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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✍️ 20 stories

“A Slogan For Every Town” by Daniel Rogers

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...

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“Help Needed” by Mary Bendickson

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...

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“Home” by Dan G.

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...

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“The Coward” by Colin Wadeson

Submitted to Contest #284

Colin woke up naked inside a chicken coop.His elbows and knees were bleeding from the bite of the wire mesh on the sides, the coop being less than a cubic meter in size. His ears were ringing, he could barely move or see. It was his nose that read the first words of dawning horror; by the acidic stink of the carpet sweating alcohol and dog urine in the Cornish heat, the smell of his mother’s cigarettes, of her catarrh, of his pubescent body odor on unwashed sheets and underwear, "I am home," he thought.When his eyes finally came into focus, ...

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“Home, But Not Quite” by Orwell King

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...

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“The Last Thing to Go Away” by Lara Simut

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...

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“Fragments” by Elisabeth Fowler

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...

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“Arrival” by H.e. Ross

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 ...

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“No Place Like Home” by David Ader

Submitted to Contest #284

Whittaker walked up Pilgrim Road deliberately splashing into the puddles left behind by the night’s downpour. He enjoyed the rain. April showers and all. He smiled at that. He also enjoyed the lightning and thunder that had accompanied the storm. He never felt wet, not especially cold even at his age. Oscar, no doubt, would be hiding under the bed just waiting to curl up in Whittaker’s lap which was no small feat for a fat old lab. Some candles glowed inside of his neighbors’ homes. That would be a legacy of the storm no doubt. He could...

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“The Aftermath” by Jennifer Abrahamsen

Submitted to Contest #284

With what felt like the last of my strength, I heaved the remnants of my front door out of the way and stepped out onto what should have been my front porch, but was now a pile of rubble. The sun blinded me after being in darkness for so many hours. I felt no pain as I enjoyed the feeling of being alive and free from the debris that rained down upon me early this morning when my own home tried to kill me. I turned to look at the tomb from which I had jus...

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“The Ghosts Of Memories’ Past” by Luciana Francis

Submitted to Contest #284

“Why does everything feel so different?” I said to myself, with confusion and heartache. “I got my favorite teacher yet again, for a second year in a row, but it doesn’t feel anything like last year.” I thought to myself. Why is it so different? Why doesn’t it feel the same? Why does everything feel so strange and foggy? “Take me back. Take me back to last year, someone take me back please.” I continued crying to myself, almost unable to breathe from the anxiety I was feeling. As I walk past my old classroom from last year, with my favorite ...

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“Our Hollywood Driveway” by Susan Taylor

Submitted to Contest #284

I just learned that we had a "Hollywood Driveway," on that small lot of our 1955 tract house in Canoga Park. From the curb to the garage, the driveway strtetched straight probably one hundred feet, our pink stucco house on the left, and Muffy's rose bushes on the right. I remember having to weed and sweep that corridor often. Dad was a machinist, but he liked wood and nail projects, too. He built a gate two-thirds of the way up the Hollywood, the type with a wheel that allowed it to open to the space between the garage and the gate, a space ...

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“It's all train station to me” by Emery Lipow

Submitted to Contest #284

Drums. Drums, Michael says, fingers playing strings in the air. Hands shaking. Hands always shaking. Not like this, he says. Carrie, he says. Dad, says Alex, Dad, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Michael, not Mike, never Mike, sometimes Dad, laughs. Shakes his head. Alex sighs. Try again, he says. Come on, Dad, try again. Michael looks at him. Closes his eyes. Plugs his ears with his fingers. Fine, Alex says. Fine, have it your way. I was just trying to help. Maybe, Alex thinks, maybe a better son would know. He ...

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“And I shall be useful when I lie down finally” by Juliette Ikss

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...

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“END TIMES” by Charles Corkery

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

Submissions are closed

✍️ 20 stories

“A Slogan For Every Town” by Daniel Rogers

“Help Needed” by Mary Bendickson

“Home” by Dan G.

“The Coward” by Colin Wadeson

“Home, But Not Quite” by Orwell King

“The Last Thing to Go Away” by Lara Simut

“Fragments” by Elisabeth Fowler

“Arrival” by H.e. Ross

“No Place Like Home” by David Ader

“The Aftermath” by Jennifer Abrahamsen

“The Ghosts Of Memories’ Past” by Luciana Francis

“Our Hollywood Driveway” by Susan Taylor

“It's all train station to me” by Emery Lipow

“And I shall be useful when I lie down finally” by Juliette Ikss

“END TIMES” by Charles Corkery

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about someone who receives a gift or message that changes their life forever.

Center your story around a character spending their first holiday alone.

Write a story that includes the line “I should’ve known better.”

Center your story around an unexpected guest who changes a traditional get-together.

Contest #284

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

353

Contest entries

148

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

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