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Write a story where one character needs to betray the other, but isn’t sure if they can.

Posted in Dark on Nov 1, 2022

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✍️ 170 stories

Your Poor Rick

Winner of Contest #67 🏆

Trigger warning: depression and suicidal ideation   “We saw your poor Rick,” they say in the grocery store aisle. I smile, unconvincingly, and compare jars of spaghetti sauce that I don’t even want.  “We heard about your poor Rick,” they say, half turned on the pew in front of me at church. I sit alone and nod at their thoughtful concern, which is, in truth, neither thoughtful nor concern. “How is your poor Rick,” they say to me on the sidewalk, where I’m gardening and minding my own business. It isn’t a question.  It's schade...

462 likes 406 comments 406
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Wind

Submitted to Contest #67

Vera lay still in bed, listening to the wind howl and the waves crash onto the small island. A silent tear rolled down her cheek, for today was the day she would have to kill Matthew. She didn't want to do it, she didn't even know for sure if she COULD do it, but she had to. She glanced down at a small slip of paper in her hand, and whispered to herself the familiar, menacing words as she had every day for the past year. "Six go out. Five come in. One will lose The rest will win. Two elders, Two youths. Two killers Only one will ...

118 likes 198 comments 198
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Lost in a World of Snow

Submitted to Contest #67

She caught you one day, doing lines of coke on your kitchen table while your four-year-old slept two doors down. She had known about your addiction for months now. You had fought about it many times before. Your parents, your sisters, even your friends had tried in vain to intervene. But this time, it was different. This time was the first time that you had gotten high in the home that you shared with her. She had reached her limit. She couldn’t take it anymore. She got up in your face whispering angrily, desperate to try and make you see se...

106 likes 82 comments 82
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living by a script

Submitted to Contest #67

I glance at Camille, who looks as nervous as a shivering opossum. We both do, but for different reasons. “Ready?” I whisper. She barely nods. Bridget climbs out of her seat, shaking. Her eyelids are so low they look shut. Her palms reflect from the handful of sweat. Perfect acting. “Well, I’m going to head to the bathroom,” Bridget says, breaking the silence. “You guys are acting kind of strange.” We both bob our heads forward like puppets. My mind blurs, I’m only concentrated on the mission. “Ellis, now?” “No, until she goes in.” Bridget di...

102 likes 50 comments 50
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Before you go🖤

Submitted to Contest #67

I watch a girl walk down the hallway to her room. She can't see me standing in the dark corner, covered by shadows.She opens the door, and grins. I don't move, already knowing who’s in there. He smiles at her, the same way he smiled at me. He pulls her into the room, and I hear the click of the lock."Fine, I'll do it." I mutter.Micheal materializes beside me, smirking. "Thought you would.""Shut up." I snap. "When does it need to be done?""Sunrise, if you do it." He says. "And keep the girl alive, Rez."I scowl, hating the name they all call m...

90 likes 114 comments 114
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I Wish You Love.

Submitted to Contest #67

Should I betray you? I don’t think I can.Giving up our friendship just to get a win?They say friendship doesn’t last foreverBut somehow I thought we would always be together.Will I be the break of our long built friendship?I always knew I sang better, I don’t mean to brag but I knew it once I opened my lips.My dream, my life. My voice is all I can provide.But I want you by my side…Music brought us togetherWill it divide us…forever?We made a promise, hoping our friendship will prevail.“If one of us fails, we both fail”But why did I have to be...

71 likes 196 comments 196
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Iago's Choice

Submitted to Contest #67

The television shows a car's flaming wreckage. On screen, the anchorman announces, "This was one of two similar scenes, thirty minutes ago. Both the candidate for president and their running mate were killed by coordinated rocket attacks. The assailants remained unseen. Police are asking anyone..."You tune out the rest. You know what happened- she did. Your boss took you under her wing seventeen years ago. You know her like you know your own family. Nothing is too low for her. Vipers disown her for being too low a snake. There she comes, int...

64 likes 30 comments 30
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girls who eat caterpillars on the playground

Submitted to Contest #67

I. It was halfway through LIT 201: INTRO TO AMERICAN LITERATURE that I realized I hated American literature. Every book we read ended the same way: our plucky main character gets on a train and thinks wistfully to the past, then brightly to the future. It’s a cheap metaphor, the train, a symbol for progress, forward movement, Westward expansion, rfonwards & upwards, etc. And American stories are just like that, straight lines, like train tracks, flat, giving the illusion that you ended up somewhere different, further ahead, than when you...

63 likes 12 comments 12
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Bird Watching

Submitted to Contest #67

OneMedina gazed out the open window into their new starlit world, Lillian at her side, waiting impatiently. Sighing, Medina closed the window and attended to Lillian’s cluttered papers strewn all over their shared room. “I never asked you to pick up my papers,” Lillian murmured, still tapping her toe impatiently. “I asked you to take me on the main deck!” Lillian spoke a little louder, arms crossed in defiance. Medina placed the messy papers on her desk and slipped on her shoes as slowly as she could muster. Then, she took Lillian’s han...

61 likes 34 comments 34
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Family

Submitted to Contest #67

“I love you. Do you love me?”“Uh – yeah. Yeah, I do love you.”“How much?”“Too much.”******“You are getting distracted, Henry.”“I know Dad. But I – I can’t help it.”“You must. Stop being sentimental or I’ll have to do it myself. You know how I feel about getting my hands dirty.”“Forget about her. Or I’ll make you.”******I walk across the lawn and reach the door.Gently knocking, I look around, taking in my surroundings and committing them to memory.A plant next to the door giving off a sweet fragrance, the freshly wet grass in the lawn, the we...

60 likes 6 comments 6
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Cracked Corporations: Cracked Cases Part 6

Submitted to Contest #67

           Alma hopped off the subway and sucked in the city air. Gaseous, slightly grimy, cigarettes-and-alcohol, and completely real. It wasn’t some fake pastoral purified scent everybody seemed obsessed with in the country. New York smelled like what air was supposed to be.           She had run away, she had run away, she really did it!                ...

54 likes 15 comments 15
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Red, red, red, and more red

Submitted to Contest #67

Lin- she had always seemed ordinary. People who used to look at her would not find anything special about her. At first glance, she was your regular woman in her twenties, doing some job or the other and living a seemingly content life. But that was actually not it. She was a secret agent, working undercover as a book editor. What others did not know was that while she worked on her stories, she simultaneously would be encoding messages. What people didn’t realize was that she was actually gathering and sorting data under the pretext of work...

49 likes 22 comments 22
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Knight's Assassin

Submitted to Contest #67

The bright, colorful gaiety of the festival was at stark contrast with my mission here. The crowds of adoring people cheered at their King as he appeared on the stage. The people in the city of Sunderra loved their King, loved the riches he gave them, loved the gloriousness of their city that was visited by people near and far and gazed upon in wonder. In their eyes, the King and his court could do no wrong.They were all blind fools.I made my way through the crowd, the vial I held in my pocket weighing heavily, although it was only small. Bo...

45 likes 32 comments 32
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Agreement Abandoned

Submitted to Contest #67

Gesrion stood just at the mouth of the cliff; so close that his toes hovered over the edge. One unsteady or unbalanced move and he would be free-falling in empty air, plummeting into the darkness.  The deep chasm watched him with a welcoming stare, trying to lure him into its grasp. The fingers of death brushed his cheeks, tempting him to come just a little bit closer. Only enough for it to wrap its fingers completely around him and snatch him into the binds of hell itself. Gesrion waited for vertigo to lead him to his untimely demise...

44 likes 5 comments 5
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Best Day

Submitted to Contest #67

Trigger warning: pet death   “You ready, Benny? You ready for the best day? Huh, buddy?”   Benny’s tail wags so hard I worry he’ll break it again. I laugh and rub his head, smiling at the soft fur between my fingers. It’s hard to believe how coarse and matted it was when I found him huddling behind a dumpster seventeen years ago.    No collar, no chip. No love. It took about five seconds for me to decide to take him home from the vet.   His golden fur’s faded a bit now and he walks slower than Hank, the neighbor’s pe...

44 likes 31 comments 31
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