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Hide something from your reader until the very end.

Posted in Dramatic on Jul 25, 2025

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✍️ 121 stories

New Hire

Submitted to Contest #313

Jordan clacked away at his keyboard, each keystroke getting him one step closer to lunchtime. Someone knocked gently on the door. “Yoo-hoo!” Helen’s blonde bob peeked into the room. “How’s that report coming along?”“I’ll have it in your inbox by EOD. Some timelines had to get tightened up, but I’ve got it all sorted.” Jordan rubbed his eyes and managed a weak smile.“Sounds great. Please CC Dana too so she can keep the client in the loop.” She twirled one of the pearls dangling from her ears. “One more thing. We have a new intern that HQ sent...

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Monachopsis

Submitted to Contest #313

Cars blur as they speed down a nearby road. The rusted and chipped blue of my truck door groans as it closes. The warm breeze of a cloudless day rushes over my skin as it is finally exposed to the outside. I readjust the heavy backpack on my shoulder as I hand over my keys to the waiting valet.It isn’t often that I immerse myself in the luxuries and opulence of a vacation. Let alone a hotel. But the last few months and their nonstop disastrous events have caused me to feel as though I need a reprieve. Plus, it has allowed me to think of anyt...

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A Quiet Smoke

Submitted to Contest #313

It was a lonely morning. The sun had barely caressed the sky, and the small city was still asleep. But there on the street, a cigarette between dry lips and heavy boots being dragged over the same pavement as the mornings before, was a man walking his beloved dog. It was quiet. If not for the gentle crackle of the cigarette and the heavy sigh of the man, soft smoke mixing with the morning fog, or the frequent scraping of the leash kissing the asphalt, the man was close to believing that time had truly stopped at last. The fog caused the worl...

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Living Memory

Submitted to Contest #313

The hammering I’d heard earlier wasn’t some overzealous couple, hellbent on a renovation that would inevitably turn into a demolition of this decrepit house at the end of the street, as I’d hoped.I cross my arms as I assess the new addition to the front window of the highly rumored haunted house.“A new piece of crappy wood covering the perpetually shattered window,” I compliment the dilapidated pile of sticks, “those teenagers will never get in now!”My sardonic smile fades as I turn to assess the gaping screen door where it hangs off its anc...

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Dinner for Two

Submitted to Contest #313

The gazpacho was perfectly chilled; Jackson was putting the finishing touches on the salads (vinaigrette with almonds); and the scent of herb-crusted cod with lemon butter and asparagus filled the air. Buffalo Springfield was playing in the background; “Out of My Mind”. Aunt Jane had always said her music list only had two settings “1964-1975; and deep cuts only”. The woman may not have been Jax’s biological aunt, but some things you inherited by life experience rather than genetics. A quick glance in the oven showed the roasted potatoes ...

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Eviction Time

Submitted to Contest #313

Eviction Time If only I could fast forward to when he is out of here… Shit, my stomach hurts. And not that I need to eat something kind of ache; more like I have been kicked in the gut and left to rot kind of pain. I have to get Miles to leave. He is sucking the joy out of me little by little. I can see it in my smile, which hasn't truly reached my eyes in months. “Fake it until you make it”, that’s my daddy’s motto. And I have lived that way for a while now. But no more. Today is the day. I am going to force Miles to get out. To leave me,...

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The Truth Leads Me To Dark Places

Submitted to Contest #313

CW: Explicit language and sexual content. How can a man have both eyes wide open and can’t see a damn thing? I’m still trying to figure that out. My world was fantastic up to that point. I got a fine black wife that turns heads in any room she enters. Every time I look at her face when I wake up in the morning, I’m remind how I leveled up when I met her. She was way out of my league, but I still got her. Thank god I listened to my mother and went to school for engineering, because there was no way I was pulling this woman with a regular nine...

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Delaneigh Hylander and the Petersen Twin Brother (Only Question: Which One???)

Submitted to Contest #313

An excerpt from current WIP novel, "Confessions of a Church Girl" The Petersens and our family were the only ones who stayed behind after all our guests had left, including Gemma. I didn’t want to go back home because Gemma and I would pick up on a conversation about Jason and how my interaction with Hans Petersen was just an “easy distraction” to get over the break-up. The last thing I really wanted to do was have a discussion about Jason, or Gemma’s opinion on how any guy at all—especially Hans—could possibly be an “easy distraction” when ...

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What Matters Most

Submitted to Contest #313

(Death of a parent - not by suicide) The boys are already fighting over cleats in the front hallway, and I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee. Michael swears someone stole his left shoe, and Ezra is yelling back "it's not stealing if you leave it in the car for three days." I just shake my head and laugh, because somehow this is the rhythm of our mornings now: chaos, noises, and the exact kind of mess that we are here and in it together. Fall is coming fast and I can already feel the buzz of the season. Between soccer games, footba...

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Starlet

Submitted to Contest #313

They always ask me why I do it.But you look like such a nice lady, they say. Proper, respectable. Suburban and prude, they mean.They sit dazed in the passenger seat as I tell them the hourly rates, the permissible acts, the available holes. Their anxious excitement is obvious, pathetic and not endearing: they work their wormy lips and swallow with dry mouths, they clear their throats and bite off nervous giggles, their eyes glint in the amber streetlight. Their expansive foreheads sweat and they wring their hands and they ask,But why do you ...

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Room For One

Submitted to Contest #313

Diane hadn’t left the house in six weeks.For some reason , it felt like a century.The doctors told her that isolation might make things worse, but worse than what? Her husband was dead, her daughter wouldn’t answer her calls, and the world outside the windows felt thinner somehow—like cheap scenery painted too quickly.As if what she called life, was real and she was just a doll. So she stayed in. The house was quiet most of the day. Too quiet. No hum of the fridge. No ticking of clocks. Even the birds had stopped gathering at the feeder outs...

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Deity

Submitted to Contest #313

Chief Petty Officer Beckett rocked forward on his knees for a closer look. Reaching down into the freshly dug pit, the expeditionary archaeologist carefully scraped away the last cake of earth barnacled to the object. The high sun immediately locked onto the silver cylinder, bouncing a harsh metallic light onto his weathered face like a satellite. He squinted with sweaty joy at discovery. The cup was an unusual find this deep in the Desert Valley Basin, he marveled. It was identical to the ceremonial drinking vessels he had helped unearth ...

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Progeny

Submitted to Contest #313

July 28th, 1872My house becomes emptier with each month, it seems. We are now five where we once were twelve, and I suspect by winter's end we shall be fewer still. I suppose it's because of the suffocating nature of the house. It is draining just to be inside, surrounded by the dark wood and darker history. I had seen pictures from my family's past, and the bright smiles on the faces of those captured within, but such expressions were absent in all my time here. And so it is of little surprise to me that my family is leaving, one by one.I s...

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Dawn, that was Good!

Submitted to Contest #313

Small town anywhere, dead quiet at the crack of dawn, no cock-a-doodle-do, no heavy traffic, just the subtle sound of a small opalescent-colored pigeon egg falling from the brittle branches of an extremely thirsty neighborhood birch tree. Thud — it hits the soft dry grass below and gently rolls onto the somewhat cool concrete sidewalk — stopping only a few inches shy of the roadway. No damage whatsoever, one of those sporadic miraculous moments in time. But the day is only beginning, and it is forecasted to be another scorcher. Very soon, th...

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Pick a Hand

Submitted to Contest #313

“Close your eyes, Amy!” Maria watched as her twin sister grinned, closed her eyes, and then spun around 180 degrees for good measure. The girls’ youthful energy was infectious; everyone loved to see them giggle on the path to their parents’ garden where they went daily after school. You could hear them coming from across town, their footfalls erratic as they chased each other. Their voices would rise with excitement as they grew tired and less controlled minute by minute in the afternoon air. Today, they had paused beside a fountain just out...

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