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Your protagonist is a voracious reader. Lately, they’ve been noticing odd synchronicities in the books he or she is reading. What does the protagonist discover is happening?

Posted in Fantasy on May 17, 2024

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✍️ 31 stories

Amaranth, Lapis, and Luck

Submitted to Contest #251

“The strings look lovely, Simon,” Mary said as she perused Simon’s white board, placed squarely in the middle of his office wall. “But if this is some conspiracy about a secret society of the wealthy elite, I am going to have to send you to the funny farm.”              Simon sat behind his desk holding a piece of paper, barely visible behind the stacks of books. The floor was strewn about with notebook paper covered in diagrams and drawings, with lines connecting the word...

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Pages and Ages

Submitted to Contest #251

Twenty-five-year-old Max McReynolds walked into the small bookstore, The Book Buffet, every Saturday precisely at 9 am, once it opened. The Book Buffet was the only small, business-owned bookstore for miles around, accepting and selling donated books. Max always arrived promptly when the store opened, and checked out the area for new donations every week, knowing he needed to keep buying as many books as cheaply as he could as he read books at an unquenchable pace. He loved to earmark pages, highlight or underline specific passages...

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The True Colour of Bookmanship

Submitted to Contest #251

I opened the book as soon as I got a seat on the train. I was eager to resume Preeti Shenoy's beautiful novel 'A Hundred Little Flames.' The narration is brilliant, and the story is so convincing that whenever you close it, you feel like beginning again from where you have stopped. The surroundings look similar as the plot was developed around a remote village in central Kerala, with most of the characters a Keralite must have seen daily; this is something that attached me to the book. I bent down to pick up the bookmark, which dropped from ...

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An Intervention in 5 Parts

Submitted to Contest #251

“Harry lay in his bed that night, thinking about the good time at Hogsmeade with his friends. Outside. With his friends. He had a great time. He should do it more often.” I stopped reading and stared at the words. These words were wrong. This was not Harry Potter. I blinked a few times, but the paragraph didn’t change. I shook the book, half-wanting the words to fall off the page. But they defied me, the assholes. I looked around my apartment to see if anyone else saw. But how would they, I lived alone. It was a pretty simple place. One bedr...

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The Dream of Sight

Submitted to Contest #251

Valeria ran on silent feet, keeping her back to the wall as much as she could. She paused as the wall turned into a corner, curving around the back side of the house. The solid stone wall towered over her by six feet, and she was considered tall by most. How was she to get in? Thwack! She crouched instinctively, advancing in a crawl to see what had caused the sound- “Amelia, can you help me please?” Jackson asked Amelia sighed. Why did people think it was okay to interrupt someone while they read? Didn’t they realize how many crucial moments...

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Fobi Tog

Submitted to Contest #251

Annabelle stood in line waiting anxiously as she stepped closer and closer to the front. She was waiting for the latest release of ‘No One Knows Me’. It is a book about a man living his life in the forest. Little is known about the author besides his name, Fobi Tog. He never comes to his releases. He has never done an interview. Movie producers want to make a movie about one of his books, but no one knows how to reach him. The line became shorter and shorter. Meanwhile, she had his previous book in her hands. She was hoping, just hoping that...

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Of Vice and Zen

Submitted to Contest #251

Mindfulness is basically mindlessness, I think, failing to rid my brain of the thoughts that this meditation is supposed to eradicate. I’ve taken a walk down to this big oak tree to meditate upon it, as the book suggested I do.           I’ve lived on this street for over twenty years and I’ve never paid more than a second’s notice to this tree. I have neighbours either side of me who I’ve paid equally as little attention to. I’ve painted other people in the street as sort of caricatures...

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The stalker amongst the shelves

Submitted to Contest #251

The stalker among the shelves  I had that dream again; I can only remember bits and pieces, but it was her. The face is blurry but even I can tell she must be a beautiful woman. Her skin was like porcelain, her hair as dark as night in contrast. Her nails were always painted black, always wearing those short dresses, usually red but sometimes white. The only thing I can remember about her face is her eyes, like looking into the night sky, I could swear they even sparkled like stars.  Why has this gorgeous maiden come from? She’s be...

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Marked Only By Her Name

Submitted to Contest #251

She was, both in equal parts, afraid that the papers would continue to arrive and that they would stop.The first package arrived at the start of summer break the year Clementine turned eight. She had finished Kristy’s Great Idea and was captivated by every aspect of The Baby-Sitters Club. Clementine struggled to make friends, preferring fictional relationships to those of her peers. She could trust the characters in the books she read, knew they wouldn’t fail her, and believed all their problems would be resolved by the final page. Clementin...

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Expectant

Submitted to Contest #251

The book fell to the floor with a dark thud, its sound far too loud in Nando’s ears. That was the fifth time this week, in as many books. Yes, being autistic made him far more aware of patterns and connections. He was used to that. But this was too timely and too frequent to exist only in his head.  Nando picked up the book, his fingers hesitant as they wrapped around the hardcover novel. He reopened the book to where he had been startled.  We have been expecting you. It was absurd. There it was, clear as day. But why? The surrou...

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The Escape

Submitted to Contest #251

“Bec … Hey Bec … you still awake?” Rebecca’s eyes cracked open. With an awkward jerk, she sat up abruptly on the couch, sending the book that had been lying on her chest hurtling toward the floor. Its pages fluttered for a second before landing on Chapter 13. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. Her eyes quickly took in the bookshelved walls around her, the green velvet sofa beneath her, the tribal woven rug on the floor. Of course, she thought. I came over to Max’s house for the night. A wave of realisation and dread rushed through ...

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The Arcadian Society

Submitted to Contest #251

NOTE TO READER: This story contains themes of violence, gore, suicide and mental and physical abuse. It was exactly a year ago to this day that I received my invitation to join the Arcadian society, with little knowledge of the horrific events I was setting in motion, brought together by a disturbing synchronicity. My involvement in the secret book club had seemed at first to be a harmless coincidence, the invitation, actually, being from a college classmate who sat next to me in English literature, where our teacher had felt an urge to ta...

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Between the Stacks

Submitted to Contest #251

As the Caribbean sun made its debut, the Captain of the Schooner Maria ascended to the main deck. He peered into the hatch before he closed it and bellowed, "Just sit tight, funny-looking gringo, and sip your piss water." With a bellowing laugh, he sauntered away down the deck.Watching the Captain's departure, Harley couldn't help but shake his head, clutching his books in the galley. Unfazed by the Captain's rough demeanor and scorn, he was accustomed to dealing with bullies. Harley was acutely aware of his uniqueness. Gifted with an eideti...

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The Shrine Book

Submitted to Contest #251

The shrine’s pale exterior is crusted with vines, cracks, and smears of dirt that nestle the grand building into the even greater forest of towering trees, hanging greenery, patches of vibrant blooms, and low crawling ferns. I take a lungful of the fresh, earthy air and step up the battered stairs.Looking around, I think, I've never seen a Spirit Shrine in this condition. The one in town’s always kept squeaky clean.The wooden door sports cracking old varnish and splinters while the round handle’s paint is starting to peel away, revealing a r...

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The Cornwallis Conspiracy

Submitted to Contest #251

AI Montage of Fake News“It is a truth universally acknowledged...” Sophie Nakamura paused mid-sentence, her brow furrowing as a chill crept up her spine. She had read that exact phrase before, and not just in another Jane Austen novel. The modern thriller she'd finished just last week had used it too. What were the odds? Sophie, a 15-year-old high school student, was a self-proclaimed bookworm, more at home in the world of fictional characters than the cliques of Cornwallis High. Her refuge was a cozy nook in the attic, overflowing with well...

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