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#74 Countdown

Congratulations everyone, we’re almost done with 2020! As we reach the final week of a year that’s brought so much upheaval to all our lives, there’s bound to be even more clock-watching than usual.

To channel this anticipation, this week we’re going to focus on counting things down. Whether it’s seconds, days, or tasks, striking through lists and calendars is both therapeutic and practical. So don’t let me hold you up! After all, time’s a-tickin’ and these stories aren’t going to write themselves!

🥇 Winner

Kindergarten

Scout Tahoe

Winner of Contest #74 🏆

I’ll be on the train. It’ll be an underground train, like the subway, but in an airport. One door is both the exit and entrance with a few people trickling in and out. The train’s name will be Bart and my father will have warned me about it. The train will have pastel colors of gum, crafted into inappropriate pictures of body parts and messages in another language. I’ll know that if I was in another world I’d call it art and take a photo to show my kids. I’ll be standing. Sucking on a mint and molding it to the shape of my tong...

331 likes

179 comments 179

⭐️ Shortlisted

Top Ten Places To Wait For Your Owners

Rinnie Leigh

Shortlisted for Contest #74 ⭐️

One: right where they left youIt’s a wonderful, quaint little spot, a lush, fragrant stretch of grass and white clovers, sunny and warm and right by the roadside, so they’ll have no problem seeing you when they come back. Besides, right here is where their scent is the strongest, on account of how they left you your favourite plush blanket to wait upon, as well as your food and water bowls, heaped with dry food and your favourite biscuits. It’s more than they usually feed you at a single mealtime, which means it’s one of the best things that...

83 likes

250 Days

Iona Cottle

Shortlisted for Contest #74 ⭐️

Esme sat and watched the sun pass across her room, just as she did every day, waiting for the right time. That wasn’t to say that she watched it all day, every day, although she did spend a lot of her time – probably more than most – just watching the box of light trek across her painted wall. It wasn’t as though there was all that much else to do. During the morning, when the light was best, she did draw and read, but after her lunch arrived through the little flap in the middle of her door, she’d settle into her large armchair and watc...

72 likes

The Top 10 Times I Thought About Dying

Shortlisted for Contest #74 ⭐️

Trigger warning: Suicidal ideation and attempt"Wash me away," I begged the sea.I remember the waves crashing onto me with a force that was mighty enough to wreck ships. Yet I did not struggle. I merely floated on my back as one enjoying a swim in a reflection pool on a mild summer day. I gazed at the thundering skies and wondered what would happen if a bolt of lightning were to strike the water. Would it be enough to kill me? Would it be that bad, dying?I waited for fear to take hold of me; for any remnant of survival instinct to awaken my s...

37 likes

Knockout New Year

Shortlisted for Contest #74 ⭐️

We haven’t discussed this before, but I’m about 75 percent sure she’ll say yes. I grip the velvet box with clammy hands. “Ten!” On TV, thousands in New York start the countdown. I’m reminded of the last two times I held this box. I try not to, but your brain inevitably connects things against your will. The first time was at my first girlfriend’s favorite restaurant. It was in fact her favorite, she said, but not the sort of place you propose in. Up until that day I thought Chili’s was pretty nice. She left me with th...

29 likes

This week's prompts

Write about someone scrambling to finish a goal in the last few hours of the year.

Winter – 123 stories

Write about someone keeping track of time with tally marks on a wall — until one day they discover that all the marks are gone.

Thriller and Suspense – 132 stories

Write a story that takes place across ten days.

Kids – 100 stories

Write a story that takes place across ten seconds.

Kids – 256 stories

Write a story in the form of a top-ten list.

Middle School – 113 stories

Stories

Kindergarten

Scout Tahoe

Winner of Contest #74 🏆

I’ll be on the train. It’ll be an underground train, like the subway, but in an airport. One door is both the exit and entrance with a few people trickling in and out. The train’s name will be Bart and my father will have warned me about it. The train will have pastel colors of gum, crafted into inappropriate pictures of body parts and messages in another language. I’ll know that if I was in another world I’d call it art and take a photo to show my kids. I’ll be standing. Sucking on a mint and molding it to the shape of my tong...

331 likes

179 comments 179

Not Worth It

Submitted to Contest #74

Trigger warning: Suicide, death Things to do before I leave: 1. Hug my mother. Say I love you to her, even if I don’t mean it, because I won’t. She never loved me. She always loved her other children more than me. But she tried, I’m sure she tried to love me. It is my fault that I’m so unlovable. It’s my fault that I was always so moody and depressing, that talking to me was more of a chore than a pleasure. I didn’t deserve the same love that my siblings always got, I know that. But I wish I had gotten at least a fraction o...

140 likes

223 comments 223

Game Over

Submitted to Contest #74

Trigger warning: Death They took off my ventilator. Ten seconds left. Before I lose. Ten. I stayed at home. I washed my hands. I wore a mask the rare times I went outside. I adapted to the online classes, the Zoom birthday parties and the occasional awkward family group call. I texted till my thumbs were sore and watched television till my eyes were red. Nine.I did it all. I tried. But it wasn’t enough. Clearly. The people who did nothing to save themselves were saved. I did everything to save myself. But it caught up to me. I ran until my l...

119 likes

195 comments 195

Violet's letter

Rose Valerie

Submitted to Contest #74

Day 1: The letterThe Party of a lifetime, Alex himself got invited. The letter felt old and the paper was thin and valuable. Dear Alex:Alex, I’ve heard a lot about you, even if you don’t know. I know how you act, what you look like and I know your girlfriend, Hailey. Though this might seem creepy that I know everything about you and that you know absolutely nothing about me, it helped me decide that you’re perfect for this. You’re invited to a party. Not any ordinary party, like come on, you’d just ignore this letter if it was an ordina...

118 likes

Unexpected Turn of Events

Saniya Khakwany

Submitted to Contest #74

Time had flown by quickly, every year Sasha would make New Year resolutions, but every year she would fail to achieve them. This year she thought to make a list that was easy to accomplish, but yet again, the year was about to come to an end, only a few hours left and yet she had not been able to complete a single thing on the list. With the horrible day she had at work and the bad lucky she got when she arrived only two minutes late at the bus stop, she felt flaky and depressed for many reasons. Another additional being that she was unable ...

110 likes

The Coldness of Sand

Deidra Whitt Lovegren

Submitted to Contest #74

3.1688739 x 10^-10 MilleniaIn ten seconds you will break my heart. In a thousand years, I will never recover from the words that will come out of your mouth, from this serious conversation you want so desperately to have, from your dead shark eyes that fail to hold my gaze. I will get up from this moderately priced seafood restaurant’s table, fully understanding that our relationship is, indeed, over. Like preparing a fish for a feast, your words will cleanly gut me. And at this point, I seriously doubt my legs will support me. As if al...

84 likes

Ode to a Gummy Bear Graveyard

Jubilee Forbess

Submitted to Contest #74

to my pillow Free verse poetry Floating like dead feet against the shore Wraps seaweed around your legs Pushes you deeper into your bed And you wish you had thicker blankets Thicker pillows Thicker skin. Your friends Love you They Put no one above you But sometimes you wonder if they’d love if they knewThat you killed your betta fish when you were nine Choked your hamster at age five Dropped lemon drops in your cat’s food bowl And still don’t know what the word arseni...

83 likes

Bombs Away

Submitted to Contest #74

I stare in horror at the smirking face of Albert Grindstaff, the purveyor of death and horror, not the sanitized version of television screens, but the real genocides, the killing of entire families, smirked at me, scarlet blood blossoming over his heart from the bullet I just shot into his chest. There is a dead quality to his eyes as if the soul had long departed and left this zombie-man in his stead, a monster to do the bidding of the dark force. All he cared for were his luxuries and the dirty money that floated in electronic nothingness...

83 likes

Top Ten Places To Wait For Your Owners

Rinnie Leigh

Shortlisted for Contest #74 ⭐️

One: right where they left youIt’s a wonderful, quaint little spot, a lush, fragrant stretch of grass and white clovers, sunny and warm and right by the roadside, so they’ll have no problem seeing you when they come back. Besides, right here is where their scent is the strongest, on account of how they left you your favourite plush blanket to wait upon, as well as your food and water bowls, heaped with dry food and your favourite biscuits. It’s more than they usually feed you at a single mealtime, which means it’s one of the best things that...

83 likes

Into The Leviathan’s Maw

Elle Clark

Submitted to Contest #74

The bioluminescent ribs arch high above, spanning the sky. Leathery skin behind them stretches taut and cuts off whatever view there might be. Twisting around the bones are vines of darkness, occasionally bridging the gaps between to link the only sources of light in my world. In the early days, I had tried to use the vines to climb high enough to survey my environment, but they were as brittle as hope and as sharp as disappointment. I always fell, my hands crisscrossed with thin lines of blood. Now, I simply watch them growing, slowly ...

82 likes

Those Who Showed Me the Way

Maya -

Submitted to Contest #74

𝐓𝐞𝐧My best friend, Emilia, taught me to always stay true to myself.I met her on the first day of first grade, in the bustling highlighter-yellow hallway outside our classroom. Our backpack hooks were adjacent to each other, each with a laminated frog sticker above it displaying our names.The rest of my classmates stood in a circle around her, giggling and staring at her without attempting to make their teasing discrete. After a few moments of confusion, I realized they were laughing at the pair of wire cat ears she wore on her head. By this ...

81 likes

276 comments 276

And the Ball Drops (Wayne's POV)

Submitted to Contest #74

*Nainika’s Note* Hello everyone! I’m sure we’re all ready for 2020 to be over, and as my last story of 2020 (AND MY FIRST TIME DOING ALL 5 PROMPTS!!!!), this is a collaboration with the wonderful Maya Emerson!! She took Cressida’s POV of this collab, and it doesn’t really matter what perspective you read first!! (It’s in the link in my bio) I hope you have a wonderful and safe New Year’s!! Enjoy Wayne’s story :) “ITS NEW YEARS EVE!!!” I’m rudely awoken by my eight-year-old nephew jumping onto my stomach. “Urk,” I groan, rolling over. “Uncl...

78 likes

Your Black Pen

𝕜𝐞𝕟𝐝𝕣𝐚 𝕤𝐭𝕠𝐧𝕖

Submitted to Contest #74

Warning: There’s one guy who’s gay, so if you’re uncomfortable with that, feel free to leave. Thanks :) Ten - Lukas Lukas was a nice guy. You sometimes look at him in class, and thirty percent of the time, he glances and smiles at you. He’s too innocent. One morning, you were early for school. Your mom had a business meeting, so she dropped you off at seven thirty-five when it started at eight. You decided to watch the basketball players, who were the only students that were there. You realized one of the players was Lukas, and you decid...

76 likes

Ten Seconds 'Till Death

Submitted to Contest #74

I’ve heard about someone’s life flashing in front of their eyes before they die. But mine was more of a movie. An old-fashioned movie. The scenes of my life slowly unfolded, shifting from one to the other on a tape. I could almost hear the clicking sound of the transitions. And somehow, I knew that I had ten seconds before the car would hit me, therefore killing me. And then the movie started.10 secondsI was the stereotypical “nerd” in middle school: I always had my nose in a book. I loved reading, it gave me an excuse to escape the real wor...

75 likes

182 comments 182

Just a bit of Courage

✯𝐋𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚 𝐋𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫✯

Submitted to Contest #74

Title: Just a bit of Courage Author: Haripriya Author's Note: Hello everyone! I hope you all are having a great day! This is my last story of this entire year, so I hope you enjoy it! I can't do it. I can't!! I just...just can't. I know it was one of my goals to achieve this year, and there is only precisely 9 hours left for this year to be over. But, I'm too scared. I am the opposite of unabashed. I'm sorry Grace, I just can't do it. You were right in saying I was just a big embarrassed person, a big scaredy-cat because, in reality, I a...

74 likes

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Contest #74

This contest has ended. Thank you for your submissions.

$50

Prize money

724

Entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jan 01, 2021 EST

Won by Scout Tahoe 🏆

Title: Kindergarten

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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