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End your story with someone dancing in the rain.

Posted in High School on Nov 1, 2022

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✍️ 55 stories

The Chandelier

Winner of Contest #160 🏆

There were gems in the chandelier right past the door of my home. I wasn’t supposed to touch the glimmering stones as they hung, but I would push up a chair and scramble on the rickety wood to brush them with my fingers anyway. It was addictive to paint the lines of my fingerprints along the surface. I would flick on the lights and watch them sway, imagining my mother on the dance floor, conjuring images of date nights when Mama walked out of the house with a black cocktail dress and her best pearls along with the smokey scent of her expensi...

170 likes 97 comments 97
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Let the Joy Rain Down

Submitted to Contest #160

TW: Swearing, slow dancing, gratuitous descriptions of love. Everything is up in the air. All I know for certain is I love her and I’m not letting this life go without a fight. She gives me the foundation to build my life upon.             Now that it might all be taken away, I’m looking at her more. I’m wondering why I ever left this apartment. Billie’s smile is my sunlight. Her hand in mine is my racing heart. Her arms around me are the joy I never knew was possible. Her scent i...

42 likes 33 comments 33
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Bobbi Dancing in the Rain

Submitted to Contest #160

My ex-wife Bobbi is determined to dance in the rain. We haven’t had rain in Olfa County in nearly six weeks, which is a shame for many reasons. We’re getting notifications from the local water control folks that we need to take shorter showers. The farmers are fretting. I saw an old dog by the side of the road looking very concerned. While Bobbi may be upset about all that, she’s most distressed over not being able to go dancing in the rain once our divorce is complete. You see, we didn’t have what most people would consider to be an ami...

39 likes 28 comments 28
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Sun Showers and Flowers

Shortlisted for Contest #160 ⭐️

It was a cold February morning when I received my first letter from Koharu. Frost lined my windowsills and the grey clouds clung close to the ground, covering the mountaintops. A light knock at my door persuaded me to fully wake up. My room was still dim, white fluffy covers barely illuminated. I thought it would’ve been my breakfast but, to my surprise, a baby pink envelope rested under the door. I was delicate with the paper, fingertips barely brushing the folds in an attempt to not rip it open all at once. Dizziness struck me suddenly, my...

29 likes 6 comments 6
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A Tide of Stars

Submitted to Contest #160

If only a camera could capture what a soul can. The campfire's blooming hues spill color over our faces, providing the only light we receive in the velvety night. The adults are sitting around a rickety, wooden bench near the tents, tangled up in a never-ending game of Uno Flip. I watch as the younger kids giggle amongst themselves, glad that our parents haven't noticed how time's racing ahead. A half-eaten large pizza is calling my name, but it's sitting too close to the adults for me to swing by without announcing my presence.I don't know ...

28 likes 13 comments 13
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Fifty Percent

Submitted to Contest #160

It was like watching a crash in slow motion.Danier Leyte, the brightest boy of his class of ’10, the one picked to become a millionaire before he turned 40, the one that all of the best and the brightest of his class looked up to, was watching his career fall apart and – yes, yes, yes – crash in the rudest and worst possible way.A bus crash?A train crash?A ten-car pile up?No, no… This was ugly and real, happening in real time, with real consequences for real people.He was one of those real people. That jagged red line, tracing a jagged path ...

21 likes 14 comments 14
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A Story That Never Happened

Submitted to Contest #160

1A skyscraper hasn't grown out of the curb in the very center of Tallinn, Estonia. You can check this by using Google maps: type in Postimaja Shopping Center and choose the street view. You'll see a busy intersection with buses, cars, pedestrians, and no birds (remember the birds) encapsulated forever in the amber of a camera. Maples, with leaves unnaturally green in the picture - in reality, quietly dying under a thin layer of dust and traffic fumes - have their roots in patches of land, small decorative gravel preventing water evaporation....

19 likes 12 comments 12
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Gold

Submitted to Contest #160

I sit on the counter of the gas station, sneakers tucked up neatly to avoid the racks of chocolate bars and lollipops, with a textbook balanced on my knees. "You have to get down if a customer comes in," says Ophelia, poking my leg. "Yes, ma'am," I say, not looking up, focusing instead on deciphering the illustrations depicting plant reproduction. She shoves my shoulder. "There's no point in you being here if you won't talk to me. Go home if you want to study." I snap the book shut and look up at her. "Is that so? My presence isn't enough?" ...

19 likes 6 comments 6
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The Moments Passed

Submitted to Contest #160

"What would you have done differently?" he asked. She looked at him quizzically, "Done differently?" "Yeah, you know, what do you wish you would have done differently if you had known it would… well, would end like… this," and he gestured broadly about, as the darkened room trembled from the pandemonium outside. She exhaled slowly, casting her eyes back to the stony floor. "I don’t know. I suppose I wish I would've spent more time with my sister, I would’ve gotten to know her when she was younger instead of just picking up the pieces d...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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Finding My Freedom

Submitted to Contest #160

TW: Mentions miscarriage, death, and suicide but does not go into too much detail about them. It has been three days, twelve hours, twenty minutes, and fifteen seconds since my husband died. I could hear the laundry machine rumbling down below as I stared out the window, trying to decide if I should mourn his death or celebrate it. I washed every single item of his clothing today so that I could donate it to the goodwill, it was the least he could do. I can’t help but wonder how people would feel knowing they were wearing the clothes of a k...

16 likes 1 comment 1
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The Doldrums

Submitted to Contest #160

July 19, year of our lord 1813, Ian scratches into what is left of his makeshift log. The eastern sun was already up at between forty and fifty degrees in the crystal clear blue sky of the Central Atlantic. It would be noon in less than three hours, their twenty-first day lost at sea. Glancing forward to the bow of the thirteen-foot skiff that had been their confinement. Ian only spoke English and had no idea how to communicate with the black slave – he simply referred to as John. Ian, desperate to escape the poverty and ...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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Kate and Chloe

Submitted to Contest #160

The phone on the nightstand buzzed for the fifth time in less than a minute, but Kate just turned on her other side.She knows it's Chloe. Knows that she'll likely be apologizing with a string of emojis – trying to explain herself with brightly-colored faces and googly eyes.Making excuses.Whatever. It didn’t matter, anyway.Not anymore.Kate sniffled and wiped her eyes dry. It's not like she cared. Not like Chloe was her girlfriend or something.But she could have been, that insistent voice at the back of her mind whispered. The way she looked a...

15 likes 8 comments 8
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BLOODY ON HONEYMOON

Submitted to Contest #160

The first day Zakka had met Nneka, he was attracted to her curvy figure, but didn’t think of having anything to do with her because, as a soldier on the battlefield, he was a walking corpse. He could die anytime. But he could not leave there, where he met her—a cave. She squatted in front of an emaciated boy, about three years of age, giving him water from a water-bottle she had found among the kits of a dead Biafran soldier several meters away from the cave. The boy seemed to have some difficulty in drinking the water. The first time she ha...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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Stranger

Submitted to Contest #160

March 3rd, 2022 ‘God he’s such a douche.’ I stare at Henry across the library. Laughing with his dumb friends, drinking his dumb expensive coffee, and playing with the shoelace of his dumb costly shoes. Today he wore a dark green sweater with light brown khakis and whatever dude-bro edition Jordans that just came out. His hair was brown and fluffy, his face looked extra sunken and emotionless, and his skin glowed even more pale than usual. I hate him. I really do. I hate everything about him. Especially his girlfriend, miss Tiffany DeNola. O...

12 likes 3 comments 3
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The Flip-Side

Submitted to Contest #160

FOOTAGE RECOVERED FROM THE FILES OF EDENCO’S  DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS, DATED 7-23.  Click. A red light reading “ON AIR” glows overhead. A tall man with a green blazer and blonde hair sits at a leather chair, a large set of tan headphones resting atop his head.  “KDLR 103FM’s Leo Green comin’ at you live from the ivory tower.  “Record high temps again today, folks. It’s a scorcher at one-hundred-and twenty-one degrees. No precipitation in sight, which is a good thing. High of 140 with a low of 87.  “Stay inside i...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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