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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#60: Face Your Fears

This week is a special edition of the Reedsy Prompts contest because our friends at IndieReader are taking it over with their own theme, prompts, and bonus prize! We'll let them take it from here...

Hi! Amy from IndieReader here. If you’re not familiar with IR, we’re one of the original (paid) review services for self, hybrid and independently published authors, providing professional book reviews since 2009, in addition to unique marketing and distribution solutions.

We know that 2020 has been a memorable (aka stressful) year for many. According to experts, one of the recommended ways to manage stress and anxiety is by thinking about what scares you most and then writing about it. So fittingly, this week’s theme is post-apocalyptic stories.

Don’t worry if that doesn’t sound like your genre, as we’ve written 5 prompts below that work whether you’re into that kind of thing or not. So pour a glass of wine, take a few deep breaths, and start typing. And we wouldn’t be surprised if, after you’re done, the world around you doesn’t look so bleak. At least there aren’t any zombies!

(As a bonus prize, the winner of this week's contest will receive a discount code for 20% off an IR Pro Review.)

This week's prompts

Write a funny post-apocalyptic story.

Funny – 110 stories

Write a post-apocalyptic story that features zombies.

Science Fiction – 178 stories

Write a post-apocalyptic story triggered by climate change.

Adults – 134 stories

Write a post-apocalyptic thriller.

Thriller and Suspense – 144 stories

Write a post-apocalyptic romance.

Dystopian – 196 stories

Stories

“Fric the Caveman” by Nori Mo

Submitted to Contest #60

So-ho-ho~ You think you know how the dinosaurs went extinct, huh? Think you’re so smart? “The dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago because of a meteor- the earliest human ancestor was found to have existed only 6 million years ago- no human has ever seen a dinosaur in person-” you believe, but these are all rumors spread by scientists to keep you quiet.My name is Fric, and I’m a caveman.I lived alongside my family… until they died in the apocalypse...“Oh no,” you say , “what happened?!” you ask. Well, it’s a long ...

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“The Nest” by Saif Mohamed

Submitted to Contest #60

One humid summer night in 2022, the US President was awakened by an emergency call for a meeting, requested by the head of NASA. In the next day, the President was on air, informing the world that Earth was in the way of a fleet of meteors, the average size of one of them is bigger than times square. Unless properly dealt with, he said, they could be the end of life as we know it. As searches of the Times Square size surged, many governments started a joint initiative to send a number of highly advanced missiles to destroy the celestial bodi...

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“It's Not a Wasteland” by Avalon Manly

Submitted to Contest #60

The whole place smelled dead. Not of death, but of deadness, of nothing having been alive there for God knew how long. The sun beat down an unforgiving white haze, and the metal rusted into pockmarks, and the plastic sloughed off its shapes to drip and drool into a series of malformed curlicues. She had absolutely no sense of how much time had passed, and kept losing her own feet in the heat waves that rolled off the blacktop.There was no other life in this place, though she had practically no idea what constituted life anymore. It was hard ...

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“A Reason for Survival” by Aubry Washburn

Submitted to Contest #60

The dust kicked up underneath her feet, creating a sort of dust devil around her. It had been days since Kate had seen any water, or people for that matter. Though she hadn't seen any living people, she had run into few zombies. She grasped her shot gun tightly as she thought about her last few nights. She hadn't been able to sleep for days now. Every time the sun went down, that's when the zombies seemed to be the most active. It was as though the blaring hot sun made them sleepy during the day, which proved difficult to get any sleep...

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“Cycle of Consciousness” by G. Baerwolf

Submitted to Contest #60

I stumbled through the hospital corridor, leaving red handprints on the clean white walls as I went. I could hear the footsteps, tens of hundreds, trampling over each other in the stairwell behind me. I stayed focused, searching desperately for the operating room. I passed one door, then two as the screams began to echo behind me. I turned a corner and increased my pace, aggravating the wound on my ankle. A wild gunshot rang out from down the hall behind me. My eyes widened and I saw the sign ahead of me, three doors to my salvation. I heard...

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“"I ain't gonna let ya"” by Kiersten Elin

Submitted to Contest #60

The Dead groaned loudly and banged against the glass doors at the sight of us. The murky glass kept me from seeing past the first 2 rows of Dead, and those alone would be more than we’d ever faced in the past year that we’d fought together. Was he as nervous as I? I decided I didn’t want to know. If he was nervous then that meant things were really bad. Maybe he could see my heart pounding against my ribs or my stiff legs as I walked closer to the doors, but when I looked back at him he gave me a reassuring nod. Right. We could do this. The ...

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“Primal Instinct” by Georgia Casleton

Submitted to Contest #60

Since ‘the event’, life had been brought back to our human primal instinct; survival. Everyone was only out to only protect themselves and their families. I mean, who wouldn’t? You can trust no one in these times. You never know what people are willing to do to win. At least that is what it feels like. It seems that this is a massive computer game, and the last one standing is the winner. Tribalism is something that has had a massive resurgence since ‘the event’. I suppose when things are tough and pleasure is a distant memory, humankind r...

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“Dead Signal” by Eric Daily

Submitted to Contest #60

Five stories under the Chthonic Labs Alpha-1 facility, in a chilly glass-partitioned room, Guy and Deana decided to take a break. Beyond the glass was the observation chamber, walled in cold steel. There lay fifty-four human corpses in a space no bigger than a cargo container; some were weeks old, others were months, but most had been dead for years. The chamber was dark, and nothing could be seen except fifty-three little red lights jumbled around near the floor. With some input codes and the flick of a switch, he could make al...

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“Barry Newton's Awakening ” by George Davis

Submitted to Contest #60

Barry Newton’s Awakening—George Davis The long, dark tunnel had no light at its end. Barry Newton walked, hand on the wall of the underground passage. “Wow, it’s pitch-black in here. Where am I?” As Barry moved slowly along the path, his vision sweeping side to side in the black abyss, and his mouth was as dry as a parched desert. The last thing I remember, he thought to himself. I was crossing the street, going to the barbershop for my monthly haircut. I vaguely remember seeing a stretch lim...

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“Mimicry” by Cynthia Lee

Submitted to Contest #60

In this city, I can't smell anything. Besides the scent of death. But there was no other choice. The five of us have to loot the food stock that is still left here. Therefore, we devised a strategy, how to penetrate the sea of zombies from one point to another. Without getting caught, we weren't one of them. Yeah, at first, this mission was scary to me. Fear of being caught and crushed like prey for piranha fish. Just the thought of them gobbling up my brain already makes me pee in my pants. But there w...

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“Lost in the Woods” by John Kieffer

Submitted to Contest #60

“Let us in!” Rochelle threw a rock at the gate as she yelled. It made a loud electric pop as it landed. “We need help damnit!” “That’s your problem,” came the muffled voice from the other side of the walls. “The gates aren’t opening, move along.” “You’re sentencing us to death! We need food, water, and shelter from the zombies.” “Yeah, you and everyone else who comes to Greensburg.” Rochelle looked at me with a quizzical look on her face. “Greensburg?” she mouthed to me. I shrugged. I never understood why, but these small settlements lov...

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“Waking Up” by Jessica Bell

Submitted to Contest #60

It was supposed to be a simple surgery. I had a strange pain in my lower side and had my suspicions that it could be my appendix. Go to the hospital because, better safe than sorry, and it was confirmed that yes, my appendix was inflamed and needed to be removed. I remember my parents, my brother and my friend Steve, who were all going to wait through the surgery and meet me after. My mother was always the worrywort, so of course she was almost teary eyed as she said she loved me. I remember being in the bed, being wheeled to the operating r...

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“Alone ” by Kimberly Caplinger

Submitted to Contest #60

Seventeen year old Samira had never found it hard to be alone no matter where she was. Whether she had been in school - she would find a corner with a book and read. When she was at home, she would go outside and enter the woods behind the house and find a tree to climb up and spend hours there, reading, thinking and listening. She would sit at the dinner table with her parents and her two year old brother, Tootie, and daydream through their conversations. She must have daydreamed right through the talks of what to do if zombies had taken ...

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“When the Lights Go Out” by Wendy Parks

Submitted to Contest #60

The world had gone into freefall and the darkness was descending. There was a global melt down and there was a frantic rush to be evacuated from the country she was currently holed up in, to try to get back home to some level of security before a calamitous civil unrest ensued and the zombies arrived. In the dead of the night, she boarded a bus and was shuttled to the already closed and deserted airport. The coach sped through deserted villages and towns, ignoring speed limits and road markings in desperate attempts to get ...

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“The Northern Exodus” by Rajesh Patel

Submitted to Contest #60

Summer had just begun officially. I mean, astronomically. Today, June 22nd, at precisely at 4:14am CDT of the year 2022 AD. We live in our little house, a bungalow, in this city called Victoria, in Texas. I love the heat and I love summer here. Temperatures fairly close or above 90 degrees on average during this season. My wife, Rebecca, she prefers the cooler weather though. She is after all born and raised in St-Paul, Minnesota. I am from Dallas, Texas. I’ve always lived in the warmer weather all my life. I work mostly from home, as a fi...

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$50

Prize money

762

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Sep 25, 2020 EST

Won by Ruth Midgley 🏆

Title: Unpaving Paradise

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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