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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about someone fighting to change their city neighborhood for the better.

Posted in General on May 23, 2021

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✍️ 48 stories

“Emotionally Attached” by Amany Sayed

The bitter wind blows fast and furious, but it doesn't bother me. I'm used to it. It sets the scene anyway. My knees are starting to cramp. That doesn't bother me either. I’ve hidden in smaller spaces before. Someone taps me lightly on the shoulder and I tense, turning swiftly around.  My apprentice. I narrow my eyes at her and quirk my eyebrows in question. She nods. Our signal. I nod back and bring my ha...

47 comments 47
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“the villain ” by Kelly Dennison

He supposed he would always be cast in this light. A villainous figure upsetting the naïve tranquility of the small towns and cities he would be sent to. Oh, how he envied the unenlightened. The folk who had seen but not understood the consequences of humans playing gods and of divine agency disrupting these affairs.  Sure, there were always traces of witchcraft woven into stories the villagers would whisper at the inns....

23 comments 23
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“Amy's Crusade” by Daniel Hayes

Factory City is full of dirty lumber mills, coal mines, and recycling centers. In the winter we don’t have white snow, we have black peppered snow. I sometimes wonder if the Pepper Gods look down on us, and think the snow is mash potatoes. We don’t dare play outside because a person could easily get cancer. The city is a living breathing cesspool of pollution. My name is Amy Lee, and my grandparents died last summer from lung cancer. They never smoked a day in their lives. Just recently I heard my mom coughing up a lung in the...

11 comments 11
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“The Scourge of Shoalsburgh” by Michael Boquet

Bowen Manor sits on a long, narrow track of land on the southern edge of Joplin. The Manor, sitting at the top of a steep incline, is ringed on three sides by marshland. It is a stately home built of red brick, mortared with mud from the nearby marsh. Its wrap around porch the perfect place to watch either the sunrise or sunset. A turret protrudes from its otherwise flat roof and a basement is housed within its foundations.Bowen Manor was once the crown jewel of the Shoalsburgh neighborhood. After decades of neglect, the...

17 comments 17
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“Two Sides of the Street” by Philip Clayberg

There were some questions that you just didn't ask, even at home. But sometimes Niamh's curiosity got the better of her. “Dad? Why is there still a solid yellow line painted down the middle of the street outside?” she asked her father one Tuesday. Her father laid his newspaper aside. “You should already know the answer to that, Niamh. It marks the border between Northern Ireland and Irelan...

88 comments 88
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“Fighting Back” by C.G. Waltman

Murder is common in Lark city. Life is cheap and the integrity these scumbags claim to have is shot into their veins. I hate the filth. Last week I surrendered my badge and walked away from the police department. It wasn't easy to leave everything I worked for but that was the first step to make this city a better place.The problem with being a cop is the restrictions. Sometimes to beat the criminals you have to lower yourself to their le...

8 comments 8
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“The Green City” by Gerald Daniels

               The morning mist was clearing but the passing cars still had their sidelights on. I wondered where everybody was going and to what worlds of work they were heading, I imagined most would spend a day staring at a computer screen. There was a moment when I felt a tinge of guilt, a slight regret maybe, but I gave it to the wind, let it drift away and into the head of some other poor victim. I'd earne...

16 comments 16
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“The Screaming Lady in the Foyer” by Ⲕⲁⲧⲉ Ⲙⲉⲛ𝓰ⲉ𝓵

The problem with having weekly explosive arguments in the City Hall foyer is that it gives you a reputation. A bad one. The kids catcall you on the streets, and when you respond (angrily, of course), they record you on their little hand-held gadgets and call you a Karen, whatever that is. The adults invite you to baby showers and weddings and dinners only reluctantly, and they arrange themselves...

3 comments 3
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“Tear drops and closed caskets ” by Khotso Motale

  Content warning   ...in a sense I'm 14 years, 4 months suicidal, and nobody knows it better than my mind that every year they sing a happy birthday for me, inside my chest behind my ribs there's a beating organ that sings for me too a happy-alive-day song, because of surviving all the 335 suicidal thoughts and attempts. All the diarys I've been owning from the age of 7 are full of never ending lists of things I brood and reminisce about whenever I'm in solitude. Be in a taxi to school; reading a book al...

8 comments 8
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“The Bloody Change” by R. B. Leyland

It began in blood and carried on much the same. Since the night I was cursed, I had felt the all too familiar pulsing coursing through my sinuses, forcing my mouth to salivate and my teeth to sharpen, my eyes to focus, my nostrils to flare. We’d been made for one reason and one reason only: to kill. Bullets still penetrated us, knives still cut us, our bones still broke. But we healed at a speed that belied belief, spat the bullets out from between our teeth as our bodies did the unnatural and soldiered on.At the start, we were use...

18 comments 18
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“Blueberry Lips” by Inkstained Introvert

Keller stood at the bottom of a thin but wide metal ladder curving up the side of one of dozens of black trains. “Climb with me?” Farren exhaled deeply and followed his friend, who’d already begun to ascend. “Sure.” Keller, sassy wild child that she was, made it to the top before Farren was even a quarter of the way up. It wasn’t that far to climb, but the already-setting sun was rendering it difficult to see, and besides, maybe he was just a little bit afraid of heights. Maybe. At the top, ...

16 comments 16
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“Fighting for justice ” by Alonzriah'a Washington

Previous Next Black Lives Matter 2020 Impact Report See how we, as the organization leading the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement, responded ...

2 comments 2
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“Patrick Cox's Resurgence” by Boakye D Alpha

From across the city street, it looks like nothing. A building that was once a cradle of the great scientific invention for the old world now resembles a building that has been through the thick, unpardonable hands of war. To be fair, it has. Darthler’s hands are no less cruel. A building  which was once called the ‘Tower of Hope’...

1 comment 1
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“What So Ever You Do to the Least of my Brothers” by George Georgerfrost@Gmail.Com

Andre Bowers was shot and killed by Langford Police when he was standing in the parking lot of a local 7-11 waving a pistol.  He happened to be African American and later it was determined that the .38 snub nose was not loaded.  Immediately the small community reacted to this incident creating a question: How can we prevent future incidents from happening?  This question is not unique to Langford.  One more fact...

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“A face of change” by Collins Jerry

Her body trembles as the soft voice of the speaker calls the letters of her name.She fights the fear that rises with each applaud.when the lady next to her stands,she realizes that she is expected up the stage,she forces a smile and heads towards the red carpeted small stairs.The applause gets stronger,now mixed with olulation and a chant from somewhere it catches on.On the final step she feels the grasp of an embrace,th...

3 comments 3
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