where I stood with my hands clasped and my mouth shut. As though it were only natural he should speak for me without my consent. The servant only gla...

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“Finally Here, with You” by Mira Caplan

Submitted to Contest #50

"Come on!" Someone- I think Shonna- called from in front of me. I grab Rowan's hand, pushing him forward. I look over my shoulder, picking up Evangeline and placing her down on the the other side of the fallen tree that she had trouble climbing over."Go to Shonna." I say to her, glancing back again as I hear the sound of wings in the distance. "Hurry!" I don't know how it had come down to this. Life used to be simpler. You know, before The Eight were captured, and before my Mother passed away during childbirth. The doctors couldn't save...

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“The magic words” by Djenat Remmache

Submitted to Contest #50

They seem to be the perfect match. But are they really?They seem to have a happy relationship. But are they really happy together?Lydia and Scott met a year ago and started dating 8 months ago.Their relationship started in the most unpredictable way that no one can understand but them. We can say that they have a unique relationship. No one can completely understand why they are together, maybe that is why they still are. It’s their little secret. Their secret is the reason why it all started. Every couple has their own secret, haven’t they?...

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“People Talk ” by Mila Van Niekerk

Submitted to Contest #50

Authors note: This is just the first story , I'm hoping to work in a sequel with next week's prompts :) Here goes:And so, she lay there, with the hot water bottle upon her stomach and an icepack strapped to her forehead, contemplating the meaning of life and asking herself all kinds of philosophic questions she didn’t know the answers too.Do the teachers notice when the chalk squeaks on the blackboard, or don’t they and is that why they just keep on writing like their students aren’t being cringed to death behind them?Why can’t any real-life...

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“Ocean in the Sky” by Courtney Stuart

Submitted to Contest #50

When I think of him, I think of the ocean. Today, there is a woman. Yesterday, it had been Wyoming and wooden floors and rosary beads. Specks of dust caught in the weak slivers of sunlight pouring through a basement window. An old man who could not speak, and a girl who’d offered you a cup of coffee and a smile. A boy, who’d stood next to you and swore he knew the exact date for the end of the world. You had told him through the clouds of cigarette smoke that hung above each of you that you didn’t believe him; you knew that th...

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“The Letter Countdown” by Lata B

Submitted to Contest #50

The light shines down on all our faces and I can feel mine start to turn red. It was a big night for us. We all had our own goals. For some, it was to prove their smartness. For others, it was to impress their parents, but for me, it was to make a name for myself. Being a nerd was better than being invisible. I scan the crowd of teachers, parents, and the cool kids with my scared beady eyes. It's not like I'm afraid of people I'm just afraid to talk to them. One by one they get up to stand in front of the microphone. Taking turns eit...

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$50

Prize money

940

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jul 17, 2020 EST

Won by Emily Hemmings 🏆

Title: Life in the Trees

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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