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Write a story from the point of view of a canine character or a mythological creature.

Posted in Short Story on Aug 1, 2025

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✍️ 103 stories

An Afterlife Denied

Winner of Contest #314 🏆

It was almost impossible to make out the lone figure, shuffling slowly across the expanse of sand, far below. Only his movement gave him away. Wrapped in pale shreds of clothing, caked in tan grit and burnt red by the oppressive sun, he was all but a part of the desert already. Anubis, crouched in the shade of a rocky outcrop, panted his jackal tongue in an effort to cool himself. The heat of the clear day was extreme, the weight of its pressure, unrelenting. He pressed as much of his bare skin against the rocks as possible, his fingers spre...

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The Scent of Replacement

Submitted to Contest #314

I know Arthur by his smell. Always have. His scent lives in my nose the way sunlight lives in morning grass. Worn flannel that holds decades of Saturday mornings. Old books with their patient, dusty whispers. The gentle soap he uses after his evening shower, clean and honest as rain on hot pavement. This is my master. This is home. But something is wrong. The wrongness started three weeks ago, creeping in like fog under the back door. At first, I thought it was the heat. Summer has teeth this year, and they bite deep. The air hangs thick as ...

36 likes 17 comments 17
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What My Dog Thinks About When He Pees

Submitted to Contest #314

Walk? My bonded companion does not heed my plea. There is no jingling jangling clanging incantation of key. Walk? Walk? Walk? He does not understand, so I put it on the floor for him to see. Yes, BAD. Yes, NO. Yes. Walk. We ready the harness and the cord of binding to be as one in the search for the scents that need finding. Outside, all is infernal heat, but I drag my feet even so. He wants to rush and leave no mark. I have tried to teach him, but he squanders all his inside. That tree? Now it's ours. Same goes for that car. How else are we...

23 likes 12 comments 12
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Paws of Fire

Submitted to Contest #314

I'll say it right from the start: **I do not do well in heat.** I am a delicate tabby flower, designed for lounging gracefully on window sills during mild spring mornings or doing Olympic-level pouncing in cool autumn breezes. I was not—let me repeat: **NOT**—built for 34°C with humidity levels so high even the curtains gave up and stuck themselves to the walls like sweaty towels. But do my sisters listen to me?Nooooooo.Because Spurka thinks she's some kind of dark, mysterious jungle panther who thrives in tropical conditions, and Kitka—don'...

22 likes 14 comments 14
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Smell of Death

Submitted to Contest #314

Smell of DeathTW: True account of multiple deaths. Plans change. I heard my best buddy, Lefty, say so as he went down on one knee (he didn't even fall!), and said something like that to pretty Miss Claire, our new friend. And, boy, have they been changing around here lately!It started one evening as I was getting the cattle herded back to the pen when Good Ol' Simon, our neighbor next door whom we watch over and help out sometimes suffered some kind of set back. He was hurtin' bad so Lefty drove him away in our truck and left me in charge. H...

20 likes 21 comments 21
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Divine Paws of Judgment

Shortlisted for Contest #314 ⭐️

I have stood sentinel beneath the great pillars of Karnak. I have seen empires rise from dust and return to it once more. My dark eyes have witnessed the truth of the mortal heart, brave, foolish, loyal, deceitful. All are revealed when placed upon my scales. Mine is an ancient and noble duty.I am Anubis, Lord of the Sacred Land, Guardian of the Scales, and Judge of Souls.Now, however, I find myself banished. Punished, perhaps. Trapped in the land of mortals, in a far lesser incarnation. A humble abode of red brick and double-glazed windows,...

20 likes 4 comments 4
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The Sky Walking Dragon of the Ship Destiny's Dreams

Submitted to Contest #314

Before I grew into a blue, partly furry, partly scaley, four legged, flying, walking, and swimming being, with ears that can rotate and spin, descended from ancient creatures, my life began near the ocean. After I was born, I cuddled up to my mama most of the time. Then one day, someone picked me up. My heart gave a leap, and started pounding fast. I slipped and bounced in their arms, and opened my eyes wide. "Where was my mama? What was happening?" My thoughts whirled, my body twitched, and sharp, strange emotions filled me. Panic grew, and...

19 likes 4 comments 4
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Echo

Submitted to Contest #314

My voice keeps me safe from the old man. He terrifies me, but I am in his home at his invitation. He arranged meetings with his wife. He had heard of my talent, and he wanted to keep his wife “happy and occupied.” She delights in my stories. I speak endlessly to her. That’s why her husband doesn’t bother me. I distract her so that he can do his foul business.She sits close to me and lets me whisper my stories to her. We spend hours this way until her husband is fast asleep. His days are spent hunting. The young girls in the Achaea don’t stan...

19 likes 11 comments 11
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A Dog's Walk

Submitted to Contest #314

In loving memory of Sofie (2010–2025) A Dog’s Walk “Hey Sofie, do you want to take a walk?” Ben asks with excitement. Do treats taste better than dry food? Do bunnies smell AMAZING? Of course! Of course! “Ruff, ruff!” My tail is wagging like a windmill in a hurricane, and I scamper to the front door. I run in circles to limber up, stopping with my nose facing outside, tail in full wag. I sniff the breeze coming through a crack under the entryway, lilac and lavender aromas sing to me. Spring is in the air. Ben and I both know the routin...

14 likes 7 comments 7
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Tank, The Bestest Boy

Submitted to Contest #314

It was still hot out here. When Harry and I went for our walk eariler today, the concrete burned my paws so much that I licked them all afternoon laying on my couch while he stayed in his office. He once left the door open when he was in there, and I wanted to help him out, so I brought my rope in there. He got angry when some stuff got knocked onto the floor, and told me I couldn’t be in there. So I laid on the couch every time he went in there and closed the door. But he always came out for dinner, and shook my bowl to let me know it was t...

12 likes 10 comments 10
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Miracle's Guardian

Submitted to Contest #314

Write a story from the point of view of a canine character or a mythological creature.Due Aug. 8 at 11:59 p.m. Once upon a time, there was a young married couple, Jerome and Katherine Ballantyne, who didn’t care about politics, culture, or accepted religions. If you had asked their neighbors about them, they would have said Jerome served his country in Korea, so he deserved our thanks. Any other known details were too odd to mention in polite company. Those details included the flowers that never stopped blooming, the jugs of water they left...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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A Final Dance with Death

Submitted to Contest #314

“We were all angels, once,” Morteziel says wistfully. A mere shadow of her former self, golden wings blackened by what she’s become: Death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The horse she sits on is white, pale as- well, her. How I hate the dark cowl that obscures her face, hides her silver hair that shines with moonlight. “You linger too much on the past, Death,” sneers War. They are unrecognizable now, scarred and burned head to toe from countless battles over the centuries. Once they were one of the most beautiful angels with pr...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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Unstitched

Submitted to Contest #314

[Chapter 1: The Boy and the Grave]It was the hottest day of the year.Eli Cross was digging a grave behind the house with his grandfather’s shovel—an old, half-rusted thing that rang bitter against rock. The ground was dry clay, stubborn as bone. Each strike made his blisters deeper. The sun poured down without mercy. His shirt was long gone. Sweat traced lines through dirt on his chest. A shallow grave yawned at his feet—too small, too crooked.There was no one else to do it.The body lay off to the side, wrapped in a wool blanket already buzz...

11 likes 1 comment 1
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Small Pebble

Submitted to Contest #314

For the first time in many, many millennia, I am going to cause a scene. I’ve got plenty of energy for some much-needed divine intervention. I watch from a distance as two opposing forces meet with malice and bloodshed, weapons brandished, nothing I haven’t seen before. So typical, it makes my whole being seethe. Thousands of years ago, men like the ones obliterating themselves right now would invoke my name, trembling, around hearthstones before storms and battles. They'd chant into ceremonial flames, forging iron to blade. It’s almost swe...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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The Pilgrimage

Submitted to Contest #314

The Pilgrimage “We’re almost there now.” It has been a long journey down the whole length of the Cornish peninsula. The day before they had been at the henge. That was an awe-inspiring experience. They had done weaves between the upright monoliths and Lucky, the tour guide, had intoned, “Think of your ancestors here, among the stones, thousands upon thousands of years ago - And I’m talking human years, not dog years. It was believed this was a ritual site so our forebears may have stood outside of the ring, watching an ancient druid make a...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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