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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about a character who can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.

Posted in Horror on Oct 31, 2022

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✍️ 80 stories

“Psychic or Just Sick?” by Dawn Kaltenbaugh

Submitted to Contest #167

There are days when I wonder if everyone else sees what I see. If they felt what I do, they would get no peace. I know I don’t…These fantastic visions can’t be real, can they? It started on a fateful day in September I’m sure all of you remember, but not like I do. I heard the screams, felt the terror of each person on those planes. The sounds will haunt my nightmares all my life.  I can’t get the faces or the voices out of my head. I feel like I’m going insane an inch at a time. When those towers went...

3 comments 3
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“Thursday, November 23, 2006” by Danika J

Submitted to Contest #167

Thursday, November 23, 2006.   I woke up to SOS by Rihanna playing on my purple digital alarm clock. I got out of bed, grabbed my new toothbrush with too many bristles, and brushed my crooked teeth. I pulled my fried blonde hair back into a ponytail to wash my face.   Wait – that doesn’t make sense. I got my hair cut on Monday, and it was too short to pull back into a ponytail. So that can’t have been Thursday.   Why can’t I remember Thursday? Thursday was the most important day of my life! So far. Did I do so bad that I forgo...

4 comments 4
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“Kept On Digging” by Samantha McWilliams

Submitted to Contest #167

It’s often easy to tell the difference between an accidental crash and the shattering that occurs with the force of anger behind it. Looking up from my yard, with the sound still reverberating in my mind, my innate curiosity overcame me. Just across the way there, the mobile home tucked haphazardly amongst the rest — a stillness had fallen over the place that seemed quite different from the others, from mine. A slick feeling of sickness was already creeping into my gut, and I found myself pushing the sensation down into that place of denial....

2 comments 2
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“The Girl with the Rainbow Tears” by Delbert Griffith

Submitted to Contest #167

Everyone is happy when I take my meds. Except me. The meds are for “my condition,” as my parents and siblings describe my particular brand of schizophrenia. They’re all afraid to say the word. It’s a bitch to spell too. ************** “So, you are color blind,” the old man said. He nodded but he wouldn’t look Fargo in the eye. The boy seemed a little strange. “Not just color blind, my friend. Real color blindness. I can only see black, white, and shades of gray. It’s extremely rare,” Fargo said. He sounded both proud and despondent at this, ...

5 comments 5
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“Adrift” by C. J. Peters

Submitted to Contest #167

No one can tell anything is amiss. I make sure of that.I sit in class. I raise my hand. I participate in group discussions.I go to work. I chat with coworkers. I type away at a computer.I take a walk. I nod at passersby. I pet a dog.Most days, I remember no faces, recall no words. It’s better this way.Each of these experiences is as real/unreal as the last.Today, I am both marionette and puppeteer. I tilt and twist and guide my body along. I delicately, masterfully pull the strings so I may make my painted and wooden body dance and sing. I a...

8 comments 8
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“The Meaning of the Nightingale's Song” by MB Campbell

Submitted to Contest #167

The Meaning of the Nightingale’s Song(PREFACE—Part of this story you will find in children’s storybooks. But the rest, the part that happened after the fairytale, is not for children. It is the story of the never-ending battle between nature and artifice, between art and vacuous mimicry, and between lies and the real nightingale’s song.The fairytale began with an Emperor. A plump man with thin and auburn hair, a lock of which hung across his forehead like a banner. He wore jewels on three of the fingers of his right hand and on his left wris...

2 comments 2
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“Turing Test” by Brie S.

Submitted to Contest #167

The velvet armchair opposite me cries out in protest when the strangely clad, unfairly symmetrical man finally collapses into it.His too small button up shirt rides up a little on his stomach, exposing tan, bruised skin and stitches, which my gaze can’t help but linger on. After a moment of stillness, he shifts to fold his one knee over the other, leaning back into the plush red fabric as if he’s been here a million times before.The smoke from his alabaster cigarette has already spread to become part of the air, blanketing my expensive Europ...

7 comments 7
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“Something is Coming” by Sarah Rich

Submitted to Contest #167

He was running as fast as his legs could take him. His arms ached from their sway, and his calves throbbed from exhaustion, but he couldn’t stop. There were too many lives to be saved, he swore. Something is coming. Yet, despite his will, he stumbled into the overgrowth under himself and instantly tasted the earthy musk of soil between his teeth. The thicker patches always made it difficult to run smoothly, and he hadn’t the time to tread carefully. They needed to know. Something is coming. Quell dug his nails deep into the loosened...

4 comments 4
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“Tricks of the Mind” by Caroline Conner

Submitted to Contest #167

*This story contains references to mental health, substance abuse, and suicide. * It was nearly midnight when Crystal stepped out of work that night, exhausted both physically and mentally. She had not been serving at the steakhouse for long now, but the hatred for the position had seeped in before the interview had even begun. Falling from the top of one’s dreams is never an easy thing to endure she supposed. Pickings were slim, though, and the bills did not stop rolling in just because her life was not going the way she had planned. For ...

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“Retrograde” by Lucy Bergholtz

Submitted to Contest #167

“You’re not real.” I stared daggers into its gaping black eyes. It stared back, emptily. This thing couldn’t stare daggers if it tried. There’s nothing inside it. “Aren’t I?” I felt cold inside. I couldn’t say anything more, I was simply too afraid to blink. Too afraid to breathe…but I did. I was panting. As cold as I felt inside of my body, my mind, my lungs, I was sweating on the outside. I was terrified. The next thing I could comprehend was waking up. I know I wasn’t dreaming. My pillow was drenched in sweat, how could a dream ha...

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“If You Ever Find Yourself Drowning, Be Sure to Drink Enough Water” by Cassidy Ammorette

Submitted to Contest #167

“You need to sleep.” I stare at my son. A cold, gray, metal table sits between us. Its presence is large and undeniable. The corner of it pushes lightly against me, reminding me that it is there. That it has always been there, even when we couldn’t see it. An impermeable, unnatural solidness that has always kept us at a distance from each other.  “It’s hard to sleep.” He stares back at me and it’s like looking at my reflection in a funhouse mirror. He looks like me, if you stretched pieces of me this way and that, in all of the wrong ...

6 comments 6
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“Borderline” by Brody Patterson

Submitted to Contest #167

October 28th, 2084 I have something within me. I don’t know who or what it is, but it is as much me as what others see of me, yet it hides within the part of me that is unseen to the world. … It was a dreary day in November, and Bentley’s watch struck thirteen. The immense, foreboding sky-scrapers of a lifeless New York City loomed over his head. He rushed along the barren streets, shielding his face from the bitter winds. Winter’s knife had come early.  A wad of papers fluttered under his ash-coloured hand, as he squeezed them tight a...

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“Grimjar” by A. Kangiser

Submitted to Contest #167

The walls of reality bulge as the sky pours down whispers of death from above. Red sky, red clouds, red death. Little forms scurry about; man.. animal..? They seem familiar to a distant part of the consciousness but in a strange way they seem foreign as well. I look each of them over to gauge if they are the ones responsible for summoning me.Zaxxle: "There now.. isn't this better..?"The intrusive thought comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once to reverberate around in the confines of my skull.I grunt in agreement peering out into ...

5 comments 5
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“Chill Night with Friends.” by Joe Suarez

Submitted to Contest #167

She’s waving her hand in front of me. Why is she doing that? I know she’s here. I know who she is; she’s the other half of my two drinking buddies. I look back down at the small patch of grass along the cracked sidewalk. Little tiny white flowers pop-up and bloom before immediately decaying back into the soil. The cycle continues. “Hello, are you listening?” She says for the first time, or is it the fifth time? “Of course I am.” I lied. She takes a puff from her cigarette, then exhales from the tiny box to her left where her mouth is loc...

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“When the Hollow Man Visits” by George Georgerfrost@gmail.com

Submitted to Contest #167

I get kind of shaky when the hollow man visits. Mama told me he is one of those ghostly beings that haunts the Appalachians around where we live.  When you live in these parts, you hear stories about entities that can test your timbre and make you quake in your boots, if you choose to wear such things.   When I was just ten years old, my mama took me to Charlotte to have Dr. Weston checked me over since she claimed I wasn’t quite right in the head.  As it turned out, he concluded that I, Marlin Pakachance, was living ins...

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