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Set your story in a place where everything should be familiar to your character(s), but isn’t.

Posted in Dramatic on Jan 3, 2025

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✍️ 58 stories

Fragments

Submitted to Contest #284

“Who’s that in my house?”The dark, handsome child turned his attention from the TV and responded. His voice was deeper than a boy’s ought to be. “We’ve been over this—that’s you. Do you want me to take it down?” I didn’t know how to answer him when the volume was missing in the room. I couldn’t understand what held his focus or mine. He rolled his eyes back to his video game when he got no response from me. Trying to make sense of what he said, I raised a tired hand towards the face in the flaking mirror. Both were pale and wrinkle...

53 likes 17 comments 17
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A Slogan For Every Town

Submitted to Contest #284

Americans will drive anywhere if it has a decent website and a catchy slogan. My wife and I saw several billboards advertising Arkansas's largest natural land bridge while driving to Little Rock. We didn't plan on seeing a land bridge that day, but, by golly, we did see a land bridge that day. Why? Because we're suckers for flashy advertising. The billboards promised an experience of a lifetime. It delivered a gift shop, an 1850s cabin (not sure what that had to do with the land bridge), and a broken land bridge. That's right. No one was all...

36 likes 24 comments 24
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Help Needed

Submitted to Contest #284

Help Needed Claire leaned her aching head back on the bus headrest and tried to close her eyes. She was ten hours in to what was promised a 20 hour trip so figured she finally had time to relax enough to get some real sleep, if that was ever possible again. She had just stretched her legs in Tucson and let her cat, Patches, out of her carrier to use the makeshift litter tray and drink some water. The cat had already settled back into an afternoon nap. Still feeling grittiness in her eyes, Claire rubbed them with the kerchief hanging around h...

30 likes 39 comments 39
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Rebuilding What's No Longer Mine

Shortlisted for Contest #284 ⭐️

My entire world collapsed and I don’t know how to build it back up correctly. I’ve been in a daze. Even on the drive home from school, the town looks different. Another sprawling field torn up, littered with cranes and huge piles of dirt and signs advertising the Coming Soon $500 thousand dollar homes. Another Sheetz has sprouted up, plus a new Sprouts. Or were they there before? Maybe my memory’s shot—my brain does feel like Swiss cheese. Or maybe being away changes how you view things, and my lens has already changed after one semester. It...

19 likes 5 comments 5
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Home

Submitted to Contest #284

I woke up in a bed, comfortable, enormous. My hands clutched a white blanket, pulling it close to my face. It smelled of lilac and vanilla, scents far too sweet for my taste.I rubbed my eyes, trying to banish the remnants of sleep and make sense of my surroundings. Where was I? What had happened? How did I end up here? My gaze darted around, searching for windows to glean the time of day, but there were none. The room felt enclosed, suffocating in its opulence.On the nightstand beside me, a photo caught my attention. It was of me. My face be...

16 likes 8 comments 8
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Home, But Not Quite

Submitted to Contest #284

Eight years. Eight long, exhilarating, lonely years. Amazing in some ways, terrible in others. I can’t believe it has been that long since I set foot in my own country. My own city. My own home.So much has changed—the trees taller, roads replaced, and new multi-storey houses lining the street where I grew up. The city skyline has grown, and the riverfront is unrecognisable. And now, we have to pay to see a doctor? Since when was that a thing?Bloody hell, speak of a little brother Yank obsession. It strikes again! I used to laugh with Europea...

16 likes 5 comments 5
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The Appointment

Submitted to Contest #284

The dark bags under Ben’s eyes droop like day-old tea bags. He’s washing the breakfast dishes, a tattered tea towel flung over his shoulder.  “Have you been sleeping, love?” Ruth asks, troubled eyes tracking him from the table. “Not really, Ru. You’ve been sleepwalking again.” “So? Let me sleepwalk.”  “It’s dangerous.” Souvenirs from her witching hour sojourns bloom on her shins under the creeping vines of varicose veins. He noticed them this morning while he helped her with her socks.  “Lock the doors if you’re so worried I’l...

12 likes 9 comments 9
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Darkroom

Submitted to Contest #284

Anjali left me alone in the apartment so I could collect my things. I’d lived with her for almost four years at this point. The breakup was amicable: she told me I was impeding her productivity and I told her she was as heartless as Sputnik. Then we called each other things so regrettable that we had no choice other than to apologize for them, and afterwards we made love on the carpet for what she called “the absolute very last time, so help me god.” She left immediately afterward, claiming she couldn’t be around me for one more second lest ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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END TIMES

Submitted to Contest #284

Arthur Balfour knew that something was awry; very much so. Yet, try as he might, he could not figure out what it was and, the more he tried, the more muddled things became in his mind. Everything seemed so familiar but, on the other hand, so, so different. At the age of twenty five, Arthur had lost his sight following a car accident that had caused heavy trauma to his brain. Three operations had not been able to restore his vision and, from the moment he’d been told that he would spend the rest of his life in darkness, just the tho...

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The Beachcomber's Guide

Submitted to Contest #284

The Beachcomber’s Guide is the first thing I see, the anchor to the past. We walk into the cottage, and I'm hit with memories of childhood. Running barefoot on the toast-colored boards, a feathered path worn down the middle of the front room, long imprinted from sprinting off the beach to the kitchen, ignoring Anna’s call to wash the sand off our feet, because we were only grabbing another soda or an extra bucket, and how much sand could possibly be deposited onto the floor in such a mad rush? (The answer: a lot.) “We’re here,” I tell Anna n...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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And I shall be useful when I lie down finally

Submitted to Contest #284

Being dead is like being unpopular at school, standing on the edge of a group, waiting for one person, just one, to acknowledge your presence but they never do. They just act like you are not even there. But you are. They just can’t see you, or hear you, or feel you. And that sucks.She didn’t really want to die, she just wanted peace. This must be hell. Trapped in the house she so wished to escape, trapped in the same dynamic with her family, together in space but worlds apart. It’s funny, when you die, the urge to kill yourse...

10 likes 0 comments 0
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Special Delivery

Submitted to Contest #284

Thomas Reeves had delivered mail to 384 Cedar Grove for fifteen years. Every Tuesday he'd climb these same concrete steps, past Mrs. McAllister's meticulously pruned hydrangeas, to slide the day's letters through the door. Today, something was wrong.The brass numbers on the house flickered like a failing neon sign, momentarily reading 834 before settling back to 384. Thomas blinked hard, letters clutched against his postal uniform. More jarring than the numerical dance was the door itself, the bright red door seemed to mock him—hadn't it bee...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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A Glimpse Beyond the Grind

Submitted to Contest #284

The sound of keys jingling as the door swung open was the first crack in Alex’s already fragile mood. His apartment greeted him with a mocking silence, broken only by the hum of the fridge and the faint tick of the wall clock. The weight of another soul-sucking day at work pressed on his shoulders as he slipped off his shoes and threw his bag onto the couch. “Just another year in this dump and we’ll be out. I got this,” he muttered to himself, trying to push away the doubts clawing at the edges of his mind. “You’re late again,” Emma’s voice ...

9 likes 8 comments 8
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Arrival

Submitted to Contest #284

The Air Jamaica jet bumped its way through the mist nine hours late and most of the lights below never grew brighter. I looked incredulously upon a wonderful scene, my first and I guess most impressive of Port au Prince. There were no tall buildings visible in the darkening landscape. A mountain grew up from the sea. Streams of traffic flowed during the commute hours on several arteries. Trees everywhere softened the outline of the architecture. Small fires trailed smoke toward me. The amber of kerosene lamps in contrast with the brightness ...

8 likes 0 comments 0
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The Last Thing to Go Away

Submitted to Contest #284

Sonny Pearce woke up to the sound of the alarm clock on the bedstand on a sunny Friday morning. As it was spring break and he was a college student, he didn't have to get up too early to go to school. He stopped the clock's ringing, but couldn't remember when he had set it the previous night. He got up from the bed and slid his feet into the slippers on the floor mat. He didn't know how he found them there. When he walked to the bathroom, he stuck his tongue out and opened the drug cabinet to take the tube of toothpaste. He didn't usually pu...

8 likes 5 comments 5
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