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Center your story around a character who’s struggling to let go.

Posted in Dramatic on Jan 17, 2025

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✍️ 85 stories

The Rubber Duck

Submitted to Contest #286

The soft golden light of dawn streamed down from the blinds, painting thin stripes across the cramped apartment. Ben stirred beneath a pile of blankets, his head throbbing from late nights of studying. The muffled hum of traffic outside barely registering over his exhaustion.The door to his room burst open and slammed loudly into the wall nearby."Benny!" Suzie's high pitched voice pierced through the haze of sleep. Before he could react, a small ball in bright pink pajamas leaped onto the bed jolting him awake.Ben slowly pulled a pillow over...

53 likes 42 comments 42
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The Wash

Submitted to Contest #286

The envelope joined the pile gathering dust on Mike’s table. He would read its contents, but only after his run. He dreaded a confirmation that would seal his fate almost as surely as if he’d thrown himself off the rocks and plunged into the oblivion of a churning sea. But no. In spite of everything, he wanted to live.Besides which, Jeff would have expected him to fight rather than cling onto a past long since gone.There was no point running away from problems.But running away was exactly what he’d been doing – for months, even years now. As...

38 likes 17 comments 17
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The Struggle

Submitted to Contest #286

"Don't touch that," Jaq yelled as her mother grabbed one of her teacups and saucers."What do you mean? I wasn't touching anything. I wanted to make sure this didn't fall since the pile of papers you just put down and shoved caused the cups and saucers to move across the table," her mother said."That's touching," Jaq said, breathing long and loudly at her mother. Then, she got between her and the table. Rolled her eyes and made a growling noise.Her mother saw her daughter for the first time in the natural sunlight that came through the dining...

23 likes 8 comments 8
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The Quiet Never Comes

Submitted to Contest #286

Jill, can you come in here for a second The instant message caused instant anxiety for the company’s compliance manager. Jill minimized the fifth interruption of the day from her CEO, and pinched her forehead. She breathed in and out in the measured way her Chaos Master had instructed. As she tried refocusing on her daily quest for inner peace, all the office phones shrilled at once, their insistence of being picked up a nagging declaration of urgency. She hyper focused on the aggressive crunch of staplers being forced down in...

22 likes 2 comments 2
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Jurassic Pork

Submitted to Contest #286

In the distance, the T. rex roared like a man stubbing his toe on the coffee table after getting up to pee at night.Marsh Buckley’s gut dropped, a Jeep falling from a tree. Unlike a few unfortunate souls in their party, they’d scraped through the last encounter. Who knew toilets could be so dangerous? Marsh wrapped his arms around the kids’ shoulders. ‘Now, don’t you worry, kiddos. I recognise that roar, I learned it in dinosaur school. What he’s saying is, “I am sufficiently full for the foreseeable future. I wouldn’t even contemplate chowi...

22 likes 9 comments 9
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Tim the Bookie

Submitted to Contest #286

I try to keep to myself at work. I don’t like small talk, and I don’t especially like the people I work with. Each day is the same – write a list, complete my tasks, and check them off. Most people know this, and they tend to let me be. Everyone, that is, except for Tim. I should’ve known better when I realized I was the last one in the office – the last one aside from Tim. Tim leaned against the desk, fiddling with the replacement iPad he'd brought for one of the students. The fluorescent lights above flickered faintly, their hum blend...

19 likes 7 comments 7
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The Faults of Our Fathers

Submitted to Contest #286

Jason was concentrating on his computer screen. He would type a sentence or two, and then stop, think a bit, then type a sentence more. The story he was writing unfolded in his mind and transposed to the page. It was a story about a boy, no more than ten. He began to type:****The boy sprawled on the living room floor, the snow blowing against the window. He was excited to be missing school. Earlier, his mother, haggard, with little sleep, black circles under her eyes, had taken his temperature.“It’s 101,” she said to the boy who was lay...

19 likes 14 comments 14
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Man Meddles With Nature

Submitted to Contest #286

In every instance of my investigation, in my poking, in every timeline, in any tangible, traversable point, and in all my efforts, my mother always dies.  Whether it was cold blooded murder, or something completely innocent to the untrained eye; driving over a speed bump triggering a brain bleed, an argument, or just a spiral of causations and effects that were lost in my chasing.  I followed all such incidents, like a speck of dust through a sandstorm. And when I took the precautions, when I remembered that particular chip in that...

18 likes 4 comments 4
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Grief AI Assistance

Submitted to Contest #286

“Do you want me to continue, Mrs. Shafer?”Blair is watching the wine drip down the wall, scarlet streams leading to the broken bottle on the floor. She senses it staring at her from the kitchen doorframe, a blurry outline in her peripheral, watching.Her husband had been reading to her. She stirred wine into mushrooms, inhaling gulps of bitter steam while Parker sat on the couch in the other room, reading a passage aloud from their favorite book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. At the precise moment Addie realized Henry Strauss had remembe...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Box in the Closet

Submitted to Contest #286

Drizzle misted the window. Outside, other apartment buildings glowed faintly, smudged halos against an encroaching dusk. Emery stared out at them, leaning against her scratched kitchen counter, holding a chipped coffee mug in both hands. Her days were becoming more and more like this lately: an uneasy rhythm of waiting. Waiting for her thoughts to loosen. Waiting for the phone to buzz with a text she wasn’t sure she wanted. Waiting to decide what to do with that box she’d stuffed in her hallway closet. She turned the mug around in her hands,...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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Up in Smoke

Submitted to Contest #286

“You have to let go!”Abner squinted through the smoke, his own voice dying in the roar of the blaze, but a faint cry came back to him.“No!”Lurching forward, Abner dodged a falling beam, covering his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and childish hope. “Yule!” he called. “We have to go!”“Eat a dick!”“It’s not worth it!”“Eat a bag of dicks!”Shouldering through a scalding door, Abner found him, still clinging to his damn fool construction, dangling from where the attic floor fell through. “Damnit, Yule, you’re gonna get crushed!” Abne...

17 likes 13 comments 13
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October time...colours

Submitted to Contest #286

October time…coloursIt’s always the same at this time of the year. The brain fills up with noise when it gets cold. I hold on to the image that the rush of jumbled words released by my brain cells creates the energy to keep me warm. Unlike being dead cold.I cannot let go. Every year around this time, same thoughts run the Marathon in my head. Stubborn and mean. Never mind how hard I try, they don’t want to leave. Never mind … they always come back. But to be precise, some variation is always there. Like now, when they hit harder than ever, w...

16 likes 8 comments 8
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Permanent Marks

Submitted to Contest #286

As I looked outside my fogged window, a piece of dust on my printer caught my eye. I brushed it off and grabbed a piece of paper from the printer. Before sitting on my desk chair, I left my room to check the clock in my living room—it was twenty-three minutes past three in the morning. The clock looked odd, as if the hands were ticking in place. I brushed it off, knowing that it might have been one of my ordinary hallucinations. I left my living room to enter my room. I placed my paper inches from my pen—the one I always had lying in the ce...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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Our Crush

Submitted to Contest #286

WARNING: SLIGHT LANGUAGE USAGE.Green eyes. They stared at me like I was the only person that they’ve seen in their entire life, and the way that they looked at me was amazing, but something felt wrong.I knew I shouldn’t like him, I shouldn’t even like him as a person let alone have feelings for him. He’s my best friend’s crush. I can’t like him, even though I have for over a year. She’s liked him since the sixth grade, how did I even put up with that? The amount of times she’s dragged me through the hallways just so she could see h...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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Years of Longing By Erin Rosswell

Submitted to Contest #286

“Alright, thank you. You have a good day now. Thanks.” Another call done and dealt with. I swear, I’ve only got seven minutes left of my shift, please…please in the name of Jesus Cringles, not another call. I’m so ready to pass out on my bed. Alas, got a couple more dollars to make today. On the plus side, the mortgage should be dealt with. Now I just have every other payment to make. I wish the economy would up and die. At least I’d have an excuse to be financially underperforming. Oop, phone just buzzed. Bright Blue? Damn. N...

14 likes 9 comments 9
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