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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

It’s the last evening of your vacation and you’re watching the sunset with your friends/partner/family, wishing summer would never end. But just as the sun dips below the horizon, you notice it returning in reverse.

Posted in Science Fiction on Sep 1, 2023

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✍️ 49 stories

“Departed, Return” by Emily Holding

🏆 Winner of Contest #214

“And then there was another Mark,” Dad recalls, sending the table into an encore of laughter.  “Stop it!” Hannah pleads, tears rolling over sun-reddened cheeks. She perches opposite him, one leg hiked on the serrated bistro chair, a rum and coke bubbling in her left hand, the right clutching her stomach. She is 18, the spit of her mother – so she’s told – and will be off to university in two months. “Yes, God, please stop.” Begs Ryan, who is next to Dad, head in his hands. Muffled by skin, his voice is still so freshly broken that i...

45 comments 45
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“Fimbulwinter's End” by Derrick M Domican

Submitted to Contest #214

To you, who is reading this, wherever you are, it saddens me to say this will be the last of my personal scribings, which you have presumably been perusing for some time, possibly out of curiosity for a civilisation lost, as I assume it must be, following the events of this eve. I am writing these words by candlelight, wrapped in my wolf hide cloak, attempting to fend off the cold and unbearable darkness that has descended on my mother’s Hall and lands, not to mention the world, following the death of the sun.Yes. That is what I wrote.&...

35 comments 35
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“Reserved Park” by Chris Campbell

Submitted to Contest #214

“What’d I tell you, mate? Best fucking sunset in Straya!”“Too right, mate. Never seen anything like it. It’s magical.”“One hundred ninety-eight feet deep, mate. Do you know that down there in the middle of the crater, there’s acacia and eucalyptus trees twenty-six feet high?”“Crikey. That’s deep.”“Yeah, nah mate. Deep ain’t even the word. Three hundred thousand years old but wasn’t discovered until nineteen fucking forty-seven! That’s how remote this place is.”“Yeah, mate. You could die out here.”“You could die anywhere, mate.”“Nah, yeah. Fa...

26 comments 26
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“Please Don’t Leave Me” by Jonathan Page

Submitted to Contest #214

Selena and I were dancing hand-in-hand and singing at the top of our lungs out on our porch at the Presidential Suite of the Playa Del Carmen Resort, just feet away from the Caribbean Sea. There was a bottle of champagne in tow and a heap of menthol cigarette butts littered by the landing. After exhausting Pat Benatar and Rihanna, we were up to Pink: “da-da-dot-da-da… please… please… don’t leave me…” and the palm trees were two-stepping while the ocean was drumming a steady syncopated beat.The sun was setting below the surf, and I ...

8 comments 8
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“Whose Dwelling is the Light of Setting Suns” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #214

I was warned as a child that looking directly at the sun would result in the retinas being burned out of my skull. That they would be fried like onions, sizzling unfunnily in vitreous humour. Nobody ever identified the point at which it was not only safe, but positively medicinal to look directly at the sun. Rays robbed of retina sauteing power by virtue of travelling on an angled path through the atmosphere now painted me in the same milky peach as the few thin, gilt-edged clouds that teased over the horizon. She was next to me, but would n...

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“Pinch the Sun from the Sky” by Tom Skye

Submitted to Contest #214

The sun's final sliver hovered over the Ibiza horizon as James pinched Shauna's knee to his right. They watched from the roof of a 20-story hotel three blocks from the beach. The two of them sang together:"Oh, tell me why, do we build castles in the sky? Oh, tell me why…."."I would pinch the sun from the sky for you if I could," James whispered.Shauna began to laugh as James belted the female vocal with eyes closed to disastrous effect. The ecstasy pills from the previous night were still lingering, and both were keen to embrace the moment b...

16 comments 16
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“The Escapist” by Dorian Edgerly

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #214

The sun was going down on the last official night of summer, and if I could have, I would have frozen that moment in time forever. I would have let the sun hang eternally over the horizon, painting the ocean and the earth in stunning gold and orange, warming my face and hers despite the breeze that said fall was coming. I would have let it sit there in that spot, unmoving, never giving way to night or coming back again to announce the arrival of the following day, if it meant this summer didn't have to end.      Lina...

16 comments 16
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“Warped” by Khadija S. Mohammad

Submitted to Contest #214

The sun was cold. Katrina was watching the sun set peacefully, but just as it disappeared over the horizon, it slowly come up again. Cold. It was black, giving off no light, no warmth, as bleak and dull as the surface of Mars. Katrina blinked hard until dark spots appeared in front of her eyes, but the view didn't change. She shivered and stared. The sun rose again gradually, then sunk below the opposite horizon. Without light, she could look at it directly, with no more harm done than if it had been the moon. Without light, it could be ...

9 comments 9
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“Good Night Sun: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #214

“Oh my God, just look at that sunset!”Mike stirred, swallowed a sigh with a residual essence of his morning chorizo, and lowered his Kindle.Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye. While he’d read the thing a dozen times over the past 40 years, Mike’d downloaded it that morning after listening to some $300 haircut with a New York honk mangle a cordial “muy bien” into a preening “muy bueno” to the inscrutable delight of the lobby breakfast host. Mike understood maybe one word of the host’s sardonic response to a server before he spotted the tubby ...

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““Twilight’s Tango: The Unforgettable Sunset,”” by Gary Fondaumiere

Submitted to Contest #214

The final evening of our vacation on the tranquil beach, where the setting sun made me ache for summer to last forever, Beside me, my friends and I sat on a weathered wooden bench, our toes buried in the cool sand, watching the fiery orb’s descent. We were a tight-knit group, bound by years of collective experience and an endless supply of laughter. This trip has granted us a much-needed respite from the pressures of our daily lives. Like a dancer ending a lovely performance, the sunset symbolizes the passing of time and bidding farewell...

2 comments 2
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“Saturday, again.” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #214

Saturday’s sunset was spectacular. Every one of us was sad to see it going to sleep, but its departure was a beauty that only the sky could produce. We looked at one another, knowing that we were sharing that bittersweet ending to our holiday. We had to fly home the next day and none of us wanted to. We were in Lake Garda and the weather had been glorious. We’d lounged by the pool in surroundings that bordered on the divine, and the following day, we had no choice but to go back to the dull, dark UK. Remote weather-watching told us that rain...

6 comments 6
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“What You Wish For” by John K Adams

Submitted to Contest #214

Jack lugged the picnic basket up the path toward the overlook. He called back to Melody, his girlfriend, “Hurry, Jill! The sun’ll be setting…” “Jack, please don’t call me Jill. How many times…?” Melody sighed.   They found level ground. Jack spread the blanket, placed the basket and stepped over to look at the valley lit by the late summer sun. Leaves would soon turn. Melody stepped beside him and took his hand. They caught their breath while enjoying the view. “What a magnificent day.” “I’m sorry it’s our last together. The perfect e...

8 comments 8
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“THE DAY AFTER THE DAY” by Arlin Couch

Submitted to Contest #214

Saturday, September 23rd, 2023, we were leaving the “Wander CampGrand Canyon” camp site to go watch the sunset over the Grand Canyonas we had every night since Thursday evening when we arrived for ourweekend getaway for the last days of summer. Depressed was anunderstatement for how I was feeling, but as we all know, all good thingscome to an end eventually. You know, just like summer does, then it startsgetting chili in the fall, and blistering cold in the winter. But that’s a whole otherstory we can dive into later. My family and I were si...

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“Our Last Summer” by David Willett

Submitted to Contest #214

The frosty amber liquid glistens through raised glasses in the ethereal light. We all gather outside to toast our final moments as the sun bids farewell to summer. It had been a season that would never come again.                I flick the curls of my auburn fringe to clear my vision and ask my three companions, ‘Are there any better type of beers than summer beers?’                ‘You can’...

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“The Church at the End of the World” by Cami Green

Submitted to Contest #214

“The world is ending and I am in an itty-bitty, yellow bikini. How the hell am I supposed to run?” Cassia screamed. “Come on,” Theo said. “You know we have to get out of here so run in your bare feet like we used to when we were kids.” Cassia ran off the beach like a deer running from a wolf pack. Her eyes were huge and her heart pounded. But she had been on the track team at school and with her long legs, she was one of the first out of there.  “The roads are blocked,” Theo yelled. “We’ll have to run home to take shelter.” “We ...

2 comments 2
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Ended on 23:59 - Sep 08, 2023 EST

Won by Emily Holding 🏆

Title: Departed, Return

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