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Write a story about a character who encounters someone with an uncanny resemblance to a lost love, friend, or relative.

Posted in Dramatic on Aug 22, 2025

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✍️ 63 stories

… The Last Place You Look

Submitted to Contest #317

October, 2011 The sticky note is taped onto the front of my inbox as I arrive at the ICU nurse’s station for the night shift. There is one word written on it—“pathology” in a petite cursive—so I know where I’ll be spending my first break. I leave the note where it dangles, instead gathering the paperwork that I’ve received over the four days since my last shift.Handoff with Jewel takes thirty minutes; my previous patients were both discharged since my previous shift, so the charge nurse assigns me two new cases for my shift. The first is rec...

18 likes 7 comments 7
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The Funeral Guest

Shortlisted for Contest #317 ⭐️

It rained on the day they buried my grandmother. Not the hard kind that rattles rooftops and sends people running for shelter, but the quiet, persistent sort that seeps into wool and bones alike. It felt like the sky had taken up the same soft voice the priest used, and together they were asking us to keep our heads down. Be good. Be small. Be done. Inside the little church, lilies crowded the altar. I sat in the second pew with my knees pressed to the polished wood. The casket looked lighter than wood should look. My mother's hand was flat ...

17 likes 10 comments 10
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Bananas, chocolate and wine

Submitted to Contest #317

The first time I saw him, I was in the supermarket, reading the label of a can of chopped tomatoes, looking for the latest allergen developed by my friend's son. At this point, I have a file in my phone with more than a hundred items that can give nightmares to any mom in the playground, but not me. We had invited them for dinner, and I was ready to prepare a vegetarian, lactose-free, gluten-free, kid-friendly lasagna, followed by a fruit salad, as long as there were no fruits in the list... so... banana. I had a plan: kid-proof lasagna and ...

13 likes 6 comments 6
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The Dream Census

Submitted to Contest #317

At midnight, Laurie opened her door to find two strangers with clipboards, asking who she'd been dreaming of. She almost lied before saying his name. The woman wore a navy blazer despite the heat. Her partner, younger and pale, carried a leather satchel that bulged with forms and scanning equipment. Both had the bureaucratic stillness of people who knocked on doors after decent hours and expected to be welcomed inside. "Ms. Harper?" The woman consulted her clipboard. "I'm Agent Morse with the Bureau of Somnolent Affairs. This is Agent Kellum...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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Breathe Again

Submitted to Contest #317

Sensitive Content: Loss of a close friend Lunchtime. My favorite, yet least favorite part, of the day. Dealing with a room full of six-year-olds for seven hours is exhausting. Although it's kind of lonely just sitting at my desk and eating the same ham sandwich every day. I could sit in the teacher's lounge, of course, but that's just awkward. Most of the other teachers are at least 15 years older than me, and it's kind of odd to be the only one in the room who doesn't remember the 90s. I like my colleagues, of course, we're just not eat-lu...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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Jennifer's Requiem

Submitted to Contest #317

“I have to be honest with you, Jen, I don’t love it.”My manager, Kim Davies, doesn’t love my final painting for the upcoming Millhouse exhibition.I hang my head like a child, and Kim chuckles, putting a warm hand on my shoulder as she tilts her head, still looking at the massive canvas propped against the wall.“Wait, wait…” Kim taps her chin, “Nope. Still don’t love it.” Her hand slides from my shoulder as her heels click to walk around the studio, which she rents for me. “This painting doesn’t match all the others. What gives?”I sigh, pulli...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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ACHILLES ACHARÇIS

Submitted to Contest #317

It was a good hunt. Zabajac had taken the elk buck down from a mile and a quarter away. Zabajac's my good Scythian, recurved bow. Pull of more than two hundred pounds. It could pierce armor if I needed it to. The name means Killer in Czech. I don't like announcing myself with something like a shotgun blast. I came up to the Yukon three years ago to get away from people—and to forget. All that time I'd not seen more than three people—and none of them saw me. I'd gone through a lot of trouble to find a place where I could keep the stench of m...

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THE DOPPELGANGER DILEMMA

Submitted to Contest #317

THE DOPPELGANGER DILEMMA “IT’S Elizabeth, isn’t it? ? Or was it Liza? You were one of the Kellogg twins, weren’t you? You and Stephen. From Pittsburgh, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood? ““Pittsburgh? Elizabeth? Stephen? Nope sorry, wrong on all three counts! My name is Madeleine Mallory. I’m from Portland, Maine. And I am neither a twin nor a sister to anyone named Stephen. Actually I was an only child. And I have never been to Pittsburgh. Why do you ask?”“My apologies , Madeleine, I hope this didn’t raise your stranger danger hackle...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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Butterfly Feelings

Submitted to Contest #317

The winter of 2004 is a winter I can never forget. That’s the year I met my best friend, Aria. I was a very isolated kid, only really befriending the kids in my neighborhood. I always felt off with all of them, they were all guys who liked guy things. Me, on the other hand, had no interest in any of that. I yearned for at least one friend who would understand me. All of that changed when Aria transferred to my school in the middle of November. "Class, this is Aria. She recently transferred from-" before she could finish, she ran over to my d...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Moving On

Submitted to Contest #317

When you moved in next door, I had to scrape myself off the floor. And you’ve been making me spontaneously burst into poetry like that for at least four months now. Of course, it’s not you. Not really. You stopped smoking. I gathered you got into the habit after leaving me for her, because it’s what she did. Those few times I saw her in person when visiting you on campus, her blowing smoke in my face to cover up her stealing of your heart. However, when I last trawled your eBay purchase history it was full of vaping devices. Looking so alie...

8 likes 4 comments 4
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Oasis

Submitted to Contest #317

Sound, in the true desert, is a force that catches you unawares always. In the bleakness of sand and scrub a shack adjoins a small house with two horses tied to a hitching post leaning their heads down standing aside the wall trying to stay in the shade and out of the hot mid afternoon sun. Inside, through a still, blanketed doorway and thick adobe walls is a dark room, cool by desert standards. There is a bar of thick oak planks atop a row of barrels. In front of the bar are two white cowboys in leather chaps and worn suit coats. A Mexica...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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The Shape of an Echo

Submitted to Contest #317

For five years, Amelia had lived her life in the quiet, orderly stacks of the city library. It was a world of contained stories, of beginnings and endings bound neatly in cloth and paper. Her own story felt as if it had been torn in half, the latter part left unwritten since the day her brother, Collin, had disappeared. He’d gone hiking in the Cascades, a simple day trip, and had never come back. No note, no body, no trace. He had simply been erased by the wilderness, leaving a void that Amelia had tried to fill with the rustle of turning pa...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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A Census of Lovers

Submitted to Contest #317

CW:Sexual content Sloan froze when a photograph appeared on the screen. She dragged the page back up, certain her eyes had played a trick, and leaned closer to the light. A row of colleagues stood pressed together at the opening of a civic project, the ribbon stretched across the frame, every smile sharp with celebration. She barely registered most of them. Her focus locked on the man in the middle. The caption named him Blake, senior partner, innovator, mentor. She read the line twice, her lips forming the words while her mind clung to his ...

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A Trace of You

Submitted to Contest #317

Jack wandered aimlessly through the narrow aisles of the old bookstore. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular – he just wanted a quiet corner to himself and this bookstore was the perfect place to find it. It reminded him of happier and simpler moments in time. Moments where the brush of her hand made him blush, the excitement in her eyes when she picked out the perfect book for their picnic by the beach, and the moment where the words “I love you” accidentally slipped out of his mouth. The memory made Jack’s eyes water as he made his...

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Siete Cerillos Apagados

Submitted to Contest #317

The first time I saw her again, the heat was already splitting my skull. West Hollywood at noon felt like standing under a blowtorch — the kind of heat that makes the air hum, where palm trees look plastic and the asphalt ripples like it’s trying to swallow itself whole. I’d just finished a double shift at the treatment center, three admissions back-to-back, and my scrubs smelled like bleach and stale withdrawal. My body was buzzing, hollow and electric, like I’d been poured out and left behind. I stopped at the self-serve car wash on Fairfa...

7 likes 1 comment 1
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