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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Begin a scene with a non-visual sense. Describe a specific sound, smell, taste, etc to capture your setting, then expand the story out from there.

Posted in Fiction on Sep 29, 2023

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 174 stories

“Jack of Spades” by Cliff Pratt

Submitted to Contest #218

“I’ve come to the right place then. You can’t forget the smell of soldering, can you? The little puff of smoke. The acrid burning smell. The slight irritation in the eyes. One whiff and you are back there, a young teenager, in your bedroom, wiring up your first project. Mine was a radio. What was yours?” “Who are you? Did my Mum let you up here?” The boy brandished the soldering iron like a weapon, but I ignored it. “Yeah, she let me come up here,” I said, stretching the truth. “Well, what was it? Your first project?” The boy’s room wa...

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“I’ll Be Home For Christmas ” by Ava Morgan

Submitted to Contest #218

Owen woke to the absence of the birds singing outside his window; their usual serenade was silent, no sound penetrated through the window or the cold, snow covered air outside.  A slight chill tickled at his nose, making him shift uncomfortably. He brought a hand to the window, laced with an icy chill that pierced his skin to the bone, marking his skin an angry red.  It was such a curious feeling, to feel cold. He had no idea when he had last felt cold but something told him a long time.  He sat up in his bed, the sheets unu...

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“The Hero ” by Christina Cooper

Submitted to Contest #218

I could hear my heart slamming against my ribcage at a hundred miles per hour. My breaths were slow, steady, and forced. I had to concentrate with every ounce of my being to remind myself to breathe. In and out. One. Two. Three. Four. In then out. Just like my therapist taught me. The locker room’s clock ticking sounded like thunder in a library. I focused my breaths in and out with the rhythm of that clock, hoping it would quiet down just a tad. My sweat burned my eye as it dripped from my forehead. Tears were nowhere to be found and frankl...

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“Tiny House ” by Bob Long Jr

Submitted to Contest #218

Kent was momentarily fixated on the upcoming weekend ... the relaxing melodies flowing from the car's sound system, as his car passed the beautiful array of colors that graced the mountain side as he traveled the winding road that led to his alma mater, the sweet taste of the hot sausage sandwiches served up at the concession stand, and the roar of the crowd as the points went on to the board. ========Friday had arrived, finally, and knowing he had at least a three-hour drive, under the best of conditions, Kent left his office at 3p. He...

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“Sea Cave” by Christopher B.

Submitted to Contest #218

The water crashes in this dark; a washing roar, wet and briny, eclipsed only by the alarming sense of pressure that arrives with each new wave, searing our ears for a moment and leaving the blackness dripping ice in a muffled crescendo of absolute panic. Seaweed swaddles my legs like wet roiling toilet paper as I scream, “keep looking!” “I can’t see anything,” Steph screams back at me, over the muting of a new wave, the terror in her voice thunking in time with the heavy driftwood logs the ocean is smashing into the entrance of the cave...

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“Coffee Breath” by Michael Jaymes

Submitted to Contest #218

I gurgled the menthol mouthwash in an attempt to remove the permanent tinge of coffee, spitting it out the window as I arrived at the park for my first date in three years. I turned to my wingman in the passenger seat. “How 'bout now?” I opened wide as Bobby leaned toward me, his long snout entering the cavern. “Whew!” He retracted against the passenger door, waving a hand before his nose. “Crap! It’s still that bad?” Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. “Yup,” he replied in an airy voice, dropping his window for fresh air. I s...

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“The Girl That Saved The World For Us ” by Samantha McWilliams

Submitted to Contest #218

I wake to the scent of fried rice, the accompanied sizzle intermingling with a cacophony of voices from the radio in our living room. It's a Monday, I hear them say. Maybe the last one. "You’ve got to be freakin’ joking." Melanie's voice bounces off the walls of our four-story apartment as if to remind us just how little space we have. I pull the pillow further down over either side of my head, forcing the pain of a three-day-old ponytail to amplify through my skull. A heavy sigh works through my chest before I press up from my futon and te...

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“On Oak and Casket” by Sophia H

Submitted to Contest #218

The splintered wood and smooth metal of train tracks felt unyielding as Oak traced his fingertips along it. Its decay was only guaranteed by wear and time as all things are and should be. Inlaid into the ground were pathways that led travellers to a predetermined destination. So even now, the deafening rumbles of a carrier barrelling through a silent forest would mollify him, as it meant people arrived where they were meant to go. Although his name should have been blessed by sturdy trunks and branching roots that grasped basins of dirt unto...

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“The Box ” by Cynthia Crawford-Roach

Submitted to Contest #218

Clothes smother me. I am in a box. Tires roll through wet concrete and water splashes against the side of the vehicle. The sound of the rain on the rooftop is somehow soothing, blending into the symphony of urban noise.I spent the last several months propped on a musician’s couch. It was a late snowy winter afternoon when he found me on my side, leaning against a garbage bin on the sidewalk outside a café. As soon as he laid eyes on me, he stopped in his tracks, his e...

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“The proper value of things” by Pedre Paxim

Submitted to Contest #218

“Sweet,” he said. Farvid, his uncle and - if father only approved - mentor-to-be, smiled, his eyes a-glitter. “It isn’t called sweetleaf for nothing. Anything else?” The meadow was humming with life before them, basking in a lazy summer sun. The air was heady with the alluring scent of flowers and the richness of warm soil. A legion of birds filled it with a many-voiced choral - hymns of joy to human ears, ferocious challenges for dominion to their own.  Glim had his tunic undone, for even in the cool of the shadow of a stately maple, t...

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“There is a Ceiling Fan Spinning” by Jeffery Young

Submitted to Contest #218

Mold and mildew hung like a pungent fog, invading my seared nostrils. Fluffy carpet cushioned my bruised feet. A flash flickered across the room, throwing white light across a painting, a bed, and the man in the mirror. The sky erupted in chase, briefly drowning out the swirling hum of the fan. It was warm. A cool breeze tickled my wet cheeks. Rain streaked violently across darkened window panes. It’d be a great summer night, ripe for a hard night’s sleep, if it had been any other man standing there beneath the ceiling fan. I climbed atop a ...

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“Isabella’s first trip” by Lie Moreira

Submitted to Contest #218

Grass and… “What was that other smell again?” She wondered. She knew, but could not remember precisely what it was… She felt herself rolling down over the wet grass. Isabella blinked, but she did not see it properly. Everything was a little blurry. Was She rolling down a hill, maybe? The sweet, delicious scent in the air. It smelled like green too, but a little sweeter than grass. She wanted to remember what it was. She took a long breath. It was delicious, a tender smell, delicate, smooth… Childhood… “Ohhh, yeah! That was it! Child...

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“Aging Out” by Nicki Nance

Submitted to Contest #218

 On the morning of my eighteenth birthday, I took a freedom walk. The heady smell of the woods invited me into a congregation of pine trees. Layers of dew-dampened fallen needles cushioned my every step. In the center of nature’s chapel, where a canopy of tightly entangled branches had turned off the sun, cool air touched my face. I swayed to the symphony of silence, safe among my new woodsy friends. No one can take that moment from me. Future perfect. I will always have been there. The memory of it sustains me when I feel as dead as I ...

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“Ex Vitro” by Noah Bailey

Submitted to Contest #218

The gas was musky and seasoned with an aliquot of sea salt like the smothering aroma of rubbing alcohol. Along with a bitter, sulfuric taste. This wasn’t ordinary gas. It sought after people, as dealerships seek customers, and all kinds of people if it got the chance. But most especially it went after Mikey Julyan. It wanted him very much. The billow had mailed a love letter to Julyan’s nostril warehouse and the letter had unsurprisingly put his tense system on high alert. Burning his nose hairs. His body, his only body, shuttered at the pro...

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“Mr. Pang” by Chris Pye

Submitted to Contest #218

The sickly sweet smell of his aftershave oozes through my attention. He's there, behind me. Again. He's looking over my shoulder as I sit, slowly moving in closer.  That's the third time this morning. I want to react, to pinch my nose and pull a face, but I daren't: I'd lose my job. So I just stop breathing. There and then, as my nose puckers with the first astringent note, I just stop. I let my lungs relax and simply refuse to let them take in more air. The room is huge and airless; rows of office workers sit at their work stations ...

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