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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story — romantic or not — about two characters who can’t find the right timing.

Posted in Romance on Jul 8, 2022

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 32 stories

“Moonlight and Madness” by Suma Jayachandar

🏆 Winner of Contest #154

Your eyes pour the moonlight on my path as I turn my back to you. In the dead of the night, I walk with my family, away from my home, my street, my town, and what was till yesterday- my country.There are other families with us. Snaking their way to Lahore railway station. In fear, pain, and certainty that their lives are not theirs anymore. It can be cut, morphed, or smoked out within a matter of seconds. Even if they get on that train to Amritsar and arrive there in one piece, they would just be a wisp of what they once were.I walk. With a ...

175 comments 175
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“Bliss Point” by Riel Rosehill

Submitted to Contest #154

‘Can you not set the house on fire, Alfie?’ ‘It’s just smoke!’ I yelled back to Abby upstairs, over the deafening beeps of the fire alarm whilst trying to unscrew it from the ceiling. Balancing on a dining chair, I fought the device. ‘Let me try.’ Though Curtis was taller than me, I couldn’t trust him with another task after he set the timer for thirty hours instead of thirty minutes. ‘You’ve done enough trying today.’ I growled, pulling hard. The noise abruptly stopped, as if to give space to my startled gasp. I fell, but the floorboards ne...

45 comments 45
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“Sweet Malice: Turning The Clock Hand ” by Sarah Salman

Submitted to Contest #154

Exordium of Repercussion: Time destroys. Destroy time. The two utterly precise words that are put together and when they swap chronology, they gain entirely divergent meanings. When time destroys you, you destroy time. Forever. Oh my love, ever wondered if we could turn the clock hand? If we could change the course of time to make everything seem perfect? Sometimes a curse is born within time itself,  that ruins the actions taken by explicitly correct people. Have you ever fallen in love with someone who is on the death bed and soon off...

18 comments 18
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“Posted With Demons ” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #154

My new girl likes it when I call her a whore, and my brother tells me if these streets don’t kill us first, they’ll make us strong. He likes to iron money and wear 2XL tall T’s that drape long enough to cover his sagging jeans and conceal his tucked Glock 19, which he brings everywhere. The gun doesn’t have a serial number, and I’ve never seen him use it, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t or won’t. Rusty security bars cover our house's windows, and outside our front door is another door made of steel that’s so heavy and loud it makes the ...

8 comments 8
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“Don't lose her again ” by Haylie Winn

Submitted to Contest #154

The first time they met, or rather remembered meeting, might have been the most beautiful time. Streetlights glowed through the rainy, blue-violet dusk. They both were soaked disasters waiting for the bus to come. Dawn’s soccer uniform didn’t do anything to keep him dry. Both of them had forgotten to bring an umbrella with them to school.       Azalea was gorgeous and warm. She made Dawn feel warm despite the weather. Dawn couldn’t help but start to catch feelings, as well as a cold, that night. She stayed in hi...

1 comment 1
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“All Hail the Metronome” by Sue Hunter

Submitted to Contest #154

Sometimes, teaching kids makes me want to put my head through a wall. I’m not talking math or science, either. That stuff is easy. Even the slowest kids will understand multiplication after a good tutoring session. I can teach almost anyone anything. I have a shortcut for almost every type of problem. Give me an hour with a D student, and he’ll start understanding how to multiply fractions or solve for x. 5th graders are annoying, bratty, and unusually idiotic. But they’re also pretty darn smart, and a good tutor can usually help them o...

2 comments 2
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“Waiting for Winnifred” by Dana Murray

Submitted to Contest #154

CW: Harsh language including homophobic slurs I was eight years old the first time I kissed Winnifred. We were in one of those covered tubes on the playground, the hard plastic rife with static electricity. It was warm, and mostly dark, the sun muted through the bright orange of the tube. And it just seemed like the right thing to do. Winnifred was going by a different name at the time, and she seemed to all the world a strange, shy little boy. I could sense something different about her, though. Even under the layers of confusion and r...

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“8:30 pm” by Kyla Writes

Submitted to Contest #154

"Would you like to start with some appetizer, ma'am?" The waiter questions as he pulls a chair for me. I settle down on it, and place my purse behind me before shaking my head at him with a small smile.  "No, thank you. I'm waiting for someone." The waiter nodded and slips away, leaving the menu on the table for me to skim through.  I check my watch, 7:44pm. I know I came here way early even though Sam and I were supposed to meet at 8, but I sincerely felt bad when I stood her up last week on our date and figured it would be ...

8 comments 8
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“Investing in sin” by Tony Coppo

Submitted to Contest #154

"Did you know that official time is not true solar time?" I ask, nonchalantly sipping my whiskey, pushing my glasses straight up my nose and putting on a mysterious grin. Even as I walked into the gray bar of the Novotel at Heathrow Airport, her long legs ran into my eye like the waving of a red flag on a gaur. Her blonde locks flapped with every tap of her stiletto heels on the wooden floor. Her yellow aura shone gold on the gray interior in which my pot-bellied colleagues hung puffily in brown seats. Through her, the painful memory of the ...

5 comments 5
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“That One Friend” by Laura Eliz

Submitted to Contest #154

      We all have that one friend in our life that knows everything about us, who has seen us at our best, and our worst and still likes us. The friend that we can laugh with about anything and when you laugh it is so hard that you start to cry. That one friend that we almost ended up dating but for whatever reason, we didn’t. Don’t act like you don’t have that friend. You have one and are probably thinking of them as you read this and if you don't, at one point I bet you did. I have a friend like...

2 comments 2
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“The Rhapsody of Reality and Desire” by Mahogany Ree

Submitted to Contest #154

“Keep drooling like that and the levees gon break” “What?” “I see you seeing sitting over there seeing what you seeing.” “Shut up Kendra.” I laughed. “Ain’t he fine?” “Girl that man is delicious, but according to the street committee he’s got his hooks in Robyn. Or Robyn’s got her hooks in him.” Kendra shrugged. “Robyn who?” “HR on the third floor, first office to the left, Robyn.” “Noooo.” “Yeah girl. They be trying to keep things professional down at the office but me and Leroy saw them all hugged up, lovey dovey, and whatnot ...

4 comments 4
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“The Path to Tallinn” by Erik Brun

Submitted to Contest #154

*Content Warning: Mild foul language* The Baltic States have always captivated me. Seemingly hidden from the rest of the world, not quite Russian, not quite European. A mix of both, yet each held its own unique identity. Decades could be spent exploring the mesmerizing arrays of old shops and eateries tucked away in tight cobblestone-laden alleys. All of them sure to hold brazen stories of resistance against Russia, most of them ending in heartbreaking disappointment. I only had a few more nights in the capital city, Tallinn. Activity in...

2 comments 2
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“I Will Always Love You” by Rae Reeve

Submitted to Contest #154

“I love you, I do… but I can’t do this right now,” He says, letting go of my hands and walking away.“Wait, Cameron, we can make this work. Please.” I start walking towards him.“Lyla, stop.” He stops walking and turns around. “This won’t work. I love you but you need to let me go.” I don’t say anything. I watch him walk away with tears in my eyes. As the tears fall, the first memory comes.I start walking to my regular lunch table when a cute boy catches my eye. He’s sitting alone at a table in the corner. I decide to go up to him. “...

1 comment 1
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“The Passenger” by Andrea Doig

Submitted to Contest #154

Death. I can smell when he’s coming. Wherever I go, I’m bound to catch a whiff of the odour most foul. I used to wonder if I was insane. Or if, perhaps, the tentacles of a deadly tumour were crawling through my brain. But it is Death and his sinister stench of decay that roams the pathways of my life.1920s London was not as roaring for the middle-class as it was for the upper crust and gentry. Even though it was a time of increased prosperity, my family still lived a frugal life. We were educated and went to our warm beds with full bell...

2 comments 2
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“Penny for a Tear” by Havana Summer

Submitted to Contest #154

PhoebeIf I had a penny for every time I cried, I would have $5.06. That is, one crumpled up 5 dollar bill that I had saved when I was 8 years old by putting it in the hollowed out head of my ugliest barbie doll, a nickel that I found under the kitchen counter, and the hypothetical penny that my brain came up with.I don’t cry often. I didn’t cry when Pepsi, our adorable black Labrador, got hit by a car and died. I didn’t cry when my older brother, Asher, went into a coma from a skateboard accident and woke up a month later. I didn’t...

0 comments 0
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Contest #154

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This week's theme: The Right Timing

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Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jul 15, 2022 EST

Won by Suma Jayachandar 🏆

Title: Moonlight and Madness

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