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Set your story in a place with extreme weather, but don’t use any weather-related words to describe it.

Posted in High School on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 68 stories

Cold Comfort

Submitted to Contest #59

A wendigo howls outside the igloo, its relentless fury wearing on the young, pregnant widow whose husband died in my arms just before the long dark began. A full turning of the moon will occur before we see the sun again, and the beast outside will prowl for days, before its fury sates. In the dim light of an oil dish, I measure the food which the elders left for us."Bear-Slayer," she invokes my name. "What will we do?""Joyous Seal, stay here." I tuck my namesake's skin, a thick white fur, snug about her. "I will hunt for more food."The bear...

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The Leaving

Submitted to Contest #59

The old man moaned. So low, so feeble came the cry that the others never heard it over the whistling and howling outside the cave.But the boy squatting near the old man had tuned his senses for the slightest breath. He glanced at the mound, unmoving beneath the bear pelts, and drove the stick between his palms into the plank at his feet, spinning it with a speed that made his palms burn. The wolf fur slipped from his shoulders, but he poured all focus into the wisp of smoke curling from the dry grasses tucked into the notch. Within...

60 likes 46 comments 46
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Red dust and sunlight

Submitted to Contest #59

My pop, my grandfather, lives on the edge of a small town near Broken Hill in Australia. The name of the town doesn't matter. It's unpronounceable, a higgletypigglety mess of syllables, like most Australian town names. It's barely a town at all. More a collection of weatherboard houses held together by rough people who are set in their ways and live out there for a reason. It's country where Mad Max was filmed. It's all red sand and rocks and bush dust, huge clear blue skies as far as you can see, dirt tracks leading to the featureless&...

57 likes 29 comments 29
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The End of the World

Submitted to Contest #59

Monday morning started like any other average day. Sidney woke up, got dressed, and went to walk to school only to find that traffic was blocking the intersection. With a sigh, she began to sneak through the thin space between the cars. As she went her eyes caught something strange in the sky all the birds were fleeing passed a blackened grey sky. Blooms of strange black smoke filled the air. Sidney knows to run. She pulled herself through and began running towards the school for help. The ground began to tremble, shaking as dozens of people...

52 likes 4 comments 4
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Phoenix on Fire

Submitted to Contest #59

The Phoenix touched down on the surface of the planet at dawn. Captain Scott Scruff slipped on his protective suit and donned his mask.“Ready, Cap,” said Charlotte, the Caption’s second-in-command.Captain Scruff looked at his crew. Charlotte and Walter saluted. Martha just gave him a shaky smile.“'Ready’ is a strong word there, Charlotte,” said Martha.“Ready or not—I need some fresh air. Get me out of here,” said Walter.The crew had traveled for 50 years.Captain Scruff unlatched the door. An orange light spilled inside, accompanied by some s...

40 likes 13 comments 13
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A Family Feud

Submitted to Contest #59

I was walking on the street. There was nothing out of place. Everything was normal and ordinary. Everyone in town was happily going about their way. Whistling and bright smiles on their faces. Some laughing and little kids hugging each other. Our town was named the world’s happiest, but ordinary town in the world. I loved where I lived. I was born here and went to school here. The morning walks by the rivers and little streams here were very nice. Sometimes I would think that the trees were also swaying side by side ...

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Weather... Or Not?

Submitted to Contest #59

This is a place I know like I know my dead, only this city is not a cemetery of the dead but rather a cemetery of the living. A great poet wrote that line, about cemetery of the living. Therefore, I have to give her credit for it, but I agree about this place, what it is, what is here. I agree so much that the phrase is forever looping through my mind and drawing me to it, to the city, and to what it breathes and says, year after year, century after century. Don’t worry: it never gets old.I want you to know what it’s like to be in this ...

35 likes 5 comments 5
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Whims of Nature

Submitted to Contest #59

The air is oppressive this morning, every thing seems to still. Calmness invades the surroundings to the point of apathy. Lethargy takes over my being. I can’t muster the energy to do my chores. I listlessly wander out into the newly sprouted fields and stroll to the meadow by my home. Silence greets me; the animals passively stand in the pasture with their heads bowed. Even the insects are quietly subdued this morning. This stillness is unnatural and unpleasant. I haven’t lived in the country long, bu...

30 likes 4 comments 4
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Titular Redundancy

Submitted to Contest #59

There is a knock on the door. It is the eighth time somebody has knocked on his door today, which is more activity than the door had seen in the entire previous year. Jimbo does not consider answering it, not even a little bit. It would be the same intrusion as all the others, a dire warning to evacuate his home before things outside get seriously high strung. Not only does he have nowhere else he can possibly go, he doesn't want to leave. He plans to sit right here in front of his laptop, writing. If the ship goes down, he will happily go d...

29 likes 15 comments 15
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A Day Like No Other

Submitted to Contest #59

(Set your story in a place with extreme weather, but don’t use any weather-related words to describe it.)Did you ever feel like you were sweating hot lava? It was running down your back between your shoulder blades and then down between your hairy butt cheeks! Damn, this is torture.Big Blue lay tangled up in a soggy set of sheets. He kept trying to find a dry spot to sop up the salty river running off his face. Yep! It is damn uncomfortable.Finally he passes out from the struggle or just in desperation and he dreams ...

27 likes 7 comments 7
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The Bloats

Submitted to Contest #59

(Set your story in a place with extreme weather, but don't use any weather-related words to describe it.)“A swashing bassinet ye're” the booming voice welcomes me. He’s cackling behind the bar. “Join them then. Yous’ll wither up nice.” With a wild gesture, he nods me towards a radiator in the corner. I’d already halfway sputtered a ‘what?’ before I could reel in my tongue. But if he heard me, he ignored it. Good.I peel my sopping jacket from my shoulders, slapping it once.“Oy, this ain’t no fish barrel,” he snaps at me, towel in hand. “You'd...

27 likes 8 comments 8
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The Dark Lady

Submitted to Contest #59

“The Dark Lady is coming,” Mother Agnes whispers hoarsely, her large glass eye swiveling in its socket. “The Dark Lady is coming.”I inhale sharply.The Dark Lady is coming.“I must warn the others,” I say. “Rest well, Mother Agnes.” I gather my skirt from the dusty wooden floorboards, kicking up dirt and cobwebs as I hurry to leave the elder woman. Mother Agnes remains still in her cot, her wildly long hair splayed around her like the rays of a sun. But her eye––the one that is real––carries the dim burden of truth.I swing the door of the smal...

26 likes 12 comments 12
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Evening Sun

Shortlisted for Contest #59 ⭐️

The roofers arrived at seven a.m., their guttural voices slicing the thick air into thirds. I wrapped my bed sheet around me like a cocoon and peered out the open window, still woozy from sleep. There must have been seven or eight men in the crew, from what I could tell, though the opacity of recent days distorted reality just enough so that my eyes gasped only for more light, in lieu of a sharpened view, one that lent a more angular look on things. The men were of varying ages, and from what I could tell, they must be related: they all shar...

25 likes 15 comments 15
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And on that day, he saw her.

Shortlisted for Contest #59 ⭐️

It came without warning, fierce and unforgiving. Unpredictable. The village was eerily quiet in the days, weeks, months, leading up to it; shadows and smoke filling the air but never quite reaching the village. The tiny town carried on, the best that they could, living in constant fear. Waiting, waiting, waiting….. - Not that he was counting or anything, but William knew it had been exactly 47 days, 2 hours, and 51 minutes since the last disaster. Each second that passed felt like a rock in his stomach, and instead of drawing c...

25 likes 12 comments 12
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Charon

Submitted to Contest #59

Hear the witch as she wails like a bean sídhe, throwing her anger upon the barren steppes and scattered buildings with their yellow-paned windows that glare back at you like weary eyes…The man walks this night, keeping shoulder with a dogged blood bay that pulls a hay wain. Mud rises to meet his boots, sucking and grabbing, and he sees the stretched face of that mad sky-crone in the black shine of it all. He came from the salt plains, carrying the minerals on his pants and duster and into the sloping prairies where he first met the witch and...

23 likes 2 comments 2
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