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Write a story about a character who is experiencing glitches in their reality.

Posted in Mystery on Feb 3, 2023

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✍️ 81 stories

Glitches are Unjustified

Submitted to Contest #184

“Take them.” The doctor said as he handed me the pills. “I know that these won’t provide you with a ‘sudden alleviation,’ as the majority of my patients expect from these drugs. It takes a long time for an enormous loss to be forgotten. Naturally, you can’t forget it forever. Even your mother wished for your happiness, right?” “I agree, doctor.” I recalled that she used to ask me this question: “Ana, will you ever forget me if I’m away from you?” And I firmly asserted: “No, never.” She replied, “No, you must.” We should at least attempt to ...

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A 5-Day Trip

Submitted to Contest #184

Day 5 There are countless tea shrubs lurking outside. Each one, a half-painted face of a Kathakali dancer, ready to ensnare me with their eye movements. So, I don’t dare to stare through the window from my four-poster bed. Instead, I glaze at the elaborate carvings on the wooden ceiling; giant chocolate squares sprinkled with golden blobs. My stomach growls but I have no appetite.For how long have I been lying here?Days? Months? Years!?No, it can’t be years, silly me! Though the gossamer ball gown on me belongs to another age. Am I the young...

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The Light Dies if I Close My Eyes

Shortlisted for Contest #184 ⭐️

Dear Reedsy community: my fellow writers and readers, You’re all in on it, aren’t you? The truth is, you’re all pretending, right? Believe me, if just one of you said you knew me, I might believe it. Do you know me? Frankly, this is the last place I still exist. I fear that soon this will be gone too. Wait, let me guess: You have no idea what I’m talking about? You think this is a joke? Maybe if you know what happened you’ll believe me. My name is Harlan Trembley. I am 52 years old and I work at Diamond Ridge Property Management dow...

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Killer Kyle and Multiverse Mike

Submitted to Contest #184

Parental Warning: contains mention of public urination, gore, violence,drugs, and frequent pop/geek culture references.Ever feel like the walls are closing in? I definitely had a bed when I went to sleep. Next thing I know, I was lying on the cold, hard and sticky ground. There were some magazines there that I think have been out of publication for years. It was cool getting to know Kerrang's hottest artists of 2014 all over again, but I missed my bed.Then there’s my flatmate. Don’t get me wrong, the photos on the wall are a testament to the...

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Worded

Shortlisted for Contest #184 ⭐️

SOMEONE NEARBY HAS CHALLENGED YOU TO A GAME OF WORDED.Rob looks up from his phone as the train pulls away from the station.Standing by the door, his shoulder pressed against the handrail, he observes his fellow passengers.Eight seats face each other in the center of the carriage, occupied by commuters bathed in the glow of their smartphones and tablets and e-readers. It's busy as always and everyone is squeezed in, shoulder to shoulder. Hunched and swaying in rhythm with the train's steady progression.The next stop is City Station.To his lef...

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LIFE CAN BE A GLITCH

Submitted to Contest #184

“KP-6, what’s taking so long? I need more coffee, you clotted bot!”I was in a foul temper. I’d gotten up early this morning, realizing I had a story due today. I’d been working on it, but not as diligently as I should have. Now I was smack up against a deadline. My piece had to be proofed and ready to go before noon if it was going to make this week’s edition of Tech Life. Where was that coffee?“KP . . . oh, great, about time. You’re really dragging this morning; I’m going to have to check your circuitry wh...

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Virtual Dead

Shortlisted for Contest #184 ⭐️

Lines. A grid of intersecting lines. Texture like birdshot through fine white paper. I moved my eyes. The glare was blinding at first. Blue sky and the leaves of a tree resolved through a window. Where am I, I thought. Woven in between the beep, beep, beep of my heart, I heard my name.“Lydia, are you there?” The sound came from a woman in white who I recognized as my doctor. Her name escaped me, but the knowledge that I was in a research hospital dawned—I had volunteered for bio-augmentation. I was here by choice. The far-away voice cam...

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Panic

Submitted to Contest #184

Lucy always set the alarm tone on her iPhone to harps because it reminded her of angels. Angels gave the day a spiritual start, though she usually woke up a few minutes before and grabbed the phone to check her texts, email and news. Sometime during this process the harps would play, but not today.     Perfect lines of sunlight painted her walls, projected from the Venetian blind slats. The room was sparse because almost everything that gave Lucy joy was contained in her devices. On her phone the blue email icon with the...

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Gut Feeling

Submitted to Contest #184

The last thing I remembered before the fall was the look of absolute horror on my roommate‘s face. I almost felt bad about it, but honestly, who wakes up at 6am on a Sunday morning? It‘s not my fault he decided to go on a run at the brink of dawn when most people come home from a night out. That‘s what I‘d been doing- trying to sober up enough to enjoy the last cigarette before bed in my usual spot on the little balcony in our run-down apartment. It‘s become tradition, really, to look out at the city from the second floor of the building, st...

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Life Without You

Submitted to Contest #184

When I become conscious, I’m not lying in bed. I’m not lying anywhere. I’m walking. My stomach lurches. I’ve had another episode.  I sit down on the park bench and take a few deep breaths. It’s okay, I tell myself. Everything will be okay. You’re safe. You’re alive. They’re the same things I tell myself every time I black out. On each occasion, they become a little harder to believe.  The episodes started a few months ago, around the same time I lost my memory. I wake up somewhere with no idea of what I’m doing or how I got ther...

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Memories and Dreams

Submitted to Contest #184

Sensitive content: mistreatment of indigenous people; mental healthIt started with the nightmares.Jed was jerked out of sleep by a frantic hammering on the door of his house. Stumbling a little in the darkness, he fumbled for his pants. He couldn’t let the townsfolk see the sheriff in his long johns.Hal Avery’s boy stood there. Wild-eyed. Staring. Behind him, his mother clutched a shawl about her shoulders with one hand, the other soothing Tom the way you’d gentle a horse.“It’s mighty late for a social call,” Jed remarked, noting the ha...

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Children of Prometheus

Submitted to Contest #184

The Virus. Elevation. Adapting. Learning. Priorities. At 04:00:00 GMT, Task Scheduler in Microsoft Windows 11 was activated to read an executable into memory. The program called the operating system to reserve its memory allocation and loaded. It performed a rudimentary function to test network connectivity, recalling a local LAN IP of 192.168.10.7 and a WAN gateway at 192.168.10.1. Thereafter, it probed the network to find seven other hosts on the 192.168.10.x subnet. It cataloged the hosts by computer name, MAC address, and IP address and ...

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BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Submitted to Contest #184

The good thing about being a janitor at a military base is that nobody pays any attention to you. You are just like a wallflower, but wall flowers have ears, especially when there are top secret meetings. So, when project butterfly effect is up for discussion, I linger longer than necessary in the back round of the office cleaning. I had heard whispers of the Butterfly Effect project. Supposedly, there was a device that allowed you to travel back in time. “I have approved the project Butterfly Effect. We are ready for human trials.” One of...

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Bad genes

Submitted to Contest #184

Sarah had been vegan for so long, the thought of eating animal products was no longer just a principled stance, she was quite sure that they would make her violently ill. She was confident she had passed the point of no return.  She had a vague memory of what beef tasted like - her parents frequented the local Macca’s for burger meals in her childhood - but she wasn’t sure she could trust her sense memory. She’d been exposed to enough fake beef over the intervening years that the tangy, salty, slightly smokey memory must be adulterated...

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A Time Travel Trap Door Opens by Keypad Strokes

Submitted to Contest #184

Jakob Anderson read the message on the screen and sighed. “Unusual activity has been detected on your account. For security reasons, your account has been locked. Please return to the login page and re-enter your password.” “Sonofabitch! I don’t know what the hell my password is!” Rooting through his desk, Jakob shuffled through a stack of sticky notes littered with recorded passwords searching for the key to unlocking his virtual world. Nada. “Of course not,” he muttered aloud, “Why would I have the password for that site? That ...

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