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Set your story in a town disconnected from the rest of the world.

Posted in Dystopian on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 36 stories

Nowhereville

Submitted to Contest #115

           It was a dark, desolate road. Swirls of dust engulfed the van as the young college friends made their way toward a lakeside retreat that they had rented for the long weekend.           Lisa, the self-proclaimed social media sensation, continuously made Tik Tok videos, and selfies for her Instagram and Facebook pages. Her boyfriend, Jack, found it amusing at first, but grew tired of it after the first couple of weeks. ...

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Alien Invasion

Submitted to Contest #115

John tinkered with the alarm clock. He didn’t know why he kept it around. It needed to be fixed once a month, it seemed. The thing that came to mind is it had been his father’s before John was born. He only had a few things of his father’s left. The last step, spinning the spring, took the longest. He half-listened to the television program as he worked. Suddenly his attention was drawn away from the clock. The spring flew out of his hands. “This is a special report,” the anchor came on. “We have just heard…” The television buzzed with stati...

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The Town

Submitted to Contest #115

My GPS got me lost…well, that and my desire to take the scenic route and avoid the freeways. The dense woods surrounding the route it had recommended blocked out everything. It was only when the road narrowed and became a potholed mess that I realized that I wasn’t anywhere near where the GPS said I was. I should have been able to see the freeway from here, but there was no infrastructure beyond this ill-maintained forest road. Checking my phone, I saw that I had no signal. The choice was to follow this road that climbed ahead of me in hope...

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The Place from Above

Submitted to Contest #115

The boy was a child of the wildness that surrounded him. He was born of the mountains that ringed his lofty alpine valley, formed by the rapids that rushed from their snow capped peaks, rocked to sleep by the winds that howled through the narrow chutes, and awakened by the thunderclaps that echoed off the craggy stone. He was the vigorous, confident wildness that drove the elk from the woods each morning, their antlers glinting in the sun. He was the fresh, gentle wildness of the elderflower and columbine in spring bloom, rendering the valle...

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Escaping Eden

Submitted to Contest #115

They call our town Eden. I never read the bible in as much detail as I was supposed to. Alisha and I dn't believe in any of the ramblings of the fantastical book. It was a grand story to us, but that was the extent of it. The only thing I can give the book credit for is how similar their Garden of Eden is to our village. The lush plant life and bountiful animal supply keeps us fed and happy. Well, it doesn’t keep me and Alisha happy. Something I didn’t mention about Eden? It’s a technology dead zone. Not that we’re supposed to know what tech...

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Two Black Eyes

Submitted to Contest #115

“It was lucky that you found me when you did. If you hadn’t, I reckon I might’ve froze.”“Weren’t you worried at all?” I queried.“Worried about what?” She returned with a query of her own.“About getting into a car with a stranger.”“Well, I reckon I’ve got a better chance with you than with that bloody cold out there.”I chuckled at that because she couldn’t have been more wrong. I had picked her up a few kilometres back, as she too was trying to get away from the insistent snowfall that was raining down from the surrounding mountains. The wind...

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The Watering Hole on the Fringe of Forever

Submitted to Contest #115

A haggard cowpoke spurred his weary mount to the edge of the small settlement that had been steadily rising from the desert scrub for the last hour. A single, uneven, dirt road ran through town between a smattering of dilapidated wooden buildings. The place seemed as isolated and cut-off as a leper colony; there was no railway, no telegraph, and certainly no electricity. Kerosene street lamps were already burning in the evening dusk to stave off the rapidly approaching darkness.Dust caked the man’s black beard and face; the trail grit collec...

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Christmas Dreams

Submitted to Contest #115

Fourteen-year-old Jessie loved Christmas. With the thoughts of presents, sweets, and no school, what young person didn’t? While Jessie loved those things as much as the next person, Christmas also meant travelling to a place of Christmas dreams, somewhere she has been able to go since she was a little girl.For a while, Jessie went to this place by way of her grandparents’ house, who lived thirty miles away on a hilltop acre with spotty cell phone service and basic cable. She would politely greet her family when arriving before finding her wa...

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Adrift in a Sea of Nothing

Submitted to Contest #115

     Following World War I, veterans newly released from military service looked for ways to feed their families, “work the land” and enjoy an honest day’s work in the fresh air of the Midwest.      Among many agricultural areas throughout the Midwest, they gravitated to central Iowa and soon mapped out a new small town in which to plant their family roots as well as their crops. They came together in 1930 to establish a completely new community they named Winding Mountain Pass along the bank...

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River Falls

Submitted to Contest #115

I suppose when the four horsemen came up to my car, I should’ve known to put it in reverse. Or perhaps their grim faces should’ve sent me running. Either way, I swallowed the hot stone lodged in my throat and lowered the windows as they approached. Their lanterns bathed the dirt road in a ghoulish orange glow. Not vibrant, but tempered and sickly - as though someone had placed frosted glass around the Mona Lisa. The hooves clopped on the ground and a horse whinnied as it stopped by my door. A man slid off, his coat dark and graced by a shimm...

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The Emperor's Jade

Submitted to Contest #115

Social background was no barrier and many emperors chose concubines from the general public. The women of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province were no exception to this rule. Even as a town disconnected from the rest of the land, the world even, it holds nothing but the best candidates for the emperors' concubine. People of the mainland may find it weird though how Shijiazhuang only homes women and no men. It was believed that previous kingdoms have fought over the said land for the luscious yet mysterious fruit tree that only grows on its soil. B...

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I hate the color blue

Submitted to Contest #115

I don’t know when it started. It just happened one night. When everyone woke up it was there. No one knew why or how or what to do. Some people thought it was the government, some thought it was aliens. The blue haze ran along the edges of town. It wasn’t quite a fog but something thicker. If you waved your hand through it it would feel like you were cupping a handful of water in a bathtub, but nothing would come back with your hand. There were a few people who walked into it but were never seen again. ...

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HOW OUR PATHS ALIGNED By Nkama Chukwuemeka

Submitted to Contest #115

Amaka, Ben and I have known each other for six years now. The three of us are best of friends. We’ve all been to camp meetings halfway around the world; in the national theatre; in the national stadium and in church services all together sitting side by side fifteen percent of the times in no particular order, but the usual order has always been me on either side of Ben who always occupies the middle position between Amaka and me. I mustn’t sit next to Amaka if it were possible. We all loved each other but the love between the pair of Amaka ...

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The World I Left Behind

Submitted to Contest #115

I had been told that the entirety of my existence was bound to the forest of the North and East and to the sea of the South and West. Never have I passed these two boundaries that seemed to thwart any sparkle of wanderlust that I once felt as a young man. That is until I decided my demise, although unfavorable, was a much better fate than to stay within the claustrophobic borders of my world. The great and tragic irony of the matter was that this was not my world, in fact it was just a village, a village that I will no longer identify with i...

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The Capitol Walls: Breaking In and Out

Submitted to Contest #115

Felicia’s comm hummed in her lab coat pocket. Annoyed, she stripped off her gloves. “Hello?” “Dr. Hughes, is that any way to answer your comm? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” Felicia chuckled. She walked to the break room and closed the door. “Yes, both of them did, Dr. Hughes-Myers.” “Daphne and I certainly tried. Did I catch you at a bad time in the middle of an experimental progression?” “No—yes, kind of.” Her job was to assist The Capitol’s agenda: manipulate the mitochondrial DNA, beginning in utero, to correct or prevent an...

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