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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about someone feeling powerless.

Posted in Narrative on Nov 1, 2022

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 284 stories

“My Alienable Rights ” by James Offenha

Submitted to Contest #58

     They’re gone.  I can’t believe it.  They’re gone.   My rights.   My rights guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States of America are gone.  All of them gone with three signatures; one of them mine; two of them my Legal Guardians, and none of this is legal, but they’re gone.  Welcome to my world.  (Welcome to Hell).  Welcome to Legal Guardianship and being a dependent in the United States of America.  You ...

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“Melting Facades Of The Crippled ” by Lavleen Sharma

Submitted to Contest #58

While going out for a crime, conviction caps confidence. While going out to continue an affair, conviction again trumps all other qualities in pushing the sinner. In my head, the heedless romance in public washrooms were nothing more than actually using those washrooms. She believed and I made believe that it was love. I wanted her to believe that someone loves her and wants to give her everything he has – not that I understood exactly what giving and taking was. Besides, I wasn’t part of the romance, the façade was. Before I wanted it, the ...

1 comment 1
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“Here I Sit in the dark silent in the cornor” by Debbie Stelzle

Submitted to Contest #58

Here I sit in the dark, silent in a corner of my bedroom, curled up into a ball. I’ve been crying most of the night, have no tears left, and I live alone. Since March of this year, I’m furloughed from my job at school, with uncertainty when I will work once again living on a minimal income of a small pension from my job I worked for twenty years. Since I had to retire because of health, I needed to take my retirement benefit early so less than if I could have waited. The part-time job helped with the budget. Now I’m just going to keep my nos...

6 comments 6
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“Child of the Blessed” by Kate Reilly

Submitted to Contest #58

Elia stares down at the water, her breathing labored as she removes the gilded helmet. A mockery now- a mockery of what she once stood for and believed in. The cold water reflects sunlight, a pretty sight. She leans forward to gaze at its depths, to calm herself. A sharp, rattling breath. She needs to calm down. Nothing good will come if she gives into her rising panic. With shaking hands, she reaches down to scoop the water to her mouth. Blood. Dark, dried on her hands. She feels herself gag, as though her body is not her ...

2 comments 2
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“He Saw the Sun” by Lisa Jawalekar

Submitted to Contest #58

The maze itself was dark and perpetually dusty. The air was dirty from the smoke billowing from the furnace in the corner; it was thick enough to choke on. Their chamber, hidden away in some never-seen corner of the maze, was small and derelict. Icarus called it home, and he hated home. High above his head, at least a hundred feet, he could see the sky, dull and grey, obscured by the smoke that just wouldn’t leave. He spent day after day looking upwards at the sky, trying to find the birds that were too far away for him to ever really see; h...

3 comments 3
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“Suffer the Children” by Tracey Carvill

Submitted to Contest #58

The graveyard was empty except for the woman in the veil. She let the tears run down her cheeks behind it, not bothering to wipe them away. What did it matter? No one else was here to see. Clasping her rosary in tight fingers, she read the freshly carved words on the headstone once more. Such a short epitaph for her darling boy. 'Albert Caldwell, born 1879, died 1885, drowned in Rotterdam Harbour'. It said nothing about the joy she and her husband had felt after he'd survived beyond his infancy. Nothing about the pride they'd felt as he'd ...

7 comments 7
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“Kind Johnny ” by Bethany Hall

Submitted to Contest #58

It all started the night of the Storm.  Catherine was alone, the tv in front of her playing reruns of Space Explorers while her hands went up and down, carefully stitching the lace onto a near perfectly crafted dress for an old victorian doll somewhere in Kansas. It was the same thing she had done the night before that and the night before that and the night before that and every ‘night before that’, as far back as she could remember. It had been this way so long that the days and years started to blur together into a steady fuzz of ba...

3 comments 3
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“Crumbs of Passion” by Cheryl Fulks

Submitted to Contest #58

Crumbs Of Passion Waking up from another dream, hot and sweaty. The tornados were everywhere as well as the snakes. Night after night the same dreams. Out of control weather and vicious poisonous snakes on the ground everywhere you step. Melanie couldn’t get past the dreams. She stayed up as late as possible until she thought she was exhausted enough to fall into a deep sleep; but she found it didn’t matter. The nightmares were waiting for her as soon as she closed her eyes. Melanie hadn’t always had the...

4 comments 4
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“Desolation noir. ” by T. Rezy

Submitted to Contest #58

''Another rainy day in Lomont. Typical.'' I mutter to myself whilst warming my hands on a mug full of freshly ground Javan coffee. I stare out at the city from my cagey appartement. Raindrops streaking down in seemingly unquantifiable numbers. The gloomy streets are illuminated by the white and red of the cars lights and the yellow huw of the street lamps. Buildings so tall they hold up the heavy grey sky above. The inconspicuous notes of rain playing a tune of melancholia. Below, the wind blows an empty plastic bag along in its gust, waltzi...

11 comments 11
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“If The Clouds Were Cotton Candy” by Anii ✨

Submitted to Contest #58

Grandma was a huge Duke Ellington fan. That’s why instead of having us call her Jasmine, she was Grandma Jaz.  For the longest time, she had her own sweet shop over at the mall. She’d bring me there every day and have us taste her newest additions. Every day we’d try out new types of caramel, chocolate, and candy. Brook wasn’t born then. Dad, who was a dentist, was mildly frustrated with his mother, but never stopped me from being with her in the shop. In fact, he came along, making sure that I would take care of my teeth.  &nbs...

15 comments 15
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“Cold hands...” by Uruoma Adjeroh Kosieme

Submitted to Contest #58

Cold Hands I stopped crying months ago.…about the same time I stopped healing. I don’t know what is real anymore. The deafening sound made by our neighbor, Luke’s tired lawn mower which he uses every weekend, seems to be more authentic than my reality. They all think I’m crazy, Mum, Dad, Nelly and even Doctor Karim, my therapist who diagnosed my case as Type II trauma. I see it in his eyes each time I’m wheeled in for my session, he tries to mask the pity in his heart with a bogus display of hope in my recovery. I know it’s just the cheques...

1 comment 1
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“Absense” by Happy 517

Submitted to Contest #58

I'll meet you halfway father. Thanks to your absence, my love life is a pig, slaughtered; with juicy red blood makes the animal look hotter. No amount of makeup or hookups or do ups will heal the crooks that steal, beg for appeals only to later steal your zeal. Dudes don't care to set fire to your rare sense of self. They act like an elf on the shelf, judging until that nudging is shoving you into a devil's pit. Thanks to your absence, I've been battling moonlit pricks delusional to the spit and rips on my self esteem. It seems to be that ...

3 comments 3
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“Dust Devil” by Zion Hintay

Submitted to Contest #58

"Let me in Charlie...""I won't. You can't tell me what to do."I young boy lays on the ground in a fetal position trying to block out the voice in his head."Surelly, you don't mean that Charlie. I've been there for you when no one else was." He whispered in to his ear. "That deadbeat of a dad of yours skipped town and left you to rot. And your mother hasn't even the time to prepare you anything to eat during the day. She doesn't even know you are home, Charlie.""Shut up!"Charlie yelled. His alarm clock began to ring. Reluctantly he climbed o...

1 comment 1
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“The World Turned Upside-Down” by Ali Anthony Bell

Submitted to Contest #58

When we got back from summer camp in ‘69, August was family time. There were two times in the year when we had family time, in August and at Christmas Holidays. That year our Dad had sold his Chevy 2 and so we took the train to Texas and back. Texas was always the same; sleeping under the stars, catching horny toads (horned lizards), eating a lot, playing with cousins. I still hadn’t realized what the move from Montana had meant.As soon as we got back to Chicago things started changing dramatically. There were little communes in many of the ...

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“The Girl I Fell in Love With” by Prachi Kumbhare

Submitted to Contest #58

Trigger warning: suicide   She was standing there, all alone in the rain, with a black umbrella. When I saw her, it looked like she was trying to escape all the traffic and otherworldly noises only to have some alone time. She felt as if the world wasn’t hers anymore. She looked weak, sorrowful as if she had done a lot of crying. She was standing on the footpath, waiting to cross the road. The traffic cleared, and the rain slowed but, she couldn’t move. The wind took away her umbrella. It looked like someone or something was holding her...

7 comments 7
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Contest #58

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Title: In the Dark

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