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Make a character’s obsession or addiction an important element of your story.

Posted in Dramatic on Sep 16, 2024

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✍️ 129 stories

Counterfeit

Submitted to Contest #252

Meeting longtime friends from her college days, Bonnie entered the club head held high. She saw pals, Chelsea, Nicole and Eileen sitting in a booth against the back wall. Bonnie’s emotions soared and dove. Navigating her way toward them, she felt drawn like a balloon in the wake of a cruise ship. Friends can be brutal. Would they notice the changes? Would they approve? Could they be honest? ‘Do I want the truth?’She hadn’t seen any of them since before her surgery. This could be an ordeal. Unless one knew, the work she’d had done was invisib...

21 likes 18 comments 18
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The Beast

Submitted to Contest #252

Remember the boy in high school? The beast got you good. So good that you drove past the store where he worked just to catch a glimpse. Back and forth on that busy road in your old beat up car with no air conditioning. Your back was sweaty, and your hair had turned to tendrils around your flushed face. You stood in the drug store across the street turning the spinners of postcards and road maps. Humiliated and embarrassed but unable to move as you watched him load and unload the trucks. No one knew but the ...

21 likes 16 comments 16
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ELIM CIVOLUDAR'S MEMOIRS - OLD FLAMES

Submitted to Contest #252

Three days ago, driven by an overwhelming sense of loneliness, I reached out to an old flame on Facebook. This wasn't just any past relationship; once upon a time, I was deeply and passionately in love with her. The intensity of my feelings made her decision to end our relationship particularly devastating.Her departure shattered me completely, leading to an emotional breakdown that lasted for three agonizing days. I was plunged into a profound emptiness and despair that felt insurmountable during that time. Despite the searing pain of ...

18 likes 12 comments 12
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Beyond The Sea

Submitted to Contest #252

Warning: Language, Stalking, SuicideCredits of Lovefool: Nina Elisabet Persson & Peter Anders Svensson. Ocean waves ravaged inside her mind. It was the thought that soothed her. The trance sunk her deep into her spiral, one spin after the other, over and over until-“One caramel macchiato!” an outside voice boomed and snapped her out of her trance. She glanced around the coffee shop counter to search for the source of the voice. A young man in a barista uniform waved the cup in his hand to catch her attention. “Uh, Julie?” he re...

17 likes 10 comments 10
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More Gray Than Blue

Submitted to Contest #252

CW: Contains themes of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.More Gray Than BlueHe doesn’t really wake up because he never really went to sleep. He just sort of shifts back and forth on the tired old mattress in an ever-increasing state of discomfort for a few hours after he shuts out the lights until the sun is fully up and he knows that any prospect of sleep is gone. Then he rises, and he feels every bit of his 55 years in his lower back, knees and a dozen other places. He grabs a towel and heads for the shower, passing by the room where h...

16 likes 6 comments 6
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Books--The Food of Life

Submitted to Contest #252

After two years of enjoyment, the closing of my town’s little library brought me misery. Not only did I lose the lovely early evening walk down the lane to the town square, with its cozy library on the busy little street on the east side, and the Coffee Pot Café next to it, but I lost the weekly Tuesday meeting with people I felt comfortable with. The five members of the club had welcomed me when I moved back to the small Midwestern town I’d grown up in to live in my parents’ old home, left to me after the awful car crash that took them and ...

16 likes 15 comments 15
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A Well-Formed Vocabulary

Submitted to Contest #252

CW: Sexual acts are described in metaphor.I picked up the redheaded guy by his collar and carried him towards the door. My colleague, Harold, had control of the bearded dude so the fight was definitely over. The bartender, Lilian, gave us an appreciative glance as we rid the bar of the two troublemakers.To be honest, this was my favorite part of the job – pulling fights apart and tossing guys into the parking lot. I did it as often as I could. Well, second favorite part. My favorite part was when Doreen came into the bar on Thursday nights. ...

16 likes 5 comments 5
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Lie With Me

Submitted to Contest #252

LIE WITH MEMichael Ginsberg2024 I met Susan in October 1976, at a dinner hosted by mutual friends who thought we might make a good couple. During appetizers, I was interested. By dessert, I was sure. At the end of the evening, I invited Susan for dinner, and she accepted. A few days later, we were standing side by side in my kitchen, chatting and chopping vegetables for a stir fry. Halfway through the zucchini, Susan asked if we could hear some music. “‘Do you have “The Four Seasons?” she asked, as I headed for my albums. I pulled out “F...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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Something I Can Never Have

Submitted to Contest #252

By all accounts, John was a nice bloke. Not a very nice bloke. Just nice. Nice being the go to word for people who didn’t have anything else nice to say about a person. Using nice to describe someone was in itself not nice. It wasn’t just that there was a lacklustre laziness at play in the use of this go-to word, it was that the underlying meaning of nice was pathetically negative. By describing John as nice, a person was telling the world that they were bored with John. Never was there an excuse to be bored, and so this should hav...

15 likes 10 comments 10
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The Flood of 1931

Submitted to Contest #252

Defeat exerts a geologic force on the spirit. Over time, parts of the mind sag under its tectonic pressure. Left untended, this burden sharpens and eventually punctures some vital organ of the soul. What hope and vitality remains bleeds out in a bitter ash, to be swept away on the currents of the world. Lenn was a man meant to suffer such. He was aware of it too, for all the world whispered the message. Standing now under the overcast skies that spread across his homestead, he heard their voices. In the foreclosed shack once called a home,...

14 likes 7 comments 7
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The Morbid Fascinations Podcast

Submitted to Contest #252

Trigger Warning: Physical and Sexual Violence; Suicide I never meant to do it. Well, I did mean to do it, but somehow when I did, it only felt like fiction. That was how the podcast always felt too; like fiction. It was just another story to tell.It all started as a lark with my best friend Josie. We grew up reading about crimes in the newspapers we snuck out of the recycling after our dads finished with them. We read Nancy Drew novels like it was our job. We played detective games and spent all of our free time solving whatever mysteries we...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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The Slide

Submitted to Contest #252

“Anna … you know that curiosity killed the cat.” I always hated how he said my name when he used that know-it-all voice.  Ann-ahh; nostrils slightly flared, eyes narrowed, and chin lifted so he somehow seemed to be looking down on me more than usual. God, I hated him. Had I just thought that? I remember thinking. Surely, I didn’t mean it? “Yes, but satisfaction brought it back!” Ha, take that! I had thought. You don’t know everything, and you can’t win every argument! “Ann-ahh nothing can bring back a dead cat”. I remember wanting to...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Until You're Mine

Submitted to Contest #252

Tuesday, July 14th I could watch her all day. The way she curls her hair. The way she puts her makeup on. The way she does her laundry. Even the way she drinks a cup of tea.  Too bad she doesn’t know I exist.  At least not yet. But that’s about to change.  The sound of my knuckles rapping against the solid oak door echoes in the courtyard. In the distance, a dog barks at my intrusion on this peaceful summer evening.  My heart rate quickens at the sound of her approaching footsteps. Thump thump thump. The blood rushing in...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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The Dreamer

Submitted to Contest #252

THE DREAMER The head was almost obscured by the big black bee-stung hands; but if one looked closely, one could still make out the panic-ridden face of a soon-to-be deceased...chicken. The sound that started to echo from its beak was not a shrill scream, but a dream-ending screech, that started low and continued to build, until at its crescendo, it startled me awake on a sudden turn at the 77th street subway station. Where poultry became real. I blinked once, twice, rubbed my eyes, and then muffled a sickness yawn. Across from my now semi-fo...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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To Wake Up At 52

Submitted to Contest #252

It felt like the zestful waters of a powerful outpouring flowing into my blood when I took the proposed toast of wine at Christmas Eve 2004. A general feeling absorbed me on that evening when I had so many occasions to relish upon. It was the best time of the year – snowy fairy-tale, presents and people together - and I was the luckiest man alive. If we put my job promotion at the television, my sport achievements and the Christmas excitement on the side, my daughter and I were the stars of that gathering. It was her first and my thirty-seco...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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