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Center your story around a mysterious forest fire, disappearance, or other strange event.

Posted in Dramatic on Sep 12, 2025

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✍️ 70 stories

Dying World

Submitted to Contest #320

Shania waited for her parents to catch up. They were old and slow, but there was no way she would abandon them as so many other Elven had done their old folk… Left them to die with the world they loved. Her father stepped around the boulder and grinned at her, turned back, and held his hand out for his wife and guided her around. “Watch it here dear, a little slippery.” The track had got that way in many places because of the number of Elven that had passed through here on their way to the tree. Many more followed, the occasional disagreeab...

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The Quiet Exit by Phoenix Lane

Submitted to Contest #320

With all his drunken strength Jeffrey threw the old television, the chords flailing around it. It crashed through the sliding glass door, just barely missing Alicia’s head. The glass shattered with a vengeance and scattered widely across the back porch and into the yard. Through the opening, the cold night air rushed through the living room, although Alicia was too frightened to feel it. The loud sound had made her ears ring and shook their little house. Their 6-month-old baby boy Daniel was in the bedroom and he started crying, awakened fro...

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The Sparks Between You And Me

Submitted to Contest #320

The dark sapphire sky was brightly lit from its many constellations. Vann walked calmly by himself in the forest. Even though he could feel animals possibly watching him, he wasn't scared. The feeling that encompassed his entire being was want. As he moved forward minutes passed, he noticed the ground ahead had light shed on it. The shadows that creeped all around were no match for this warm glow. Vann stepped toward the light.Igna's handiwork. With a big grin spreading across his face, Vann studied it all. Two large treated stumps were next...

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Up a Tree

Submitted to Contest #320

Up a TreeTo a young park ranger, fresh out of training at the academy, Sequoia National Park was like playing in the big leagues. Six hundred and thirty-one square miles of dense forests on the side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains was Heaven to a man who loved the outdoors. A place where you can walk among majestic sequoia trees over three thousand years old. A place where trees over two hundred feet tall stretch into a brilliant blue sky. And a place where a person can find a kind of solitude unlike any other place in the country.Josh Howard...

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Defiance Comes With a Price

Submitted to Contest #320

Never having hiked Mount Tecumseh Trail before today, Deidre fell in line behind the more experienced foot travelers in the group. Fritz, the tour guide, warned everyone to stay together, which should be easy enough since there were only five hikers on this particular tour. Although she had successfully trekked along many trails in the White Mountain National Forest, this one was unfamiliar, so Deidre silently vowed to stick with the group and follow their lead. It would be a short trip; they were due back at the rendezvous point at the foot...

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The Tragedy at Down Under

Submitted to Contest #320

Gino O’Thorian, his little sister Sally O’Thorian, his two friends Melton and Rumi Hopkins, and their little brother Peter “Pete” Hopkins, all decided to leave the overground containment bubble called the “Down Under” during the underground evacuation process. They wanted to go whale watching, which was strictly forbidden! So, Gino and Melton formulated a plan. The Down Under sat atop a hill overlooking the ocean. The “Overhang” was to the southeast, a collection of massive trees taller than any redwoods. The Overhang itself was s...

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Secrets of the Woods

Submitted to Contest #320

Nobody ever went to the woods at night, not many went there during the day truth be told. The woods stretched out from Blackmoor hill to the edge of Dumpdon lake. Some said that they were an archaic site for practitioners of the dark arts, others that the ancient druids held their rites in there and whether or not this was the case the woods were dark and deep and full of secrets whispered in the wind amongst the branches of the mighty Oaks that grew there. Their deep roots connecting them to the past while their strong and sturdy branches...

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A Drink from the Creek

Submitted to Contest #320

As a boy, I thirsted for adventure. All kids do, I think, but the thirst ran deep for me. I sought relief in Bridge to Terabithia, looked to sake my thirst on The Neverending Story or The Wind Waker. Outside I would go, where my friends would gather in the backyard bringing swords and books and notebooks where we’d draw maps and charts to treasures we’d invent. But the backyard was fenced in, finite, empty. We needed somewhere boundless, where our desire could be quenched. For our money, nothing satisfied our craving like the forest. And in ...

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Linden Tree

Submitted to Contest #320

Linden Tree When I was young, or to be clear on the verge of passing from younger to young, and the time of dancing neared I felt the old woman keeping a closer eye on me as I played among tree roots, and wended through branches. As a child of the woods, I had often felt the old woman’s notice, a glancing awareness that she was there and curious. But, now as my cycles of age passed the double digits her attention had a weight to it and a seeming focus. I remember asking once why she was there and how long had she been waiting for people t...

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Thanksgiving Dinner

B C

Submitted to Contest #320

It was a pleasure to eat. The Edwards family was wholly sure of it. Each year, on the fourth Thursday of November, they gathered around their chestnut stained dining table and indulged in nothing but the finest selection of Thanksgiving food imaginable. Their selection of cuisine remained the same each year, and went as followed:1. Creamy potatoes, hand-mashed only2. A steamed assortment of vegetables, served fresh from the pot3. Cranberry sauce, sourced from the local farm downtown4. Buttery biscuits with a soft interior and a crunchy exter...

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The Whispering Woods

Submitted to Contest #320

The first sign that something was wrong with the forest was the silence. Not the quiet hum of a still night, but a profound, unnatural absence of sound. The crickets in the meadow had stopped their nightly song. The great horned owls, usually a constant presence in the old oaks, had gone mute. Even the wind, when it swept through the ancient pines, made no sound. Jasper, the old trapper who had lived on the edge of the Whispering Woods his entire life, was the first to notice. He was a man more comfortable with the rhythms of the wild than t...

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My Woods

Submitted to Contest #320

Nick's beloved woods had transformed into an eerie, haunted forest. Something seemed to be watching him. He’d patrolled these woods since he was three; every familiar path now seemed evil, making him feel betrayed. He had a 1911 pistol holstered on his right hip; the .45 caliber rounds would allow him to obliterate any man who threatened him. Rumors had flown and were repeated; an escaped 'nut job' from the local psychiatric hospital was supposedly hiding somewhere in his woods. Every snapping twig and leaf-blown made his pulse rise in fear;...

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Charlie

Submitted to Contest #320

Terry loved her only child, as deeply and richly as she could. Life had been difficult since her husband, Ed, had died in an automobile accident on his way to work, and money was tight. She had managed to keep her and her son afloat, barely, by doubling up with a job as a checker at the Kroger and substitute teaching at the local elementary school. Terry and Charlie lived in a small two-bedroom cottage on the edge of town. Though the house was tiny and in disrepair, Terry loved the fact that it bordered on a tract of protected forest, so ...

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It Finds You

Submitted to Contest #320

We heard the stories. Everyone has. And just like everyone else, we didn’t believe them. In fairness, can you blame us? The tales, spun by frightened hikers and nature geeks, were always three degrees beyond absurd. How could we have believed them? Even in retrospect, after seeing it for myself, there’s a part of me that wants to blame my exhaustion, the firelight, sheer delirium.But I can’t explain away what I saw that night in Cypress Park. I can’t explain it. I just pray that when you read this, you are wiser than we were.When we arrived ...

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Forest of My Dreams

Submitted to Contest #320

I could sense something was wrong when Glen appeared on the dark autumn day that for-ever branded me. Glen was my street-smart friend, who had a knack for gathering information be-fore anyone else.He grinned with all his charm, casually avoiding my mom’s radar. "Hi, Mrs. P. I just came by to see if Will could hang out.” “Of course. Just be careful if you're going into the woods.” Mom always gave this warn-ing about the wild forest that loomed by our house.We waved goodbye, and Glen led me straight towards the forest. "What's up?" I asked."Ti...

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