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Your protagonist joins a mysterious group of readers and/or writers, and nothing is what it seems.

Posted in Dramatic on Jul 4, 2025

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✍️ 44 stories

Letters from Lucknow, 1886

Winner of Contest #310 🏆

“Intercultural Book Club. Join us! Every Sunday 6pm.”The poster hung alone on a blank wall in my dorm building. As someone who had just moved in and loved novels it seemed like an easy way to meet people. So that Sunday evening, I grabbed my current read and headed to the common room.A small group had already gathered, steaming cups of tea in hand despite the lingering summer heat.“Hi, I’m Louise. Is this the book club?”“Yes! Come in. Tea?”A girl with dark curls and round glasses smiled warmly. Without waiting for my answer, she handed me a ...

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Pens of the Prompters

Submitted to Contest #310

If I can get my hands on one of the Prompters' pens, I can save Anne Servago. No one knows how the murderous pens work; I suspect the Devil himself endowed them with his power, but any story written with their black ink comes true. I wrote a story where Anne Servago dies, but I didn't realize the power of the pen until Cliff Strafford. Cliff Strafford died yesterday. That's when the truth became clear. The Prompters gave me two prompts with specific character names, instructing me to end my stories with the character's death, which I did des...

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HR

Submitted to Contest #310

We call ourselves Hominimum Repertores. Finders of people. Our life's work is to scour the world for the right person for the right thing, one role at a time. We often sit in brightly-lit cubicles, behind screens always placed at the ergonomically approved height - top half of the screen at eye level, elbows square on the desk, back straight, knees at a 90 degree angle - and read through every little accomplishment that could pass for achievement until the candidate's past and future are as clear to us as the black Times New Roman font again...

26 likes 6 comments 6
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The Magdeline

Submitted to Contest #310

FirstThe water won't sleep. It harasses the boats all night long. It slaps the sides of each of them. This I do not understand. It sounds like a strap to a bare arm or leg. My heart beats so much faster. I look at all of the boats in the darkness. They are empty but sleepless. I should be asleep, but I came here. I want something to make it quiet in my head. It's so noisy inside of me. It must be like this at the temple. All those voices. Everyone I know is dreaming, but I can't. I cannot dream because I can't stop the wilderness inside of m...

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Saving Ancestors' Stories Forever on Voyages of the Destiny's Dreams

Submitted to Contest #310

Even the stories, themselves, were afraid of being forgotten. They needed to be remembered forever, whether by oral telling or by written word. The stories carried the uniqueness that made Mariposa's people distinctive. The wisdom in the stories inspired, uplifted, and guided their lives. The beliefs gave their lives meaning, purpose, and sacred connections. For thousands of years, the stories and wisdom of Mariposa's ancient ancestors flowed through the spirals of time and space, passed along by the spoken word. Then Mariposa's generation p...

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The Writing Club

Shortlisted for Contest #310 ⭐️

I couldn’t tell if the words I was typing were from me or borrowed from someone else. That’s how unoriginal I was; a mosaic of authors, pieces extracted from my favourite novels and forcefully injected into my own work. Never truly my own, simply a puzzle made from fragments of books I’d picked up here and there –a sentence I’d seen in a magazine, a quote from a non-fiction book I’d forced myself to read. At thirty-two, most successful authors had already been established, and those who didn’t make it had dropped into mundane nine-to-fives a...

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Marie Has Always Been Here

Submitted to Contest #310

“Pour me another, Jay,” I say, slamming my empty glass on the counter with a thud. “Stronger.”The bar is emptying out. I don’t know what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t be home yet.“Whoa, Marie. Slow down,” he furrows his brow, shooting me a concerned glance as he towel dries a glass and puts it on the shelf. “Another,” I check my phone, but it’s still dry. I’ve submitted everywhere this week. My stories are scattered all around the web like marbles. No replies. They’re not worth anything. Not even critique, unless it’s editors of...

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Sweet as Honey, Bright as Dawn

Submitted to Contest #310

The postcard received with that morning’s delivery was still on Deb Mielke-Park’s mind as she started pedaling up 11th Street away from Spruce. She and Sue had lived in “the Gayborhood” for forty years, but she’d never heard of the place advertised on the mailer. She couldn’t figure out how she’d ended up on their list either: Sue was the one who’d read; Deb was a numbers girl. And it had been a year since that final heart-attack. The advertisement had been straightforward—she was invited to join an exclusive club at this bookstore, located ...

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Its source, its power

Submitted to Contest #310

You've been speaking for a long time under the fluorescent lights. You can hear their buzz braiding with your voice. But the people in the folding chairs around you don’t seem to mind. In fact, some of them lean in. “I guess I always felt like I had this little bit of magic. I dunno. It sounds childish.” “But I felt like if I wanted something bad enough, believed it would happen, and wrote it down, it usually happened the way I wanted.” It was more than that. You could charm your way out of a hostage situation. You could land a first class ...

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Start Fresh Tomorrow

Submitted to Contest #310

It lay in her mailbox, sleek and black. When Lisa pulled it out, there was a thin coat of wax which made the jet black envelope gleam in the daylight, the inlaid gold trim drawing her eye to the back of it, and the pressed wax seal at the tip of the flap. A scroll and feather pen. It was real. Ever since she joined her writer’s group three years ago, she had heard rumors, whispers and hushed tones about a secret society of writers. When people would talk about them openly, which was rare, they all said that unless this group approved of you,...

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The Four

Submitted to Contest #310

I’m ecstatic! The Rahway Book Club selection committee invited me to read at their June meeting. Me, Chuck Tompkins, a newly published poet. Who knew? The four ladies of the selection committee are the pillars of the Jersey artsy-fartsy community. Everyone defers to them. Everyone seeks them out for their approval and possible acceptance into their circle. As sycophantic as the next wannabe successful artist, I’m no exception. After their invitation, my excitement kept me awake for days! My career is about to be made. The critical wor...

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The ARC Arthurian Readers Club

Submitted to Contest #310

Of course, it would be quite improper to take five over excitable dogs to a meeting of The ARC Arthurian Readers Club. But Little Plump Jo did not need her five over excitable canine writing companions, the Dabrowski Dogs – Intellectual, Sensual, Emotional, Psycho Motor and Imaginational, to be with her physically to know pretty much what thoughts and opinions they would have. Often people thought that Little Plump Jo may be slightly mad; as she tended to suddenly burst into tears or into gales of laughter at the mental pictures the thoughts...

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Handed Down.

Submitted to Contest #310

“Happy Birthday, son.”“Thanks, Dad,” Jaden answered as he walked in the door and over to Jasper as he came downstairs.They slapped their hands into a loose handshake, and Jasper pulled his son in for a loving embrace.“This is a big one!” he yelled back and walked into the kitchen. “You’re a grown man now!”Jaden slightly blushed. “Yeeah, yeah, I know. I guess I’ll need to find a real job soon.”“Yeah, that and a few other things,” said his dad.Trying to compete with their conversation, several other voices spoke a few notches above Mute from t...

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Bayside Reading Immersive Club

Submitted to Contest #310

"You know that group is gonna be bullshit, right?" Luc told me after I stumbled on the Bayside Reading Immersive Club website on my laptop. To be fair, I couldn't exactly defend it, the website itself sucked and every book recommendation I followed seemed equally as shitty. They were all by some indie authors I'd never heard of, and if they found out there was any other genre than horror and gore, they probably would have had a stroke."Luc, shut up, you know I need to be around people that write. They aren't some Stephen King regens, but I l...

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Weeping God

Submitted to Contest #310

Content warning: Mentions of death Hauntingly, like an ever watchful ghoul, the old library loomed over, its towers rising high to the cloudy, autumn sky. It breathed fog all around its stony walls and though Gabriella had become quite familiar with its intricate designs, the library still racked a sense of eeriness through her cold bones. Gargoyle eyes guarded her every move. A particularly freezing breeze rattled her into entering the gothic building, iron gates clanging in her wake. She’d come there with a purpose and time was quickly tic...

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