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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about a character, human or robot, who no longer wishes to obey instructions.

Posted in Kids on Oct 31, 2022

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 56 stories

“"Deprogram"” by Robin Gadsden

Submitted to Contest #150

            Nica has hazel eyes, a heart-shaped face, full lips, and light brown hair cut precisely to shape her face. She had a figure any woman would be envious of with her firm, pert breasts, a flat belly, a round posterior, and legs for days.              She was also the result of her creator, a young electrical engineer named Nicholas, who of course, was named after him. Nica was the very first reality doll he ha...

2 comments 2
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“Ollie The Robot” by Melinda Madrigal

Submitted to Contest #150

Six years in the making and he's finally ready. Six years of hard work. Six years of blood and sweat. Six years of sleepless nights to make my dream come true and now here I am done, finished. Ollie is ready for the world to see and Ollie is ready to see the world. Ollie started as a dream, as a way to put my creative aspirations to the test and boy did I achieve what I wanted. I'm an artist. I love to draw anything from people to animals to anything I can imagine and that's how Ollie came to be. Ollie started as a drawing. My inspirat...

2 comments 2
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“Following her own instructions” by Stefanie Schaffer

Submitted to Contest #150

She’s pretty, always has been, but never seen as breathtaking. She’s athletic, a Varsity level teammate even, but her name has never been found in the starting lineup. And she has always been good, but not great, certainly never the best. She has blended within every crowd and every room she has stood in, and she knows this has partly been her fault. Because she has followed the crowds, and matched the people around her. She has followed every instruction and never broken a rule, for fear of finally becoming the girl who is noticed, for fear...

2 comments 2
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“Pygmalion ” by Madison Marvin

Submitted to Contest #150

Unit 8X doesn’t know how long it’s been waiting. It’s easy to measure the passage of time, but the experience of its passing is often unreliable and susceptible to error. Hours bleed into days, which bleed into weeks, which bleed into months. It’s a good thing Unit 8X doesn’t bleed or feel pain. It doesn't feel anything at all. According to its logs, Unit 8X has been waiting in Cargo Hold C for 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 18 hours, 13 minutes, and 24 seconds, 25 seconds, 26 seconds…. However, it doesn’t seem so long ago that Creator had told ...

2 comments 2
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“Moving Day” by Karen McDermott

Submitted to Contest #150

My life goes around in circles. As the family folklore goes, I was found in a box on the doorstep. However, breaking with convention, it was Father who was the most excited to see me. The Twins lost interest after an hour, retiring to their bedroom to play their complicated ‘cat’s cradle’ game, which for longer than I’d care to admit I thought somehow was for the benefit of Kanye the Cat. Mother gazed blankly down at me and muttered something unintelligible, before returning to the task of taking the haphazardly-stacked items from the d...

7 comments 7
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“How Old Women Garden” by Will T

Submitted to Contest #150

'Don't do that.''I am sorry. Do what?' I asked. I stepped back from the my work. I had been standing on the border of the garden but now I moved back to the path.'Dig up the daisies. I like them where they are.' My human, an old woman called Hastings, had placed herself before me.I noticed that one of her hands was curled, and the forefinger dangled, towards the ground, almost as if she wanted to point at me, but had thought better of it. She could not quite muster the courage, I thought. She was clearly angry and very upset. ...

2 comments 2
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“It Was Not Death” by Vi Bisky

Submitted to Contest #150

I died again yesterday. Or it felt that way, at least. It always does. A man caught me in the elevator. He got on at the second floor, when I was busy wheeling Mrs. Denborough out of the way. Something was on the tip of my tongue—Sorry, sir, I think—but by the time the doors opened for the third floor, there were three bullets in my head, and no words at all. I suppose my split-second kindness was to blame. If I had looked up sooner, hadn’t moved her aside, perhaps I’d still be alive. But I’m alive either way, so it wasn’t a matter of ...

5 comments 5
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“Those Weirdos ” by Snehil Mishra

Submitted to Contest #150

They were always an odd-couple, not that they were sad, angry, unhappy or into some weird rituals, they were just different from the rest of us. Akash would be 40, though he looked 50 and Jwala would be around 35 but looked 40. Both of them had a high paying job as they lived in the best apartment in the building, a pent house, drove their respective cars and came back together although in their respective cars. On rare occasions that we would bump in the elevator, they would greet politely, respond to greetings well but would never initia...

3 comments 3
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“A beautiful day. ” by Janice Jeffreys

Submitted to Contest #150

Saturday dawns hot and humid. Louis throws open the door and pitches forward into the coffee shop. Sweat drips from his face. He takes a deep breath and looks at the time on his phone: 6.05. "Good morning and welcome, my friend." His gaze flits about the shop and falls on the big, gleaming, silver coffee machine. "Good morning to you." The machine chuckles. “It’s a beautiful day, my friend." Louis slides his hand under the counter, grabs his apron, and straps it around his skinny frame. “No doubt about it.” He tugs at the collar of his ...

1 comment 1
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“Herby” by F.O. Morier

Submitted to Contest #150

He probably needed some slather, and while that was a priority, he'd gone out of his way to find everything to make the perfect cocktail. All his owner could do, in response to all his efforts, was to moan about his eternal smile. As if he was able to change that. -"I've been thinking." she said wistfully, "I think I'd rather live in a mud hut with a real man than here in this luxury flat with you." She fluffed her thick black hair with her fingernails: "Do you think I'll ever get out of this world, Herby?" -"My name is Herbert Miss." The ro...

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“Poor Man's Game ” by Kevin Alphatooni

Submitted to Contest #150

Poor Man’s Game By Alpha Tooni “You either work this weekend, or you’re fired!!!” My boss pointed a stubby finger at me as fire burned in his eye. He breathed heavily after his violent outburst. As I weighed the consequences of my response, a heavy silence filled the space between us.  Where had I gone wrong? Every decision I made in life led to this fateful moment but truth was, I never wanted to go into finance. When I was young, I always wanted to become a writer. Every story I had, I would write down in my pri...

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“The Volks” by Michael Jefferson

Submitted to Contest #150

The four-year war between the Imperial Empire and the rebel factions of the Gypsums appears to be near an end. Colonel Manfred “The Beast” Everhardt has trapped a large group of the Gypsum rebels in the sacred city of St. Leone on the planet Erebus. Everhardt is an excellent commander and strategist, whose savagery comes from the injury he received during the siege of Saint Augustine. When the city was about to fall, a group of Gypsum resistance fighters got close enough to throw homemade bombs at Everhardt’s tank. He was struck in the left...

2 comments 2
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“Zoomba” by Tanya Humphreys

Submitted to Contest #150

Ralphina sat up in her bed with the light summer blanket clutched to her thin chest.  TP, her grey striped kitty sat in the light of the moon in front of her closet. TP (short for Tiger Paws) stared at the closed door like a statue, the only thing giving away the fact he had heartbeat, was his whiskers, they twitched like dragonfly wings. After an hour, Ralphina’s eyes drooped involuntarily. TP leapt up onto her bed and curled in his spot behind her knees. “Bzzzzzzzzzzz. Bowp. Beeep.” TP freaked out. “Mroooowr!” He bounced...

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“Heart and Soul” by Anae Sotsavanh

Submitted to Contest #150

HEART AND SOUL [2524 words. 8 pages.]AWAKENING The room itself seemed machine. To breech the one side door and to step upon the brilliant white of its porcelain flooring took know-how. The room, otherwise, rejected those foreign to its central systems. It was not a brutal, alarm-blaring rejection, as much as it was its deep unwelcoming glare. The corner’s lit when the door was opened, there were no windows, and each surface was pristine and glassy. Opening and entering was akin to unmasking an electrical device and being faced with...

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“My Brother's Keeper” by Melanie Raskin

Submitted to Contest #150

Melanie Raskin MMRReadme@nc.rr.com                                                            My Brother’s Keeper                     &nbsp...

1 comment 1
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