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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

An apologetic letter or email from an old flame suddenly arrives — many years too late.

Posted in Dramatic on Nov 22, 2024

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 71 stories

“Where Time Almost Stands Still” by Donald Haddix

Submitted to Contest #278

Where Time Almost Stands StillOk, how do we start this story? We could start it with character descriptions…nah. That’s on you and your imagination. We could write a beautiful description of atmosphere and breathtaking elements…nah, not going to happen. Hmmm, then how…? Fuck it, let’s just go.Cole Johnson’s Entries:Day 104:I went to court today. It was some good, some bad. I was offered 24 years. That’s good. I won’t see Sally or my children for 8,760 days. That’s bad. This is a decision I must absorb. My attorney says it’s the best I w...

41 comments 41
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“Words I've Waited For” by Alexis Araneta

Submitted to Contest #278

Just one look at the penmanship, --- a solitary glance at those loopy, almost oblong letters, a furtive regard at the doughy circles dotting the small I’s --- and I feel a million glass butterflies flutter as they’re compacted inside of my stomach, their fragile, delicate wings catching on every tissue and cutting my insides. I’ve waited countless mornings of teardrops splattering into my tea, years of watching the postman like a hawk, for this blush-coloured piece of paper. Now, that it’s in my hands, her name resounds in my head once more,...

42 comments 42
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“Better Fires” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #278

Dear J, I lit the mailbox on fire when I saw you kissing M. Others told me that when feeling too much, one might hurt one’s self. There might be cuts along the arm or starvation. I had no inclination towards self-harm. From a very young age, I understood that the world does enough to you; why do anymore to yourself? I saw you kissing M behind the cafetorium, and I ran all seven blocks home. On the way, I saw the Gozer’s blue mailbox, and I knew it had to burn. One match around the base, and it went up quickly along with whatever mail was ins...

7 comments 7
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“Easy Pickings” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #278

CW - couple of swearsMarcusWe met on an online forum where she went by the name of Smokie Ise. ‘Call me Isa if you want,’ she said, although I suspected this wasn’t her real name.‘So… you a sixty a day girl or what?’She replied with a ROFL and a series of sideways tear-stream laughing emojis. ‘It’s in the avatar, gonk, the way the shadow's done around the eye…’Guess I knew as little about women’s make-up as I did the way they thought. But the upshot was, at the end of the day I liked her, and I had been widowed a while.AliceI’ve always been ...

5 comments 5
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“From the Trenches” by Ty Warmbrodt

Submitted to Contest #278

Anne Sutherland greeted Mr. Schaeffer at the mailbox as he came by on his horse-drawn carriage to deliver the mail. You could set your pocket watch to Mr. Schaeffer’s timeliness. He was always there at two-fifteen in the afternoon, rain or shine. Anne decided to take a break from beating the dirt out of the living room rug to have a glass of lemonade. She figured the kindly postman would appreciate one too, so she fixed two glasses and walked down to the road. Mr. Schaeffer handed Anne the mail. They exchanged niceties over the weather and h...

5 comments 5
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“First Name Last Name at Gmail Dot Com” by Hannah Lynn

Submitted to Contest #278

No bells or whistles. No cutesy play on words, puns or double entendres. He was never into that. Just his name at gmail dot com. First name last name at gmail dot com. Not a period or dash separating first and last name. Not even an underscore. That’s how his email appeared. I sat back stunned, strawberry and banana yogurt on spoon halfway up to my dropped jaw. I peered closer to my phone, not quite believing my eyes. Replacing the spoon back into the plastic container for fear of choking, I looked around ...

9 comments 9
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“Curtis and the Conciliatory Kill” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #278

“Of everything I’ve regretted over the past 30 years — and you know just how many — I regret most that I couldn’t have given you the one thing you begged me for when you needed me the most. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life, and even if you could forgive the rest, I know you’ll never forgive my leaving you in your pain. I just can’t face you — I’m the same weak man, the same coward you’ve always known me to be. I couldn’t give you the death you deserved. I’m so sorry.”It was his style — a miserable, tiny, meaningless “man” with del...

1 comment 1
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“In Life and In Death” by Malika Harmon

Submitted to Contest #278

“I was born to love. So why can’t I?” That question haunted me in life, but not now, 226 days after I died. Sunlight streams through the kitchen window, casting golden rays across the room. The familiar sounds of my two children playing fill the background. It’s a picture-perfect July morning, the kind you see in parenting magazines. But my world has shifted. This realm is no longer the only one I know. Death renewed an ancient connection to something beyond…this. I gaze at my girls, their love an invisible, indestructible thread binding us ...

1 comment 1
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“Cheater” by John K Adams

Submitted to Contest #278

Connie prepared for work and ignored the envelope which had lain on her table unread for two days. Its mere existence was an affront. ‘Just throw it away…’She recognized Rusty’s initials on the return address but couldn’t care less what he might wish to say. It had been too long. ‘Why now?’ Over him long ago, and with no thought of him for years, had she seen him in a decade?She’d been crazy for him then. He ended it suddenly with a rushed, mumbled explanation. He was gone from her life. But not her head.‘What happened… what went wrong, I’ll...

7 comments 7
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“Red wine and pain killers.” by Ashlee Osborn

Submitted to Contest #278

She lived in a town where the gossip is faster than the Wi-Fi. Everybody talks, everybody gets high to make their days go faster. Needles on the ground waiting to be stepped on. Even though there are sharp boxes on the door of every apartment. Battles about who owns what street, or who is the biggest dog. Who is two faced and who it's not. People who sell drugs and people who take drugs or both. One of the worst places to live in the city. But like any other town there are also nice people with a gentle heart. That would do anything in orde...

5 comments 5
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“Moving On” by Rudy Greene

Submitted to Contest #278

Dear Johnny: I’m sorry I ended our relationship so abruptly and disappeared. I know it’s been three years since we last spoke but there is a lot to share. I’ve never stopped loving you. I know I said some brutal things during our last meeting, but they were said in the heat of the moment. I was scared and upset by my ‘situation’. It was stupid and unfair of me not to share with you that I was two months pregnant. I didn’t want to burden you. You were so stressed studying for the bar exams, I didn’t think you could make a rational decisi...

3 comments 3
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“When The Past Comes Calling” by Delaney Howard

Submitted to Contest #278

Delia looked up from her laptop at the flatscreen TV as the telephone rang, expecting to see another "Unknown Caller" on the caller ID. Irritated by the interruption to her flow of ideas and work, her annoyance turned to surprise when something wholly unexpected appeared on the screen: USPS DEAD LETTERS and a local phone number. Hesitating for a moment, she grabbed the handset and answered with practiced caution. “Hello?” “Hello, is this Delia Fielding?” a deep voice asked on the other end of the line. “Yes,” she replied, her curiosity pique...

1 comment 1
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“Apologies Seem to Come and Go. ” by Joseph Lucero

Submitted to Contest #278

Many years in the future. I'm no longer the twenty-three-year-old kid that I was when there was no need for letters because we would talk in person face-to-face. I would look deep into your brown-green eyes, and I would be lost. Now, as I sit at my small kitchen table and I'm looking at the letter you sent me. You began it just like how I thought you would start a letter. You start it the same way you would begin small talk. As I look at it now, I can't help but feel sad, and angry. What was the need for this letter I'm looking at? Knowing y...

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“Too Little Too Late” by Indigo Simmons

Submitted to Contest #278

Mina,Even though it has been several years since our love became a distant memory, our lives having separated after that fateful day, I realize now that I cannot let you go. You were the one constant in my life even after you chose yourself over me, which I understand why, but I have not been able to stop thinking about you or your smile or the way you always made me feel as if I were the luckiest guy alive, no matter how hard I try. As the years passed, I believed I would get over you, move on with my life, and continue down the path I had ...

0 comments 0
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“The Blue Envelope” by Penelope Stansfield

Submitted to Contest #278

She grasps for something, anything to cling to, as the maelstrom increases its ferocity, shattering Sophie’s world into fractured pieces. But there is nothing and no one to catch her, and she stumbles downwards, numbed and tortured, further and deeper she spirals, twisting into the dark unknown towards the locked door that she’s never dared approach and whose handle she would never turn. Now the door shudders open on screeching hinges, releasing a tempest that swirls around Sophie’s blinded eyes, her ears deafened by the howling, t...

3 comments 3
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