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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

All clocks suddenly stop. Write about what happens next.

Posted in Science Fiction on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 45 stories

“The beginning of the end.” by Marie Cunningham Davidson

Submitted to Contest #125

The beginning of the end. The first weird occurrence was when everyone woke up late for work. We had no idea of the time because every clock, watch and mobile phone in the world, had stopped. Time stood still, yet it was fluid, and the world had changed.  Buses and trains couldn’t run because there was no way to coordinate services without time. We couldn’t go to school because there was no way of knowing when we should attend. Teachers would turn up, and there would be no students. Students would turn up, and there’d be no teachers. ...

2 comments 2
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“The Quietest Walk Home” by Pako Dunwhile

Submitted to Contest #125

Lakysha bumped into the suit holding a briefcase who decided to abruptly stop his forward progress without any warning. Goddam rude people in the train station, she thought. She looked up and down at the back of the man’s pinstriped office attire. The train station lost its chaotic background noise in a split second.“Excuse you,” she offered with attitude. She walked around him and caught a sneak glimpse at the electronic readout. 11:42. Four minutes until the train departs. At least I’ll get some good, home-cooked food soon. Her stomac...

4 comments 4
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“When Time Became Immobilized ” by George Georgerfrost@gmail.com

Submitted to Contest #125

Jake Simmons was an amateur magician as well as a petty con man, but these would just be a minor footnote to what he would pull off in his notorious side career.  Due to his fascination with time, Jake would find a way to forever bend the boundaries of the fourth dimension.  Using his talent for manipulation, Jake would find the eternal secret on how to stop time and in the process use his new found power for his own edification as Dr. Faustus did in his deal with the devil.  There have been others who have tinkered with such ...

3 comments 3
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“If only it were Groundhog Day” by Ian Barrett

Submitted to Contest #125

I woke up to the sun on my face and realized I had overslept. When I looked over to my alarm clock it was frozen on the numbers 9:27am. It wasn’t blinking like the power had gone out so I assumed it was just broken. As I pulled the covers off I noticed that they felt heavier. I thought this was a little odd until I tried to pull my legs out. It felt like I had done a 1000 squats. What the hell is going on? I don’t need this shit right now I’m already late for work. I found a shirt and a pair of pants and quickly made...

5 comments 5
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“Silence” by Minerva Noiropp

Submitted to Contest #125

The silence was deafening.People glanced at their phones and gazed at their fitbits. Eyes became glued to the stalled hands on clocks in the windows of jewellers. Feet stopped. Nobody moved.Hundreds of shop goers breaths lay heavy in the still air.Gloria stared at the people. Moving with silence, she arched her head over shoulders, and around arms. Despite the movement of time, every timepiece registered 10:17.Gloria was careful not to disturb the unwound toys, for it seemed as if peoples mechanisms had wound down. Strange to think that it w...

4 comments 4
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“Blizzard” by Eric Diaz

Submitted to Contest #125

The one clock hung over the mantle was still. Both hands stuck between the number eleven and the number twelve, just before midnight. John and his wife Ruth were asleep and hadn't notice the hands on the clock had stopped moving. Since that night endless walls of sleet, hail, and snow had whitewashed the woods where their beloved cabin was located. John peered out the window as the snow fell heavily; the full force of the blizzard continued to wreak havoc all around the cabin that was sheltering them from the elements. It was the middle of t...

0 comments 0
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“All Clocks Suddenly Stop...” by Kathy Frizzell

Submitted to Contest #125

On this dark stormy evening, in my cabin, snuggled in for the night, thoughts of gumdrops dancing in our heads, little chuckle”, just remembering good old days when childhood was freedom, and beating of the drums, could be heard from miles around.Sparks from the fire lit up the room. This novel is getting really good now, at the part when the train stops to pick up passengers. This is not an ordinary train, this is a magical train, things that you see in the movies, and not the one that goes to the north pole.  Okay; talking about ...

1 comment 1
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“A Stitch in Time” by Aaron Falk

Submitted to Contest #125

A Stitch in Time R. Aaron Falk “Peter, wake up.” A shrill voice assailed his ears. “Go away.” Peter snuggled deeper into the fifteen-year-old easy chair that knew every part of his body. He rolled to the left and wrapped his arms around his chest to ward off the chill air. A surge of magic flashed through Peter’s body. Every muscle twitched. He opened his eyes. Grimilda’s elfin like face stared down at him. He flinched again. “Move your ass.” Grimilda sneered. “I can’t keep this level of magic going forever.” “So don’t.” Peter close...

1 comment 1
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“Bliss” by Raihan Kibria

Submitted to Contest #125

It was 12:18 PM GMT on a rainy Thursday when, for one second, the world stopped. Archie watched the geese take off from the river and stop mid-flight, then continue, as if someone had momentarily pressed the pause button for the whole universe. He wondered if he’d had a stroke, but it soon turned out that he wasn’t the only one who experienced the strange phenomenon. The news that night confirmed that it had happened to every single person on Earth. Apparently, everyone who was awake at that moment had experienced a moment of silent stasis. ...

2 comments 2
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“When Time Stands Still” by Charlotte Lewis

Submitted to Contest #125

When Time Stands Still Greg was one of “those” people. You know – the kind that never got anywhere on time. He was a wonderful person once you got to know him. But as he was late to every party, there wasn't always a lot of time left to talk before the host was closing the door. His tardiness was well-known. How he ever kept a job often baffled everyone but he worked at the same job for over twenty years. Perhaps, if you're really good at what you do, when you show up to do it doesn't matter. Greg met and married a wonderful woman. Sh...

2 comments 2
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“Towards the Sun” by Eva Leticia Brito

Submitted to Contest #125

Dedicated to MarthitaIt was near dawn when Fayna arrived at her house. The door was wide open and she was afraid she was the victim of a robbery. She carefully removed her white loafers and crept inside. The porch light that she used to leave on when she returned at night allowed her to see inside and enter with more confidence. She realized that everything was in order and that nothing was missing. The young woman only noticed something strange: there was too much silence, she did not hear the clock in the room and she realized that it stop...

2 comments 2
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“Unanimously Different ” by Agnes Goldfinch

Submitted to Contest #125

I wish I could tell you everybody took it the same way. It would certainly make for a neater story, but, unfortunately, it wouldn’t be true, not in the slightest. See, as much as we would sometimes prefer to deny it, each and every single one of us is different, and to pretend that the humankind’s reaction to all the world’s clocks having stopped out of the blue was in any way organized, or even unanimous, would be as artificial an invention as the idea of letting one’s life be ruled by clocks in itself was. No, in reality, it was much ...

6 comments 6
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“A Passing Moment Before Death Comes” by Rebecca P L

Submitted to Contest #125

Her kind eyes met mine so lovingly, colored the same kind of blue I usually only saw in the mirror. For a moment, it was as though the clocks had stopped and we had all the time in the world.  It’s like when I was little, and she’d let me win our board games by giving me tips on what to do. We’d laugh then, and I would beg her to play just one more round and she would indulge me, despite it being the fourth time that day and she really ought to have got started on dinner. I won again, and was promptly crowned champion supreme over a q...

0 comments 0
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“The Fallen” by Ben Rounds

Submitted to Contest #125

“We could make our millions,” sighed Luigi Vampa, and not for the first time, as he adjusted the pendulum of the Bulova C3383 so that it hung perfectly straight. It was a service which, before the great happening, the wizened man had never been called upon to perform and he was taking an obscure pleasure in the meticulousness of it. If tiny detail and exact precision had not delighted Luigi he would have been a miserable and probably very inexpert clocksmith, perhaps no clocksmith at all, perhaps he would have donned some other gui...

2 comments 2
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“THE DAY TIME STOPPED: A CHRISTMAS STORY” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #125

Ashley Burnham awoke on December 24th with her heart aflutter in anticipation of her family’s Christmas Eve celebration planned for that night. She had no premonition that the world as she knew it in the twenty-first century would be in chaos before any Christmas celebrations began. It was a tradition in her family’s church to have Christmas Eve service during the day of Christmas Eve, because most of the congregation’s families celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve in their homes. That morning her family gathered for breakfast and then dr...

0 comments 0
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