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Center your story around a mix-up that leads to huge (or unexpected) consequences.

Posted in Dramatic on May 9, 2025

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✍️ 41 stories

God's Resignation

Submitted to Contest #302

Somebody slipped the resignation letter of God into the company mailroom. At least, that's what Felix Harrington assumed when the lights flickered across the infinite expanse of the Afterlife Division's Reincarnation Department. The quantum processors hummed a semitone lower, and every soul-assignment workflow froze mid-process.Felix adjusted his tie and pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. As a junior clerk, he knew better than to ask questions when the system hiccuped. Six years of processing reincarnation paperwork h...

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A Woman of Her Word

Submitted to Contest #302

Anna, my faculty mentor, was scrolling through the school's calendar and highlighting the events we rookie teachers must attend.“Keep an eye out for the Honor Assembly,” she said, “they haven’t scheduled it yet, but it always falls on the first or second week of September.”“And what’s the Honor Assembly?” I asked.“A faculty member and a student speak about academic integrity, plagiarism, proper source citations. Two speeches that say the same thing: don't take shortcuts. Who knows if they'll listen, but we hope it sets a tone for the year. T...

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The Wrong Seminar

Submitted to Contest #302

Marcus Lee had twenty-seven dollars in his checking account and a sticky note on his fridge that read, “Succeed or starve.” He wasn’t dramatic by nature. The sticky note was practical. Inspirational, even. He had written it after watching a free webinar called Unleash the Inner Giant Within You, hosted by Bryce Chandler, America’s favorite millionaire-turned-messianic-life-coach—a man who looked like a cross between an energy drink and a televangelist caught mid-exorcism.Marcus had signed up for a $299 seminar that promised to awaken his pot...

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A Day In The Park

Submitted to Contest #302

It was a beautiful May 1st in Rochester. Meagan Hannigan took her two children, Mazie and Marcus to Zumbro Park West, to enjoy the playground, and get some fresh air. The weather was perfect, 70 degrees, and there was a slight breeze that provided the perfect amount of cool. She sat on the bench, with Mazie in the sand at her feet, and Marcus climbing the jungle gym. All was perfect, and then she saw them… It was a short five years ago when the Terran Confederation defeated the Nint’ian, ending the threat that they presented to humanity’s gr...

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TALK ABOUT ME

Submitted to Contest #302

The yearlong lawsuit between Josie Jean and Lawny Day has been dropped, but questions are still rising. What began as a heated dispute between the two podcast moguls has simmered down into lukewarm, over steeped tea – bitter, musty and maybe, brewed on purpose. Let’s rewind. It all started on Episode 91 on the podcast TALK ABOUT ME, which aired on February 21, 2020. For the first time, the duo that has always given the impression that they are nothing short of best friends, gave us a glimpse at a crack in their relationship. A weak point....

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The Art of Letting Go

Submitted to Contest #302

He claimed he was a genie, though he looked nothing like the blue men of magic with which she was familiar. He had tan skin and dark eyes, with a thick head of gray hair that matched his long beard. There was nothing that indicated he might be something more, other than a wisdom that hid in the wrinkles that framed his eyes and a knowing quirk of his lips. But he appeared from a lamp after a brush of her fingers, and she didn’t know what else to believe. He told her that unlike genies she might have heard of, he was not enslaved. He exi...

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Fate In Formalwear

Submitted to Contest #302

Lena had one job—pick up the wedding dress from the boutique and deliver it to her best friend, Tasha. Simple.Except she was running late, juggling coffee, car keys, and an overloaded bag when she dashed into the shop, rattling off the order number to the cashier.The boutique assistant disappeared behind a curtain, returning moments later with a garment bag—heavy and pristine, exactly what Lena expected.“Here you go!” the assistant chirped. “All set for the big day.”She barely glanced at it before racing out the door.Meanwhile, Jason paced i...

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[THE WOMAN AND THE BOY]

Submitted to Contest #302

Barbara Ahmed was a 35-year-old black woman struggling to find a job in her field of psychology. “The right job will come,” she often says. Little did she know how right she was. You see! A job did come. But it wasn’t what she expected. At all!It was a lonely Monday morning at Barnes & Noble when a strange man with the strangest offer approached Barbara while she shopped for sex novels. “I want you to evaluate a rather peculiar patient at the Woodbourne Prison.” “The evaluation will last for 7 days. And it is highly confidential.”“This...

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Lost Soul

Submitted to Contest #302

Nathan cursed his bad luck as the sky all too quickly began to darken, the setting sun mocking him as it raced ever closer to the horizon behind him with land but a tantalizing few miles away. His old sailboat, once his pride and joy before the world went to hell but now as worn and weary as he was, would not get to dock until morning; one more night of hunger would not kill him, but going ashore after nightfall most certainly would. He could already hear the screeches of the Others echoing from land, piercing the air so sharply as to reach ...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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Trapped

Submitted to Contest #302

This story contains themes of substance abuse and child abuse. Please read with care. “What are you doing here?” Morgan’s curly, russet brown hair falls around her heart-shaped face and tumbles over her shoulders in waves and seems almost alive with the electricity of her anger, as she glares at me through the open door. Even mad, she’s so beautiful. The fire in her eyes adding a glint. Sometimes just looking at her, I can’t help but wonder how someone like her could have come from someone like me. I can’t take credit for any of her looks; ...

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In a Holding Pattern

Submitted to Contest #302

The line seemed to slither as slowly as a desert rattlesnake stalking its prey as Jackson Tillman impatiently tapped his toe and anxiously waited to board the 747 that would take him to Chicago and the most important meeting of his career. His fingers itched to open his laptop and begin calculating the commission on what probably would become the largest software sales contract of his life. Aggressive foreign competition had caused earnings figures for his other colleagues to remain in a permanent deep freeze, but Jackson had found supp...

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Decimal Displacement: A Border Tragedy In 0.036 Degrees

Submitted to Contest #302

THE MISPLACEMENT of a decimal point in the border coordinates between the Principality of Vestovia and the Republic of Ostravya—longitude 48.2731° rather than 48.2371°—occurred on Tuesday, March 17, 1952, during a light rainfall that caused cartographer Leopold Himmelweiss’s fountain pen to bleed on the official survey document. The pen—a Pelikan 400 with tortoiseshell barrel, purchased in Vienna on the occasion of his forty-third birthday—had been refilled precisely seventeen minutes prior with Ostravyan Treasury Black No. 17, the official ...

8 likes 8 comments 8
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The Cuban Angle

Submitted to Contest #302

After collecting his luggage at the baggage claim, Jose hailed a cab. It was déjà vu all over again.‘I’m in a rut,’ he thought. ‘How many cities have I been to in a year? In the last month?’A car pulled up and he climbed aboard. “Ybor City… the Hilton…”The driver merged into the flow of airport traffic.Sighing, Jose settled into the seat. He felt like he hadn’t seen his apartment in months.‘Paying high rent for a place to store clean clothes and repack them… Need a storage unit. Cheaper…’The editors, at Clickbait.com, loved Jose’s travel wri...

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Mixed-Up Messaging

Submitted to Contest #302

Jim was enthused. He said he had a surprise for me and couldn’t wait to take me to a special place to show me. This is it. This is the “special” day I had been waiting for. He led from the cabin to his Jeep Comanche, an old white pickup truck that had been used on many fishing and hunting trips, and politely opened the door waiting for me to climb in. He then went to the driver’s side and jumped in behind the wheel. I loved riding in his Jeep pickup. He drove down the dirt driveway to the main road that all the cabins in the area used to ge...

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The Misdelivered Message

Submitted to Contest #302

In the quiet hum of a late autumn afternoon, Clara Hensley sat at her cluttered desk in the back office of Willow Creek’s only post office. The small town, nestled between rolling hills and a lazy river, was the kind of place where everyone knew each other’s business, or at least thought they did. Clara, a meticulous woman in her mid-forties with a penchant for order, was sorting through a pile of packages and letters, her fingers moving with practiced precision. The post office was her domain, a sanctuary of routine in a world that felt inc...

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