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Center your story around someone who cannot separate their dreams from reality.

Posted in Short Story on Mar 21, 2025

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✍️ 86 stories

to Whom it May Concern: PART TWO

Submitted to Contest #295

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: PART TWO I do not wait for ideal circumstances or favorable conditions. I find myself, here, in this present, whatever may happen or not happen. -David Dillard-Wright, PhDPlease, wake me up.Please…. Wake, me, up!!! She remembers her mother’s voice speaking so quietly…No honey…You’re not dreaming. 05-12-88 This is my dream.I’ll decide where it goes from here.-Alice Epiphany. She can’t think of the meaning, but she does know that it sounds like an Amy, word. Kind of. Epiphamy. She knows what it means,...

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Veil of Madness

Submitted to Contest #295

Clara didn’t know what she was looking at exactly. The scene that played out before her made her skin crawl, and she wanted to run, but fear locked her in place. Out of the fear responses that she could have, of course it had to be freeze. All she could do was pray to the gods that whoever, or whatever she was staring at wouldn’t notice her lurking in the background. There were three figures that emerged from a disheveled metal conex box hidden deep within the woods. Only one of them appeared to be human, but using the word human seemed wron...

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Shades of Cinderella

Submitted to Contest #295

Surrender to the light pouring in through every window, to the sun that warms my chilled skin. Spring is hot and cold, and I feel the same way as my blood is heated by the light that it cannot see. Silence is underneath everything, it holds a cold decomposing smell, like Earth is exhaling its ancient voice. It knows everything that I do, everything I have forgotten. It returns to me in death. It starts with my toes, it’s beautiful not to feel them, and reminds me of dipping them into the cerulean sea. It’s strange how nothing always reminds ...

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Living Shadows

Submitted to Contest #295

Every day, when the weather isn't too cold or rainy, I go to my favorite reading spot. I throw on my clothes and hop on the bus, counting the minutes until I reach my second home. I arrive at a small garden outside the local library. The long, curved stone bench hugs the evergreen bushes as the little songbirds skip around the trees. I peer through the wall of windows into the library building with its rocking chairs offering a porch view of the garden. A tall, bronze sculpture stands in the sun, greeting me as the diligent host. There’s a p...

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there is no hiding inside the passage of time

Submitted to Contest #295

The ache is bone deep. Nova’s eyes fixed on the page. Tapah, in Sanskrit, meant both “involuntary pain experienced by the senses” and “voluntary control of the senses.” An itch was like that, it had a way of summoning such opposing forces. Scratching is so abrasive, so demeaning, so unforgiving, that it forced her to embody a sort of convoluted self restraint. She dug deep within her psyche to stop her nails from digging deep into her flesh with austerity fit for a saint. The walls in her room began their normal chanting; it’s what awoke her...

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The Dreamer

Submitted to Contest #295

THE DREAMER The head was almost obscured by the big black bee-stung hands; but if one looked closely, one could still make out the panic-ridden face of a soon-to-be deceased...chicken. The sound that started to echo from its beak was not a shrill scream, but a dream-ending screech, that started low and continued to build, until at its crescendo, it startled me awake on a sudden turn at the 77th street subway station. Where poultry became real. I blinked once, twice, rubbed my eyes, and then muffled a sickness yawn. Across from my now semi-fo...

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Main Character Energy

Submitted to Contest #295

Main Character EnergyElan Tusk awoke from his dream with the taste of prophecy on his tongue and the faint scent of Martian soil in his nostrils. The vision was clear: a flaming electric horse galloped across the solar system, a ferry between Earth and Mars, and on its back—him, obviously—shirtless, brilliant, ascending. He sat up in bed, adjusted his Neuralink headband (still in beta), and opened Twitter. “It is time,” he typed. No context. No punctuation. Just divine clarity. Ten thousand likes in a minute. By breakfast, he’d already decla...

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Beautiful

Submitted to Contest #295

"Where's the bowl?" Aiden yells, pounding his little fists on the counter."What bowl?" I ask gently, my headache worsening as I rub my temples."The bowl!" Aiden screams, "it was right here yesterday!"I look tiredly at our marble counter, which is empty except for a few coupons from the mail and a half-eaten pancake sitting on a syrup-soaked plate.I bend down to so I can see my four year-old son eye-to-eye. "Aiden," I say, "can you describe the bowl you saw here yesterday?"Aiden rubs his eyes and sniffles. "It was the wooden one that Mr. Patt...

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Where the Mirrors Break

Submitted to Contest #295

The neighbors’ dogs won’t quiet, so I press the volume button again and again until the walls pulse with the shimmer of lightsabers and a galaxy far, far away. Vvrrrmmm!Krsshh!Whumm-whumm!There. That should drown them out for a while. Or, you know, at least make me forget they’re there. I absentmindedly stick a foot in my Minion shaped houseshoes, tapping the other foot around it to find the left one. Where did it end up? My body glides to the floor like honey off a spoon, and I start feeling for my shoe. Can’t be anywhere but under the couc...

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The Hunted

Submitted to Contest #295

Two stout men sat in silence behind the ticket window at 83rd Station.The sun started to get low by then, and the cacophony of the bus station softened the jazzy song that the station radio croaked out.Ten minutes had gone by at the window without any visitors. The eleventh minute brought by a bony, sickly-looking traveller.“Where to?” The larger of the men asked, barely lifting his head to look at her.“Woodstown.” Mika kept her voice low, carefully unloading a hoard of coins into the window slot. The copper smell of the money had been sharp...

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A Love At First Sight, Of The Heart, And Mind

Submitted to Contest #295

A Love At First Sight, Of The Heart, And Mind Back in my senior year of high school there was a girl named Debra. We had a mutual friend Herb. Herb told me that Debra was talking alot about me. Debra was very attractive with an excellent body, she could've been a model. I had always viewed girls like Debra as out of my league, although I did nominate her for homecoming queen. After Herb told me that Debra was talking alot about me, I started having weird dreams about Debra (I used to keep a dream journal back then). At our high...

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