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Write a story from the POV of someone who’s hiding a secret.

Posted in Dramatic on Aug 15, 2025

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✍️ 31 stories

Stasis

Dudley Mutatina

Submitted to Contest #316

“Look alive,” Ana shouted from the back of the ambulance. “Another emergency just came through.” Red reached up and turned on the sirens. “Where to?” “Near the stadium.” From the passenger seat, Verona pulled up a map on the dashboard. “Rush hour traffic on the highway.” Red smirked and veered towards the on-ramp. “That’s what I’m here for.” Ana braced herself. “Make sure we get there in one piece, please.” Up ahead, traffic had come to a complete halt. Red gripped the steering wheel tighter and sped up, his eyes beginning to glow. In an ins...

5 likes

In My Skin

Florida Meng

Submitted to Contest #316

I wish I could say my severe face eczema is the ugliest thing about me. It would be so much less shameful than the truth. Maybe that’s why 7 years ago, I did the craziest thing I’d ever done and I posted a selfie to Facebook during the worst flare-up of my life. It felt so powerful to confront my biggest fear in such a convincing way. But what I conveniently left out was that an even bigger fear had taken its place around a truly hideous lie. Up until that point, I had done everything in my power to prevent anyone from seeing the real me, an...

5 likes

The Weight Beneath

Submitted to Contest #316

The Weight BeneathI always arrive before the others. It’s not punctuality—it’s necessity. I need the silence of the archive before the voices begin, before the questions start. The old building exhales dust and memory, and I walk its corridors like a ghost who knows where the floorboards creak.The archive room is cold, even in August. I unlock the cabinet with the key I shouldn’t have, and slide out Box 47. It’s labelled “Coastal Surveillance, 1952–1956,” but that’s a lie. The contents are older, stranger. I know because I put them there.Ins...

5 likes

A House on Walnut

Victoria Crenshaw

Submitted to Contest #316

Racial and Class conflict Philadelphia, 1919 — First Person The smell of polish clung to the air like it was part of the walls—sharp, sweet, and determined to linger. The movers’ boots pounded the wooden stairs, rattling the carved banister. Ryan stood at the doorway, his sleeves rolled up in that way that made him look like he’d built the house with his own hands, instead of signing papers in an office with a leather chair. “Walnut Street, Jenny,” he said, grinning as if he’d just been handed the key to the whole city. “A lawyer’s address....

5 likes

Your Normal is My Mask

Haliya May

Submitted to Contest #316

⚠️ Content Note: This story contains themes of terminal illness, death of a parent, grief, and spiritual experiences surrounding loss. YOUR NORMAL IS MY MASKConfessions from a Life Lived in the In-Between Have you ever wished you could be normal? Not normal in the sense of working a nine-to-five or eating peanut butter without your body staging a protest, but normal in the sense that if you told someone the truth, they wouldn’t look at you like you’d lost your mind. Like that night when I was six and woke to my great-grandfather walking the ...

4 likes

Nalchael’s Promise

Submitted to Contest #316

I have learned that there are two kinds of secrets. There are the frail, brittle sort—tidbits and trifles that flit from porch to porch on summer evenings, smelling faintly of honeysuckle and fried okra, carried on the easy gossip that keeps a town alive. And there are the heavy ones, like stones sunk deep in a red-clay river: the water of a life hurries over them, sun dances on the surface, and few ever guess what weight lies hidden under all that warm, ordinary light. Mine is of the second kind. From the first day I stepped into the little...

4 likes

Beyond the Mask by John Drewry

Submitted to Contest #316

#316 Beyond the Mask by John Drewry The UnmaskingArmstrong stood in front of the crowd, surrounded by their hate-filled comments and insults. He couldn’t believe that after saving all of them from the building, they could be so savage and cruel. The night had started so simply. A silent alarm, a red beacon in his hero app, had pulsed with the urgency of a five-alarm blaze. The address was a luxury apartment tower in the heart of the city’s vibrant LGBTQ+ district. A targeted attack. He knew exactly what was happening.He arrived on the scene...

3 likes

What Have You Got to Hide? A prequel to The Battle of Maidstone. 1st June 1648 (warning- violence and sexual references)

Submitted to Contest #316

Nell gives her husband a quick peck on his cheek as he steers the boat towards the jetty, allowing the sail to collapse and the boat to lose way and bump gently up against it.‘Don’t do anything silly love,’ he mutters, for her ears only. ‘I’ll be back for you this afternoon.’ She hands over a sixpence with a great fuss, slipping him a sly wink as she disembarks.‘Thank you for your service, sir, I will recommend you when I return to Rochester,’ she says, to no-one in particular but as loud as seems to her appropriate for a well-to-do tradeswo...

3 likes

The Prodigal Son of McAuley Street

Dave Bede

Submitted to Contest #316

I almost chickened out when I got to the corner. But Jen never would have forgiven me. At that moment I didn’t care much if Ma and Rick forgave me or not. They were looking plenty happy without me, mingling with some friends I didn’t recognize in the driveway, right on the three-point line Eric and I always imagined for our long-ago basketball games. No sign of their being any worse off for their loss. But Jen would’ve killed me if I got that far and then turned back, and sooner or later I’d have hated myself too. Especially with what she wa...

3 likes

Tomorrow's Obituary

Kate Torode

Submitted to Contest #316

he newsroom is never quite silent. After the last intern leaves and the sports guy mutters out, the lights hum and the drink cooler sighs. Beneath it all comes the sound Nadine never names—the soft, workmanlike chattering of a typewriter nobody owns.She lets it run. She doesn’t look toward the corner it favors or hunt behind cabinets. She keeps the obituary file open, fingers hovering, and waits out the tapping. Eventually it slows, like rain reconsidering.At 10:12 on a November Thursday, the typing starts again. Nadine closes her eyes. Name...

2 likes

Death House

Lynn Spray

Submitted to Contest #316

I was only a boy when this place was built. They called it the Health House. It foretold of great gladness and life’s fullness with an end to the woes of those most ill and feeble among us. Never again would a man die of common sickness or small wounds. Such a thing could only be a gift from the heavens. That could not have been farther from the truth. It is a twisted and most foul thing, more akin to hell. Its halls are reeked with the rotten stench of sickness, and every room is filled with the wails of the dying. Instead of mirth, the th...

2 likes

The Secret Affair

Submitted to Contest #316

Mary-Jane and I were alone together, sitting on the sand near the water, our toes dipped in. I noticed her attitude changing so suddenly this past afternoon, and I wondered what she wanted to talk to me about. I asked, “Is everything okay, M.J.?” She shook her head and scoffed. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. How could you?” I raised my eyebrows. “How could I what?” “Please, don’t even pretend you don’t know,” she snapped. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve!” Then she lowered her voice. “Are you seriously pregnant with another man’s b...

2 likes

Coroners Assistant

Zinnia Isaacson

Submitted to Contest #316

TW for light gore and swearing.“I’ll see you tomorrow!” I shouted over my shoulder to Dusitn. Today had been a long day in the morgue. I left the cold, damp, cement lower levels of the hospital, making my way home. Today had been absolutely nasty and disgusting. The Jane Doe we got had been all cut up and beat from something. Or I guess someone. She was found in an alley a few blocks down from my apartment. I hated all the damage and pain I saw everyday. I hated seeing all the poverty, beaten people, murdered prostitutes or spouses, mis...

2 likes

That Which Thumps in the Stump

Andrew Cook

Submitted to Contest #316

I could tell you all the secrets of the universe. If I did, they'd blow your mind…literally; so I'm not gonna. I have a responsibility, you see, to keep people like you from knowing too much for your wee little cognitions. Only people who have trained their minds rigorously for years can handle the secrets I could tell, and I can see from here that your mind is as flaccid as overcooked noodle. What I can do, however, is tell you a story of a man who did learn the secrets of the universe. Sound good? Here we go!Once upon a time when the world...

0 likes

Everyone Knows

Jack Haarala

Submitted to Contest #316

Nobody can know. No one. Not Carrie, not Mike. If they knew, my life might as well be over. Work has been a nightmare today. Emails and meetings nonstop. Middle, upper, and even lower management have been on my tail for progress reports and indexes and all sorts of corporate necessities that make little sense to me. I don’t even care today. There is far too much on my mind. “Jeff,” I asked my boss, “would it be alright if I took off a smidge early, today? Ten, fifteen minutes, tops.” He looked up from the comically tall stack of papers on hi...

0 likes

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