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Set your story in a place that’s frozen in time — literally or metaphorically.

Posted in Narrative on Jan 19, 2024

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✍️ 54 stories

6:47 PST

Winner of Contest #234 🏆

What has four faces, eight arms, and can’t tell time? The clock tower at Union Station. Four clocks on the tower and none of them run? I mean, what’re the odds? I peer up at the time and shade my eyes. It’s 6:47 pm. Always is, always will be. And all anyone knows is that on a Monday the world was a loud, frantic place and Tuesday it wasn’t. Tuesday? Really? The world should’ve ended on a Saturday. Saturdays are fun. Used to be anyway. But no. We get eternal friggin Tuesday afternoon where nothing changes. Ever. Good news though— we’re ...

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Dreams of Seventeen

Submitted to Contest #234

When Seventeen slipped and fell through the ice, Mumma was nearly hysterical. She begged the elders to send out a rescue team to save the girl, because Seventeen was the only other female of breeding age left in our clan. Mumma had been eagerly awaiting the reprieve from child bearing next year when Seventeen became Eighteen, and therefore old enough to procreate. Life had been hard on Mumma. Breeding every year for the last two decades had nearly broken her, but she, like the rest of us, knew her obligation to the c...

30 likes 27 comments 27
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The Divorcee's Hat Emporium

Submitted to Contest #234

Dust gathered on dust like fossil layers in the roadside hat store as a red pickup truck sent up more of the same outside. Melinda's heart rose then fell as she watched the Ford F-150 pass the skeletal remains of the old steel mill that loomed like arthritic dinosaurs over the land of the forgotten. The store's hats were in their display cases, relics in glass tombs waiting to be exhumed. All the hats' pewter pins still shone, and each hat was a Harry's original, priceless beyond measure. But the place hadn't seen so much as a single cus...

15 likes 10 comments 10
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Wherever It Drew

Submitted to Contest #234

Irec had never shown much interest in the circumstances of his own life. He lived well, on high in Peyr, he came from a good family. He married at a young age, just as his herbalism practice was rising to the forefront on the upper decks of the city. His wife was named Estrid, and she was not anybody he had known well before pulling her up to be courted but she had an insistent way about her and he had not needed much convincing. They had a baby, and named that baby Mepka. All the while, he followed along the pull of obligation wherever...

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Frozen Hours

Submitted to Contest #234

It was an accident, but the ramifications were catastrophic in what became known as those frozen hours. Alright, let me explain.  Let me start at the beginning. I was part of a team of archaeologists on a dig near the Cradle of Civilization which was a tricky endeavor since this area has been under siege for almost forty years.  Still in the name of science, we were admitted since our team was from various countries around the globe with the intention to ferret out some deep buried secrets in this area.  We did not openly r...

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The Agent

Submitted to Contest #234

The city is silent tonight. It always is these days. My mom used to have photographs of Atlanta all over our apartment. They showcased a street full of cars, bright lights, and crowded sidewalks. As I cross Piedmont Avenue, I realize the city looks exactly like one of my mom’s old photographs. Cars still litter the roads, and pedestrians still gather at crosswalks and shop doors. The lights on the billboards continue to advertise the newest movie release or the next model of truck. The city’s night sky is just as bright as in the picture, an...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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When Time Stood Still

Submitted to Contest #234

Not long ago, in the Land of Fairy Tales, Hayward Pig lived in a brick house with his older brothers, Stickerton and Brickerton.One day Hayward walked through the North Woods searching for firewood. Little did he know anyone else was around but Sly Fox hid behind a tree and watched Hayward's every move. Hayword studied the trees and tried to decide which one was the best. Some were too small, and some were too large, but right in the center of North Woods stood one perfect tree. With a smile, Hayward raised his axe to chop it down."Put the a...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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Layover

Submitted to Contest #234

Canceled. Ray stared at the marquee and clenched his fists. He'd run all the way from terminal C to A to catch this flight to Denver, only to find out the weather made it impossible for him to get home before noon tomorrow. He looked at his watch: just past two East Coast time, and the thoughts of relaxing in his warm and comfortable home were slipping away. He sat at the deserted gate and made a dozen phone calls. Hotels were booked–something about a basketball championship–and he was seriously considering the four hour drive to Atlanta t...

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Lo Svedese

Submitted to Contest #234

He was there again.It had snowed the night before. A ‘shooting snow’. That took farm workers from their beds to light torches amongst the vines, and hunters from their duvets early, in search of the fresh tracks of warm bodies looking for berries in the early morning light. And now the hunters were in, propping up the bar and testing her reserves of cherry wine and her patience with their bellowed “saluti”s and worn tales of Mario Pepe, the fabled wild boar the size of a Fiat, “eyes like the hottest place in hell,” and Lorenzo’s brush with d...

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Dragons and Roses and Bridges and Atoms: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Submitted to Contest #234

January 1/Pasadena“The great illusion…”The problem with being the scientist’s granddaughter. Out close to $2,000 to bring in 2024 with aged beef and not-so-well-aged strangers and an oldies DJ somewhere in age between the prime rib and the Boomer-Plussers in a Claremont Double Tree conference room with a cash bar and a 9 p.m. Times Square ball drop so we could pull it together at 5 a.m. for the Pasadena bus.Not that I minded. It was probably Grandma’s last New Year, and she cashed in her Make-a-Wish on a parade. Grandma had never had much us...

10 likes 8 comments 8
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Blast From The Past

Submitted to Contest #234

The first time I heard it, I knew. But that knowing was the deep down sort that we have a habit of pushing away and dismissing when it suits us to do so. We do whatever we can to pretend it’s not there, or that what we’re experiencing is of no consequence. We kid ourselves and repeat over and over that it’s going to be OK, when we know nothing could be further from the truth. We have been warned, and there will be consequences. The oldest part of us. The part that saved our bacon when times were violent and dogs ate dogs just to ...

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Evelyn's Echo

Submitted to Contest #234

I haven't felt the wind brush against me in seven years. No push of a person's arm as they tilt their body to move past mine. I haven't heard a chirp from a bird or the train that decides to blow its horn past my apartment at three in the morning in seven years. Seven years since my daughter's laughter. Her giggles, which used to fill the evenings with joy as I watched her favorite shows, have faded into a haunting silence. The warmth of her presence, the light of her smile, echoes now in a world where only I exist. Seven years since the n...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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Just Another Day

Submitted to Contest #234

…She literally just said that. I wasn’t too sure what to make of this. I looked at my sister, dumbstruck and my left eyebrow raised curiously.I stopped mid-pour with the box of cereal. My toast had just popped out of the toaster. I set the cereal box down on the table and stood back up. I stared at her wildly as she sat in her seat at the table, tapping away at her phone as if she hadn’t said anything. I looked over at her phone and saw her scrolling through Instagram; there was a post of her friend, Kelsey, from school, after she’d taken a ...

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The Glass Cocoon

Submitted to Contest #234

The door is frozen shut. The doorknob will not turn, and the frame won’t budge when I yank on it. Oh well, I don’t need to go out anyway. Not really.I sink into the couch and flip on the tv. … ICE STORM FREEZES ROADS SOLID… say white words on a blue stripe. But the words aren’t sliding across the screen like they usually do. The newscaster’s face above them is, well, frozen. Mouth open, he looks as if he’s caught out in the cold, the weather map behind him a swirl of purples and blues. I almost expected to see his breath right there on the s...

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Help is On the Way

Submitted to Contest #234

“911, what’s the address of the emergency?” “4242 Decatur Boulevard, please hurry! I- she’s been shot! Oh god please-“ “Ma’am, who’s been shot? Are they still breathing?” “It’s my daughter, Ivy, she- she- there’s blood- oh god please send someone!” “Ma’am, if she’s still breathing, don’t move her. Try to stop the bleeding. Can you tell me who shot her?” “Y-you- you don’t understand. I- I-“ “Is the shooter still nearby? Are you safe?” “Oh god, please, Ivy, I’m-“ “Are you safe? Is she still breathing? Calm down, let me help you...

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