Write about a character who keeps ending up in the same place.

Posted in Sad on Nov 1, 2022

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✍️ 41 stories

“The Lake” by Kelsey H

🏆 Winner of Contest #151

The summer I turned sixteen and got my license, Kyle Lewis was pulled dead from the lake. It was the week before Christmas and heat pressed down over the town. People went to the lake to cool off, but Kyle didn’t drown. There was no water in his lungs.Coming back now, ten years passed, like always when I returned to visit my parents, I found myself slowing down when I reached the lake. The turn off was on the long road which led to their house and then on into town, and I felt myself pulled toward it, as if a magnet lay in the deep centre of...

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“ Ten for you, Twenty-six for me” by Aesha Amin

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #151

The metro I take to work, the polluted air of Mumbai, the faces I smile at and the faces that don’t smile back— they are stained a coffee-brown. The same color as old pages and medieval fables. The lives lived in abandoned childhood homes. Memories turned cinder. The air inside the all-women compartment threatens to asphyxiate me; smoke whisks into oxygen as cigarettes burn against already scorched fingers of these strangely familiar women surrounding me. The word crowded has no meaning here. An open seat is rare and silence a chim...

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“Wishing Well” by Brandi Yetzer

Submitted to Contest #151

Warning: a few cuss words are used.“SHIT!”I run to my closet, snapped out of the sleepy daze that had me locked into slow motion. The sun seeps through the curtains, blurring my vision. My arms swim about in front of me, searching for the clear bag covering the long gown I will soon drape over me.And no, it is not me getting married today.Today my little sister is getting married. Today, I join some of my closest friends — all of which have found their life partners — as my sister ties the knot with Liam. I’ll smile and be genuinely happy fo...

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“The Path of Wrath” by Graham Kinross

Submitted to Contest #151

With a spear jabbing at her face, Sir Danielle Longbow dodged and deflected. Her shield took the blows. “Why am I here?” Fending off the spearhead of an alien warrior she had no enmity with was an all too familiar feeling. “Because you love your family, you love your city, and you love your country. If you want any of them to survive, you have to kill this man, and the next three targets I give you.”...

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“An infinite repetition” by Connie Elstun

Submitted to Contest #151

The flickering of Christmas lights might have looked entirely out of place if not for the constant late spring rain storms and fog intrusion that made way along the foothills just outside the quaint town of Golden in Colorado. However, it was odd how the old string multicolor bulbs looked right at home amongst the ruin of the rundown old house.Young and curious Britney Marrs ritualistically noticed them. She said to herself one night on her way home from work, “What the Hell, curiosity killed the cat, but I must know why the lights are on ev...

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“Destiny of Dust and Dirt” by Chenchen Du

Submitted to Contest #151

The thing that people don't seem to get about reincarnation is that people aren't always people. The Creation Goddess Nǚwā was only ever a human for a times in her life, at the very beginning. In between, she had been everything from a tree, a snake or a fly. When she was a tree, the sky would gleam with distant glee, happy that she wouldn't bother them for a few hundred years until she had grown tall and wild. She was small yet headstrong as a seed, growing from the concrete of a prison where human skulls pile up like layers of a sw...

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“(Beta) 404 ” by Cindy Strube

Submitted to Contest #151

(Beta) 404 •Round 5Adam came to awareness gradually, as from a deep sleep. Memory crept in like an advancing tide, and he felt his heartbeat quicken. Slowly, slowly, he opened his eyes.Cementerio de Santa Catalina.He was in the cemetery again — he, the living, among the dead.The randomizer was glitching.The first time, in Round 3, it had been a bit tricky to identify this location. Now he knew where he was. He seemed to be stuck in a Möbius strip.An infinite loop. His heart pounding so hard he could feel it in every part of hi...

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“Reload” by M B

Submitted to Contest #151

Staff Sergeant Jimenez took in his surroundings as he tightly gripped his M4 and exhaled. He was in a once state-of-the-art facility... now a disaster area. Bullet holes lined the walls, expensive computers were smashed and destroyed, two corpses lay on the floor in white lab coats... ...‘Brilliant minds’ that had tampered with something they shouldn’t have, Jimenez noted darkly as he made his way to the metal door that slowly slid open upon his approach. Red alarm lights flashed in the hall and sparks sputtered from the flickering...

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“The Island” by Eric Falvey

Submitted to Contest #151

The resources here are scarce. During the daylight, I conjure endless possibilities in my mind of making an escape, returning to the world that I have lost. But as the night sets in, the ensuing darkness does not extinguish the light from the sky alone. In those moments I am cold, helpless, and alone. In the consuming darkness there is no hope, no dreams, no God, only the cold empty blackness.This is not my first time being isolated on this island. I have tried many times to paddle myself out to the open water in hopes of finding a vessel to...

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“The Third Floor” by Jim Hirtle

Submitted to Contest #151

THE THIRD FLOOR By J Hirtle Fleeing like the pearls of a fractured necklace, perspiration rolls down the unhandsome, pock-marked face of Freddie Shackleman. The tick, tick, tick of the cooling engine provides metered ear candy for the car’s lone occupant. Outside, the temperature has crept past the century mark again (five days running and it is only May); inside the nine-year-old PT Cruiser, where Freddie Shackleman, wearing a white cotton shirt stuck to his too thin frame, and khaki trousers stained by grass, mustard, and unidentifiable ...

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“Gurgleplop” by Dempsey Hyatt

Submitted to Contest #151

“Old witch, Gurgleplop, she likes her repetition Her curse is foul, just as her bowels, and leads to your perdition Old hag, Gurgleplop, eats to her volition Once you disgorge, her will is forged and feeds as your mortician!” “Ah, Balin, good to see ya. You hear those fools singin’ in there?” asked a patron smoking a pipe outside the town’s only tavern. A sign painted with a Green Egg swung above the man’s head as he said, “You’d think they’d get tired of that old song, but they just keep singin’ it and singin’ it.”’ Balin knew the tavern ...

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“Horror to Hope” by Cajek Veilwinter

Submitted to Contest #151

After fifteen brutal years of adventure, love, and loss, I had finally found the doorway on the wooded island again. Had it really been that long? Had I really been merely a child since I had stepped through it? A lot had happened. So much so that I was overwhelmed and merely laughed when I saw it again - like seeing an old, sardonic friend at an obscure cafe. I placed myself at the bottom of a tree and just looked at it. It looked pretty much the same as it did when I was little. I wondered if I could destroy it, but I had lost ...

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“Control Is Everything” by Julia Hewison

Submitted to Contest #151

It started off as it usually did. Looming shadows, a single red door, and her running. Running from what? Leda didn’t know, she never caught sight of it. But every time it rushed closer and closer, shrieking laughter piercing her ears, flames licking at her heels, and jagged claws just barely missing her throat. Legs pumping, heart racing, she sprinted to the only safety in this godforsaken place dodging a hit sure to take her head off. Sweat stung her eyes but she kept tearing forward, eyes locked on the bright red. She wheezed as she s...

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“Nightmare” by Chloe Schaefer

Submitted to Contest #151

“There’s a creature from old folktales that’s remained nameless for centuries,” Jennifer, his babysitter, told him, sitting on a stool beside his bed. In her hand was a book of old folktales he insisted she read to him. “A vile, vicious creature that preys on children.” “It’s said it chooses its victim carefully, cherry-picking kids who don’t stand out among the crowds.” She paused. “Kids who won’t be missed as much as the others.” He pulled his blanket over himself as if to hide from the imaginary creature. “It creates hyper-realistic...

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“The Sea is Restless” by Yale Luken

Submitted to Contest #151

(Summary – A young woman, consumed by thoughts of anxiety about health and death, returns again and again to an ice cream shop on the coast. There, she endeavors to meet with the one she has been in a relationship with online for several years.)On the shore there is an ice cream shop. Pale and pink, it advertises itself like a warm, tired face.There are two skies now—one clear as day, the other troubled as dusk.I walk forward through the sand and sunshine and enter, watching through the window the mountainous crimson and navy clouds, which I...

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Title: The Lake

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Write about a character who keeps ending up in the same place.

Submissions are closed

✍️ 41 stories

“The Lake” by Kelsey H

“ Ten for you, Twenty-six for me” by Aesha Amin

“Wishing Well” by Brandi Yetzer

“The Path of Wrath” by Graham Kinross

“An infinite repetition” by Connie Elstun

“Destiny of Dust and Dirt” by Chenchen Du

“(Beta) 404 ” by Cindy Strube

“Reload” by M B

“The Island” by Eric Falvey

“The Third Floor” by Jim Hirtle

“Gurgleplop” by Dempsey Hyatt

“Horror to Hope” by Cajek Veilwinter

“Control Is Everything” by Julia Hewison

“Nightmare” by Chloe Schaefer

“The Sea is Restless” by Yale Luken

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about a character who wakes up in their past life, or as a future reincarnation of themself.

Write about somebody breaking a cycle.

Repeat the same line of dialogue, from the same character, three separate times.

Write about a character who’s expected to follow in someone’s footsteps.

Contest #151

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

233

Contest entries

110

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

Explore more writing prompt ideas: