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Start or end your story with a character noticing the beauty in something they've seen hundreds of times.

Posted in Fluff on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 74 stories

emotion sickness

Submitted to Contest #106

It’s not easy, asking you out. You’re fleeting, like a firefly flitting through a sticky evening, refusing to be caught. I give chase anyway because I want to open the palms of my hands one day to find you glowing there, bright and ethereal, a flame on wings.At first, I don’t know what to make of you. Your eyes are downcast when you shuffle to the front of the class, as if the floor is more interesting than the eager faces waiting to learn more about you. The teacher tells you to speak louder, to enunciate those two syllables that sound as b...

107 likes 60 comments 60
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downpour

Submitted to Contest #106

I would’ve given anything and everything to be out in the tropical storm when I was little. It wasn’t frightening. In fact, it was cool.I would’ve wanted to go jump in the huge puddles the rain was making. When our drain got clogged because of all the dirt and leaves the rain carried in, it created a huge puddle. It was like a pond in our backyard.I would’ve asked Mom to go out and play in the puddles or even swim in that pond the rain created.And she’d say no, to all my questions.She’d tell me I’d get sick.She’d tell me I’d get struck by li...

96 likes 125 comments 125
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Aliveness up in a Pyre

C G

Submitted to Contest #106

I don’t feel real. Lurid, neon greens and reds light up the city, ugly and discordant, flickering across my face as I walk listlessly along the sidewalk, click, click, click. Despite the lights, the sight is bland, cold. Like a tv set: fake and claustrophobic. Someone screams in the distance, a police siren wails, cars make a soft shhkt sound on the wet tar, and it all feels like it’s happening to someone else. With every noise, I feel as though I’m being stuffed further and further into an airless hole. I’m stuck in an endless bad dream. D...

41 likes 8 comments 8
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Soot and Cinders

Submitted to Contest #106

Day 1In the summer, the fires come. You feel them before you see them; they form an invisible wall of pure heat. Usually, they devour the wild brush and grass that fringes my city, but this year, they poured onto us like lava, swallowing up homes, schools and hospitals, sightless, ravenous, merciless.My apartment is on the fourteenth floor, so I saw the blaze rolling over the city lines like a flaming tsunami. I saw people, as tiny as ants, running for their lives.I bundled my phone and laptop into my backpack, shoved clothes and food i...

39 likes 12 comments 12
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Aeroplanes, Chocolate Bars, and Fridges

Submitted to Contest #106

Thick blue smoke plumed and pooled around the old man's head. His grandson sat crosslegged before him on the harsh concrete floor of their subterranean shelter, watching the coils of smoke slowly unfurling upwards and collecting beneath the low, stained ceiling. There was one window in the room; a small rectangular pane of filthy glass close to the top of the wall. A pallid stream of light penetrated the layer of grime welded to it. The boy's grandfather sat across the room drinking in the meagre ray of light, the leathered seams of his face...

28 likes 7 comments 7
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Homemade

Submitted to Contest #106

 Chlorine hangs heavy in the humid evening air. Bare footed children yell “red light! green light!” in an age-old game of you can’t get to the other side before someone yells “red light!” again at the other person. Moms chase children with towels trying to herd them towards cars. Grandmas helpfully shout out, “I’ll order the pizza!” It is another closing day at the city pool and the families are being sent out into the parking lot. The life guards can be glimpsed through the doors as they sweep, mop, empty garbage cans, and tidy up...

26 likes 32 comments 32
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The Garden

Submitted to Contest #106

The Wedding The garden is the site of my aunt’s second wedding to a guy named Phillip. Phillip. Like the prince. May he rest in peace. Technically, the garden is not the site of my aunt’s second wedding to a guy named Phillip. It is the site of the reception of my aunt’s second wedding to a guy named Phillip. It was April or March or...um...sometime early spring. I was only 10. Time works differently when you’re a kid. I once read that childhood is like being drunk: you don’t have much memory of it all, but everyone keeps telling you storie...

26 likes 13 comments 13
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The moon is beautiful, isn´t it?

Submitted to Contest #106

Her name was Alina and she was the love of my life.  26th of July 2018 she passed away, six months prior we had discovered a tumor with little chance of recovery. At first there was hope that surgery would help or at least buy us some time, we tried everything and got second, third and fourth opinions with different doctors only to get slammed with the harsh reality, there was nothing to do except wait. We had been together since university and had plans to marry that summer, she wanted to have a small ceremony in Italy with our closest ...

25 likes 3 comments 3
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Ghost of a Place

Submitted to Contest #106

The year started off normal. School finished and my family took our long-awaited trip to Italy. Everything seemed perfect and aligned. The arrival of summer was like a fresh breath of air after a long day’s work or the first sip of warm morning coffee. In that moment, as my back hugged the sand and my gaze alternated between the vast blueness of the sky and the ocean ahead, it felt as if nothing could go wrong.  Then it did.  As we searched for our gate at the airport, I quickly texted my best friend that we were on our way home. I...

25 likes 2 comments 2
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Layla and Ashley

Submitted to Contest #106

******Death warning******I chose this. She did not.Drip, Drip, Drip  “Ashley, please, hurry.”    “I can’t,” her helpless voice begins to dim.    “Ashley,” I try to hold on to her arm as water begins to break through the cavern, “Come on Ashley, just keep climbing we’ll get out of here soon.”“Layla,” She holds my wrist that is latched onto hers.“Don’t stop, we have to keep going,” water spews into my mouth.“I am just slowing you down. I need you to get out of here safely.”I realize she has sto...

25 likes 2 comments 2
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Yuji and the Crag Whence the Dragon Took Flight

Submitted to Contest #106

Yuji observes the crumpled pink pellet that was once a sticky-note and steers it from afar by drawing tight circles with his slinky forefinger, alternating clockwise and counterclockwise. He’s been willing it to float and join the eclectic swarm of papers swirling above the littered room that was once his. But it defies his wishes, preferring to twitch around apprehensively as it hovers mere centimeters above the frayed tatami mat floor. The mats haven’t been changed since he fled this house ten years ago. The tightly woven rushes have long ...

24 likes 6 comments 6
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A Curious Experience

Submitted to Contest #106

The Cottonwood Trees were still bare, though the empty branches had brown tips as if they had been individually dipped into milk chocolate before being sloppily dried. The little bumps seemed ready to burst, and she wondered if they would explode before her very eyes. “If only I can be patient…” she thought. While she waited, her mind wandered. Eventually, forgetting that she was practicing an exercise of patience, she rolled onto her belly; her right side slightly elevated, her left arm cradling her head. Her right ear still took in the...

24 likes 2 comments 2
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Are You Ready

Submitted to Contest #106

Have you ever met Death? She’s quite nice. Oh yes, and she is a she. Before I met her, I always imagined Death to be some sort of scary looking thing with a cloak—not quite human, not quite monster. Death is actually quite beautiful, to be honest. Nothing to be afraid of in the least; on the contrary, I imagine people wouldn’t dread the actual event itself if they knew Death. It’s not the first time I’ve met her—right now, that is. I’ve caught glimpses of her passing by probably a hundred times during my career; I’m a fireman, you see. I sa...

24 likes 5 comments 5
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Night Recollections

Shortlisted for Contest #106 ⭐️

Even at 3 am, the sky outside was more gray than truly black. No stars were visible, beyond the yellow orbs of streetlamps high overhead and the hanging red, green, or amber traffic lights. Downtown was deserted, and I was alone save for the one being beside me: a young, slender tomcat whose nametag read ‘Daniel.’            “You know, this would all be a lot easier if you would let me pick you up.” I stopped, but the cat just stared up at me. His green eyes blinked twice, and then he tr...

23 likes 3 comments 3
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Paying the Check

Shortlisted for Contest #106 ⭐️

"Reality's a helluva a drug," he says, and I hate to admit it, but he's right. I don't think he means it in the same way I do, but to be honest, I don't know how he means it, and it doesn't matter. The world looks better than it ever has, despite the awkward view. The click of the pistol's hammer latching into place is more akin to the hands of intricate clock tower innards than of a pawn shop piece that's only good for causing trouble. The too-early-for-me sun is coating the world in a brilliance that I've never seen. The diner tables, ...

22 likes 3 comments 3
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