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Set your story in a post-pandemic world, where the effects are still felt even as your character attempts to move on.

Posted in Narrative on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 115 stories

Keep Holding On

Submitted to Contest #84

My hand reaches for the mask that still conveniently lies on the counter right next to the door.I soon change its route, my hand instead pushing the door open and I walk outside.Taking a breath of fresh air without a layer of plastic filtering it is a feeling I never thought I needed to experience.But it is the most wonderful feeling in the world.I walk on the sidewalk, the cars rushing past me and pushing the smell of petrol and other unidentifiable things into my nose.I only smile as though I know something everyone else doesn’t and pull u...

100 likes 80 comments 80
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Reasons to Stay Alive

Submitted to Contest #84

He first saw her when he was getting ice cream.  She was wearing a blue polka dot dress.  His ice cream fell out of his hands.  She was the only one who did not laugh at him.   He saw her again when he was walking in the park.  She was walking with her friends.  He gaped at her beauty, both inside and out.  She smiled back at the handsome man looking at her.  He mustered up the courage to ask her out a few weeks later.  She shyly accepted.  He took her to the movies and then to the a...

80 likes 62 comments 62
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Silver Lemonade

Submitted to Contest #84

Author's Note: This may be bad because I wrote almost all of it at midnight. But it's the quickest I ever finished a story. Anyway, thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day!Nothing has been the same since you left. After I went through the five stages of grief, as they call them, each step blurred together by the tears, I was numb. I didn’t heal, I just got better at hiding the pain. The therapist I talk to online every week has tried to help, telling me I must learn to see the brighter aspects of my life. But I’ve found my own ways to ...

80 likes 133 comments 133
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'The calling'

Submitted to Contest #84

Sarah was bone tired after a hectic day at the hospital, she longed for a warm bath, and to snuggle into her cozy bed. She lived with her parents in a small Victorian house, which had a beautiful view of the lake. Her parents were in their late sixties, and Sarah was their only child.Like every day her parents were waiting up for her. However tired she was, she made it a point to sit with her parents and chat with them before going to bed. Her father had a mild cough and temperature, so she gave him a paracetamol tab...

46 likes 7 comments 7
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Just Getting By

Submitted to Contest #84

“Muwogo! Those going to Muwogo! There is space for only one passenger!" the sturdy taxi conductor calls with a voice that would have been loud enough to bring down the walls of Jericho. Oblivious of the odor of sweat mixed with cheap cologne and face cream, I squeeze through the crowd thinking only of how to get to that seat before the taxi leaves and I have to wait another hour for the next one to show up.Above the taxi, the stage signpost is still showing the same old hiked prices that were introduced two years back during the invinci...

42 likes 32 comments 32
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Threads and Needles

Submitted to Contest #84

I must admit– I have been an adamantine heart. I’ve never been soft. I’ve never been light-hearted. I’ve been tyrannous. I’ve been ruthless. And my attitude kept on hardening since the pandemic surged. It feels stupid wearing masks and face shields. It's too annoying to have those around your face. At first, I already got used to people loathing me. With all their prejudices, it was nothing for me.  “Gabriel!? Nah, he’s b**l**it.” “If anyone would marry him? She’d be jinxed.” These were just some of the many improprieties I’ve been ...

40 likes 7 comments 7
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Fearless

Submitted to Contest #84

The deaths, when they came, were often as varied and idiosyncratic as their infected hosts. An impressive escalation in car crashes and drownings was surpassed by steep increases in accidental poisonings, jet-pack mishaps, and problems with parachutes. Balancing the scale, was a precipitous decline in hate crimes, domestic abuse, and border disputes.In my leather-bound notebook I’ve been curating a list of escalating and receding elements I’ve seen, heard or read about since the pandemic took hold a year ago.Increasing stand-up comedianspoet...

40 likes 25 comments 25
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The start towards the end (Part 1)

Submitted to Contest #84

It’s been 15 years since that day and I don’t remember much about it as I was only 3 at the time. But 15 years ago on a nice breezy day in the mid of March the world came crumbing down. The sky had turned purple, a very pretty purple, a purple that our eyes could not have imagined. The sky was purple as far as I could see. Mom and dad held my hands so I wouldn’t run away. The purple sky wasn’t the only thing that happened that day, out of the blue it snowed. It was the first time it had ever snowed where I lived and it was beautiful. I looke...

39 likes 12 comments 12
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Back to Before

Submitted to Contest #84

“Mummy!” my son screamed from outside at the top of his voice. I didn’t blame him, he was late for school and I was sitting in front of the mirror, trying to use makeup to hide my swollen eyes. I had spent most of my night crying. I couldn’t help it, today was his birthday and all I could do was think of him, my dearest husband. It’s been three years since the pandemic took him away, three years of misery for me. I remember like it was yesterday when I got a call from a health official; he called to tell me that my husband showed the symptom...

30 likes 39 comments 39
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What lies ahead

Submitted to Contest #84

PART ONE The siren wailed in the distance signaling the end of the curfew. It was 6 o’clock in the morning. Cameron never set the alarm, because that shrill, high pitched wail always woke her up. In the beginning she hated it, but as time went by, she found it convenient. She got out of bed and went straight to the shower. Personal hygiene was very important for her work. Then she got dressed and went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast; a hot cup of coffee and a piece of cake. After that, she put on her jacket, took the bag with the...

26 likes 0 comments 0
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The Solemnity of Shadows

Submitted to Contest #84

Clouds of ash erode the sky whilst society quivers at the cruel hands of fate. Fright strikes the mind like a dagger in the wind. The solitariness wasteland of what once may be considered home is now shattered in pieces after the world succumbed to the stabbing effects of a ‘mere virus’.  Those two words, mere virus, were the first instance of the plague’s reentry upon humanity. Words spoken by a news broadcaster that made some chuckle and some wince with the pain of their past; words that fell short of the truth, words that truly ...

24 likes 10 comments 10
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The One

Submitted to Contest #84

Kids, I hope you get to read this one day. I want you to know that your Mom knew your Dad was the one back in March 2021, a full year after the pandemic ended, and even back in 2016, when she left high school for college. *** She didn’t wait around for him when graduation day came in May of 2016. They had already discussed the possibility of him following her, but neither of them could live with that choice. She remembers him telling her that he applied to Monterey Bay, but didn’t get in. Instead, he’d be going to San Diego State Univers...

23 likes 6 comments 6
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Pandemic Problems

Submitted to Contest #84

Anthony Fauci was smiling on the television in a large crowd of people who were gathered in an enclosed space. It was the perfect TV moment. The president gave a short speech about the strides they’d made globally with the pandemic and a new, adaptive vaccine that is effective against all SARS viruses, but the star of the show was Fauci, whom the camera followed as though he were the bride at a wedding. He shook hands and leaned in to speak in people’s ears.Jenna didn’t look at her phone. She knew she’d be flooded with texts. Fauci said...

20 likes 4 comments 4
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love after life

Submitted to Contest #84

She holds out her hand for me to shake but I can’t take it. All I can see is a million tiny warning signs scattered across her palm. If I shake her hand I’ll need to wash them for two minutes afterwards, silently singing happy birthday to myself, twice, even though I was born in November and it’s only July.  I make a joke instead, holding my elbow forward like I’d seen politicians and the royal family do on the TV, but she doesn’t laugh. She just forces a smile and tells me that her name is Anna. I tell her mine and pull out her seat,...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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Diana

Shortlisted for Contest #84 ⭐️

Waking up used to be a treat, having a big bed used to be my favorite thing about my bedroom. The vaulted ceilings, and spacious rooms used to be pleasing to look at it, and made my home feel safe. Now, staring up at those vaulted ceilings only made me feel alone, and that loneliness made me feel suffocated. I felt dead, and maybe I was. Maybe this was some purgatory I was stuck in, maybe the disease had gotten me and I had died without even realizing it. It was more likely that the purgatory was in my head, where I was trapped while my body...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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