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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#96: Xenia

In Ancient Greece, it was believed that gods in disguise walked the Earth. While this might sound like fun, there’s a tiny catch: a blunder (like turning away a stranger in need of shelter) could get you into a deity’s bad books.

So what did the Greeks do? They lived by the principle of xenia: extending their hospitality to anyone and everyone without exception — in case a god was among their visitors. I make it sound like a life hack, but the Greeks approached xenia with real reverence, and the custom features in many works of the time — most notably Homer’s timeless classic, The Odyssey.

Ever since Odysseus made the journey home to Ithaca (where his unlucky wife was duty bound to entertain 108 unwanted suitors due to the sanctity of xenia), the delicate, shifting balance between stranger, guest, and friend has been a fertile source of conflict in stories. With that in mind, this week’s prompts invite you to explore the relationship between guest and host, or negotiate the path from strangers to friends. You can choose to embrace the concept of xenia, or not — I’ve left it up to you. Happy writing!

🥇 Winner

“unoccupied” by R E

🏆 Winner of Contest #96

Guest rooms were always hiding things. No one starts out wanting a guest room. It’s usually an office first, but then you got fired and can’t look at it anymore, so you throw a bed in it that you’ll never sleep in. Sometimes it’s a kid’s room, but they’ve moved out into a college dorm room. It used to be storage but then the divorce happened leaving it depressingly empty. A studio for recording music but the bass player was in a car accident, and the band broke up. Guest rooms are rarely ever intentional. It’s more of a ritual. Something s...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“The Torrid Travels of Teleporting Todd: A Todd Story” by Christopher Rothschild

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #96

Todd blinked into existence and tumbled into dirt. He rolled onto his back and breathed as hard as he could, exhausted. He had never blinked this far before, and now his insides hurt. He looked to his side and saw a lizard scurry under some sagebrush. He was in the desert. It was hot, even though it was nine in the morning. He sat up with effort and looked at his barren surroundings. Besides the sagebrush and cacti, there was a cluster of dark specks in the distance. Hopefully, a town. He sighed and picked himself up. If he could manage one ...

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“Elpis” by Katie Evans

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #96

Maybury was a quiet place. Five and a half thousand people lived in it, but it wound a long way out into Nevada desert. Less a town, more a collection of villages scattered through the prickly-pear cacti and low scrubland. Prometheus arrived in the mid-afternoon when the sun was patiently cracking open the sidewalk. Even the weeds between the cracks were limp with heat. The few people out kept their heads down, hats tilted forward to hide their faces. When he killed the engine, he could almost hear the backs of their necks sizzling. ...

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“I am not here” by Austin Diaz

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #96

The definition of a guest room: a bedroom in a house for visitors to sleep in. I am not, however, sleeping here. It is four in the morning, and I have not slept. Also, it is unclear if I am still a visitor or if I ever was. Two of the four criteria, then, are not fulfilled. It is a bedroom, and this bedroom is in a house, specifically Grandmother’s house. A short description of the guest (?) room: There is a bed and a nightstand with a lamp, a picture on the wall and a clock. That’s it. No chest of drawers, no closet,...

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“Pulling Threads” by R K

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #96

At the beginning of each summer, there was the necessary trip to the hardware store to comb through the aisles for glue traps. Each year, she counted how many traps were needed, based on what she found as she bent over couch-backs, crawled into corners, and reached behind bookcases to pull out the previous year’s traps. There were wolf spiders mostly, but occasionally a centipede, who had wandered onto the smooth, sticky surface. She examined the paths of the creatures who somehow managed to crawl deeper and further into th...

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This week's prompts

Write a story about strangers becoming friends, or friends becoming strangers.

Fluff – 262 stories

Start your story with the arrival of a strange visitor in a small town.

Horror – 187 stories

Write about someone welcoming a stranger into their home.

Thriller and Suspense – 161 stories

Start your story in an empty guest room.

Horror – 150 stories

Write about a character who has to rely on the hospitality of strangers.

Fluff – 97 stories

Stories

“unoccupied” by R E

🏆 Winner of Contest #96

Guest rooms were always hiding things. No one starts out wanting a guest room. It’s usually an office first, but then you got fired and can’t look at it anymore, so you throw a bed in it that you’ll never sleep in. Sometimes it’s a kid’s room, but they’ve moved out into a college dorm room. It used to be storage but then the divorce happened leaving it depressingly empty. A studio for recording music but the bass player was in a car accident, and the band broke up. Guest rooms are rarely ever intentional. It’s more of a ritual. Something s...

174 comments 174

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“Hair of Fire ” by Aerin Rebecca ✨🌈

Submitted to Contest #96

I always thought of the heat as happiness. Warmth. Like a family. Cold was the bitter iciness panging the back of your head, numbing your fingers and toes until all you wanted to do was go back inside and sip hot cocoa.That was until I moved to the blistering desert.Turns out, enough of anything and you can be numbed by that too. (I was pretty sure my skin considered a slight breeze as “cold” by now.) Sigh.I stared out the dusty window with ragged breaths, so deep in my own regrets that I didn’t hear the AC sputter out. I literally had ...

201 comments 201

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“A Dog Named Shark” by Stevie B

Submitted to Contest #96

Years ago, when I still lived in East Hampton, New York, I met a neighbor. As we got to know each other we began to socialize with one another on a regular basis over the summer. What began as borrowed cups of sugar, flour, or coffee, turned into occasional drinks at each other’s homes, and eventually grew to invitations to our neighborly backyard barbeques. As she accepted my first cookout invite, she asked, “Do you mind if my dog comes too?” “Of course not: To be honest with you, I get along with dogs and cats better than I do with most h...

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“Maybe it’s bedbugs, maybe it’s -” by Kathleen `Woods

Submitted to Contest #96

The room is empty of life, as far as the observer is concerned. Though such an assessment would be willfully ignorant of the veritable metropolis of insect life beneath the bed. They are unaware of their long accepted voyeur, as they luxuriate among themselves hidden from the light. The observer watches on thinking, ‘I should really deal with what’s under the bed.’ But this is all the observer could really think at that moment, as they didn’t know where they were.They woke alone a little while before, on the bed above the shee...

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“Spare a Room?” by Lynn Penny

Submitted to Contest #96

It was his job to protect her.From the day the doctors confirmed the pregnancy, he knew that he had a newfound purpose in life. Watching her grow from a tipsy toddler to a grown woman made the greatest and worst moments of his life. It was great because he got to watch his beautiful daughter blossom into the woman she was today.Worst because now he was tormented, chained down just to watch a monster peel the petals off.******George knew something was off when he heard his daughter giggling from the front of the motel. Mere hours ago, she was...

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“Andromeda” by KED KED

Submitted to Contest #96

I could feel him anxiously fretting about downstairs, waiting while I finished packing up my mom’s small, portable telescope. I had my own, of course. Undoubtedly an upgraded version with a stellar digital camera. But for this trip, the sentimentality of using my late mother’s battered and beloved gear just felt so appropriate. “You’ll be okay, Andy.” A forced declaration instead of an agitated question.A father, a forlorn figurehead, trying his honest best to reassure us both. I smiled up at him, my...

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“Things We Do In The Rain” by Nainika Gupta

Submitted to Contest #96

Mama always said that you could tell what type of person someone was by looking at their positive or negative outlook to rain. She said the people not worth my time were the ones who dashed from point A to point B with their collars upturned and their hats pulled low. The ones who scowled at the gray sky as if it personally offended them were the ones who most likely didn’t appreciate the little things in life. But she said those to look out for were the ones who danced in the rain. Those who lived and loved with their entire being...

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“The Cycle” by Maahnoor Rajan

Submitted to Contest #96

With every ticking of the clock, hoots could be heard more distinctly from exceptionally restless voices of crickets and katydids, but unfortunately, Andriette was very busy to notice that. The last candy left in the house finally went down the gullet of Andriette, and now after an hour of extensive staring at the packet of candy while simultaneously gazing at the TV; her eyeballs were free to look around. In search of something else to eat, her eyes caught a creepy-looking thing placed just beside the shopping bag her mother bought ...

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“William Gregory MacDonald” by Veda Stone

Submitted to Contest #96

(Warning: this story has themes of drinking and death) It was not uncommon for people to stumble drunkenly into the small inn on the corner of Central Avenue and Stone Street, but when they asked for the largest room there was and did not count out the hundreds of dollars in cash they put on the counter, it tended to catch the attention of those who saw. Harold Randall stood up from where he was sitting, looking at the man in disbelief as he counted out one-hundred, two-hundred, three, four, five-hundred dollars. “Sir, this will pay ...

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“The Surface level kindness of Living Strangers” by Kathleen `Woods

Submitted to Contest #96

Bodies walk through the huddled remains of a strangers town, the people, of varying repute amongst themselves hide in the remains of what used to be a courthouse. Whatever leaders they had have failed them, and a new voice has taken center stage, she doesn’t have a name to him, but he’s thankful as she whispers encouragement. “You take it then? Good dear. You might be ripe-uncouth, but you’ve got sticks an’ stones.” as she leads the quickening hands of a local. He’s a stranger among strangers, and he doesn’t understand a word. The wo...

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“Open” by Claire Lindsey

Submitted to Contest #96

The din of the vacuum buzzes heavily in her ears as she dusts the picture frames on the mantle, her gaze following Mark’s unpredictable course through the living room. Her husband’s sun-spotted fingers clutch the vacuum’s handle tightly. He avoids her eyes, focused on the non-existent specks of dirt on the floor. The house is bright, the curtains pulled open for the first time in many months. She is not sure she likes the light that eviscerates their home, exposing their sorrow to the world like a sliced-open abdomen on an operating tab...

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“The Road Less Traveled” by Nainika Gupta

Submitted to Contest #96

I chose the road less traveled, now where the hell am I? - Robert Frost/unknownThe stranger arrived on a sunny day. Which was weird, as all the other days of the month had been rainy and stormy. But the day the bells rang announcing his arrival, the clouds dissipated and we saw blue sky for the first time in over thirty days. The small inn at the end of the lane, creeping up over the cliff, was almost full to bursting. Not with visitors, no. Lane’s End didn’t get many visitors in the season-season, let alone in the off-season. Rath...

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“The Art of Staying Awake” by Abigail Airuedomwinya

Submitted to Contest #96

"I'm going to send someone over," the voice is awfully calm, leaning towards treachery and meekness. He waits, silently for her small voice to slice through but she remains quiet. This, he believes, is called acceptance. "Just treat him like you would treat me, please."She presses the phone against her ears until she can feel the coldness of it. That way, she hopes she can hear his hesitation. When she hears nothing, she looks around at her small apartment and sighs. She can always tell him no, she knows, but she wants to please him. She und...

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“Ania's Room” by Thom With An H

Submitted to Contest #96

I received the email in June 2009. The subject line simply asked one question: “What do you think?” The email was from my wife, Jodi, so even though I was at work at the time, as a good husband should, I opened it immediately. As it turns out, it was actually a forwarded email with the picture of a young girl named Ania. She was just three weeks older than our own daughter, Kelsey, and she was looking for a host family as part of a high school foreign exchange program. The email explained a little about her, including personal...

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“One Last Dance” by Daniel R. Hayes

Submitted to Contest #96

(Content Warning: Suicide contemplation.) In the mornings I like to jog through the bustling city not knowing if it will be my last time. It’s kind of exciting if you think about it. I’m in my mid-thirties, and the possibilities for catastrophes are endless. I could get hit by a speeding car, get run over by a bike messenger, or I could fall down into the sewers and get eaten by the overgrown rats. Those are just environmental accidents, don’t get me started on the endless hazards my vivid imagination can come up with. When ...

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$50

Prize money

858

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jun 04, 2021 EST

Won by R E 🏆

Title: unoccupied

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.

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