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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story with a character or the narrator saying “I remember…”

Posted in Dramatic on Jan 10, 2025

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✍️ 164 stories

“Destiny Diva Mulang ” by Keren Kwarteng

Submitted to Contest #285

I remember it was a cold, stormy night—let’s say around Christmas Eve. The kind of night where the wind howls like a banshee and the icy rain slaps your face like an unpaid debt. The streets of Harlem were slick and dark, the street lamps barely holding back the night. My fur-lined coat did little to fend off the chill as I clutched my trumpet case, my fingers numb and shaking, though not just from the cold. Poppa had just been readmitted to the hospital, coughing up his lungs thanks to all those damn cigarettes he swore he'd quit. I begged ...

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“A Walk on the Beach” by Keith Menendez

Submitted to Contest #285

Jak Chico stirred an umbrella cocktail at a quiet bar on South Beach.The high octane clubs, jumping and thumping down the street, could not be heard from his serene refuge. Two hours ago, the backup quarterback, Slim, invited him to meet fun girls at the clubs.The drinks, his teammate, and the females were shallow and uninteresting. Slim’s girls only wanted to ‘hook up’ and do obnoxious dancing. Not one of the girls cared about a quiet walk on the beach. Seravina and Josie’s sophistication, beauty, and intelligence had ruined his usu...

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“I Remember” by Tara Domino

Submitted to Contest #285

‘There’s never anything to eat here, God,’ says Chelsea.  ‘Are you kidding me?’ I say, gesturing at the four boxes at my feet that I’ve already cleared from the pantry. I’ve got what I think is flour on my cheek and grains of what I hope is some spice under my nails. It smells smoky. Cardamom maybe? I’m not good at spices.   ‘Oh, yes mum, please,’ says Chelsea, picking out the nearest jar, ‘let me eat some whole green pickles in brine from...’ she turns the jar over, ‘nineteen-ninety-seven.’  Horror and disgust fight for first...

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“Occisoris Angelicus ” by Charles Dean

Submitted to Contest #285

-I remember, boy. I'll always remember that day. –Marcellus turned to see a group of kids sitting before him. The eyes of excitement and curiosity from the children gawking at him with open mouths and wide-open eyes.-What was it, sir? –A young lad saw an old Marcellus. Missing an eye and his left arm. He lifted his gaze to the stars and took a deep breath. He pointed at the night sky at a constellation and said:-An angel. A harbinger of death… -***-Marcellus? Nero? –Asked a man as he walked inside a tent. As he opened it, he saw candlelight ...

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“Lifelines cut by winter.” by Mary McClarey

Submitted to Contest #285

I remember the endless, grubby freezing winter of ‘63. The drifts were knee-deep, and we walked to school on the tops of the hedges. Our inadequate lunch packs, squashed between books and incomplete homework, festered at the bottom of our satchels. We snuggled our mittened fingers deep into coat sleeves, and our toes, chilblain numb, swaddled and grew damp in home-knit socks and unsuitably porous school shoes. We were hoping our mother would soon come home.  Crunch crunch on the crusty snow, footprints breaking the new frost each mornin...

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“Sexual Education of the Twentieth Century” by Elizabeth Belhumeur

Submitted to Contest #285

It was the late twentieth century, the 1900’s as my children now call it, and I had just sat down at the desk in the second row of my Catholic school’s fifth-grade health class. Topics of such high humiliation potential required us to leave the confines of our regular classroom, and be escorted to the room, I feel, had all the warmth and coziness Roman Catholicism placed on human coitus; the sterile science lab.  There was a hum, a buzz in the air if you will, of nervous laughter and anticipation. In the days of yore, one response to se...

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“Rain, Thunder, Faces” by Ben W

Submitted to Contest #285

Rain, Thunder, Faces The sun smiled as its summer rays filled the world with light and life. The weather was hot, but not so hot as to prevent you from sitting on the porch with a glass of lemonade while you watched the world with quiet wonder and blissful contentment. The old man watched intensely, drinking in all the world was bestowing him just as surely as he was drinking the delightfully tart lemonade his sweet wife had made for him. For 40 years he had done this. For 40 years he had drunk in these summers gluttonously, for he knew wha...

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“A Brief Tale in the Moonlight” by Cameron Snider

Submitted to Contest #285

Warming light bounces against the surrounding darkness. A forested silhouette stands out against the campfire, my shadow the only company as I lift a spoonful of soup to my mouth. The taste provides me with the rustic comfort of my homelands, especially from the spiced scallions that abound in the wild there. The heat flows down my throat and goes far in staving off the chilling night wind. Swaying vegetation creates a lone accompaniment left unmet, as my lute remains tightly bound in its wooden case.“There will be no songs for you this...

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“Bayou Dreams” by Amelia Ramble

Submitted to Contest #285

CW: Mentions of death by accident and swearing.‘I remember the day you left because the trees were covered in silver and the sky was on fire.’Osprey’ warbled overhead, as a procession of husks moved in staggered steps, to the tolls of the bell, and my mother’s tears. The dirt in my hands was one wet clump, the soil still holding onto the rain from a week ago. There was no actual rain this morning, just a small reserve of sprinkled relief that the summer heat attacked, and made the reporters crow that the drought had finally broken, and anoth...

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“Sister Memories” by Rebecca House

Submitted to Contest #285

Memories are a funny thing. At a high in life, it’s hard to remember the bad times. The times that destroyed you, ripped you straight to the core of your being and left you bleeding and screaming for it all to stop. You can forget what it was to struggle and battle. It is such a good time. Such a bright time. How could anything ever go wrong? How was anything ever wrong before? At a low in life, it’s almost impossible to remember the good times. The times that were filled with love, laughter and light. We forget what it looks like to wake to...

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“The Photograph” by Lindsay Marshall

Submitted to Contest #285

I held the photograph in my hands.  APR ‘87 was scribbled in smeared ink on the back.  That was the only clue as to my exact age.  Puts me at seven years old.  The photograph was slightly blurry.  Not edited and airbrushed, not cropped to remove any background foliage, clouds, telephone wires, unnecessary humans.  As if the existence of other objects ruined the memory.    They say “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  This one was worth infinitely more than that.  It was my childhood w...

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“Give Grace” by Melissa Collins

Submitted to Contest #285

Dealing with the death of my grandma was quite difficult for me. It caused me to have many emotional issues and panic attacks, that I choose to seek help for. See a therapist is a good move when you’re dealing with mental health issues. I remember a phrase that my therapist said that took a while to really register what it really meant to me. She said I need to learn to “Give Grace”. I thought what the heck! My first thoughts of therapy was I was just paying someone to be my friend ! I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of it. I fel...

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“Voices of the Mind Connected by the Heart” by Amber McGinnis

Submitted to Contest #285

I'm not good enough for anyone, no matter what I do. I wasn't even good enough for my mother to keep, which is why she left me at the hospital the day I was born. Not even an hour after they removed me from her stomach and carried me away, she decided that it was the best time to escape. Escape the burden of such a mistake that was me. She didn't even bother to give me a name. I swear, I wish I had never been born. I don't want to be here anymore."No don't leave." a voice said."Who said that?" she asked aloud while looking under and around t...

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“The Pit” by CRX SSXS

Submitted to Contest #285

I remember the first time we saw the house.  Dale was the one who found it. He had his heart set on moving out of the city–on finding somewhere quiet for us to raise Theo. Away from the noise, the pollution, the rush of everything that calloused folks around us.  The house sat on a patch of land that seemed to have been forgotten by time itself. It was an old two-story farmhouse, sagging under the weight of years, its wood greyed and splintered. It leaned slightly to the left when you looked at it from the road, as if it were tired...

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“Waiting Room” by Ted Harrison

Submitted to Contest #285

Waiting RoomByTed Harrison It was the most recent periodical in the stack. Otherwise he wouldn't pick up an alumni review. Especially one from a college he hadn’t attended. A nurse called one of the other two people in the doctor’s waiting room.He leaned back and thumbed through the journal and came to the announcement. Unlike the age of the review, her picture-image from a yearbook no doubt was from a time long past. The black and white on the page didn’t keep him from knowing those deep, brown, warm eyes. The text and picture composit...

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