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Include the word “hero,” “mask,” or “truth" in your story’s title.

Posted in Short Story on Aug 15, 2025

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✍️ 26 stories

The Lady in the Gilt Mask

Submitted to Contest #316

I still know the gleam of those large, meadow eyes, even behind the garish sheen of the gold silk of her mask. Her head might be tipped up, every centimetre precisely calculated to showcase a swan-like neck dripping in diamonds, but I recognise every flutter of those lush, upturned lashes. I could instantly detect how her bow lips shake like autumn leaves, even as they’re painted a luscious carmine. She may be a picture of elegance in her luxuriant merlot dress, every jewel scrupulously encrusted on the bodice, but I notice a terrified pinki...

16 likes

The Stories of Hero and Oat

Jess Knachel

Submitted to Contest #316

Many thousands of years ago, into a thriving community of Early People, onto the warm and fertile soil of the Eurasian continent, the first human storyteller was born. Her name was Oat.Early People tended to wait to give children names until the community noticed something particular about them. This made names easier to remember. Some community members, like Oat, were named for the kinds of things they did best. Oat spent most of her time in the oat patch, gathering oats and speaking. She was actually better known for her speaking. During O...

10 likes

London's Mask

Amelia Brown

Submitted to Contest #316

There was something wrong with London. It wasn’t broken; it was just misaligned. Cora James had lived in the city for nearly three years, long enough to grow used to its chaos. The Tube delays, the polite apathy, the rain that never stopped. She walked its cracked pavements with her headphones in, a bag full of books over her shoulder, a coat too thin, and a determination that masked the tiredness in her spine. Lately, things had shifted. It began with her reflections. Mirrors and windows showed things that shouldn’t have been there. Slight...

10 likes

The Mask Of Truth

Jelena Jelly

Submitted to Contest #316

The gala theme is 'Beyond the Mask,' which is amusing because I’ve worn one for years, and nobody has ever asked to see what’s underneath it. “Breathe,” Myles murmurs, squeezing my palm. He is a good man—too good, if you ask my guilt. He thinks I’m nervous because I’m about to get another plaque that says Hero in a serif font. At the far end of the ballroom, the stage gleams like a dental smile. They’ve put my foundation’s logo everywhere: a paper mask split down the center, one side gold, the other side soot black. The board loves a metap...

9 likes

The Hero of Tatterwick

Avery Sparks

Submitted to Contest #316

A violin bow lay, stick splintered, over an upturned chair. Horsehairs frayed all over. Next to it, a trombone impaled a harp. Bodies were scattered about the community hall, along with music stands and upturned chairs - some individuals were clutching instruments, some nursing injuries, some lay unmoving. Those who were awake stared at the stage, unblinking, even in fluorescent light. A stage which appeared to be perfectly ordinary. Nothing unusual, just the backdrop to the local theatrical society’s performance of Jekyll and Hyde. And one ...

8 likes

Never let the mask slip

Annalisa McMorrow

Submitted to Contest #316

The thing is, you never want to take off the mask if you don’t have to. You keep yourself contained, calm, carefully tucked away. All your tendrils in place. Nothing unfurled. You smile with your mouth but not your eyes. You make people feel understood and cared for from the moment you punch the clock in the a.m. to nine long hours later. You are a customer service specialist. The problem is that there are certain people who want only to break your shell. They will try anything, everything, demand your manager, a refund, resolution, restitut...

8 likes

Mask Unlifted

Hannah Doroghazi

Submitted to Contest #316

Acrobat, as the world chose to call Sylvia, was everything the city needed her to be. The press drew the unbowing hero with a cape as dark as night. Its thick fabric flapped behind her, indenting her neck as it tugged her back in the wind. They drew the hero with thick boots. Sleek and dark as night, they weighed heavily on her feet, scuffed with memories of brawls past. The utility belt they sketched was never purposeful. But it still cinched tight at her waist—just as they wanted her to be. Beams of sunset weaved through the skyscrapers....

8 likes

The Truth About Chuckles

Submitted to Contest #316

The truth about Chuckles was that he hated being a clown. He had taken the job because he had needed one, and Clown Co. was hiring. Why not? He thought, it’ll be fun for a time. But sometime within the years of birthday parties and balloon animals Chuckles realized his mistake. He was a very sad clown. When Chuckles was a little boy, he had dreamed of becoming a superhero. The movies and tv shows portrayed muscular, handsome heroes who got the girl and always saved the day. Chuckles still dreamed of flying with a cape like Superman or saving...

7 likes

Dust, Fire, and Heroes

Submitted to Contest #316

For days, just outside of town, where the paved roads turned to dirt, clouds of dust rose up from the rough gravel lane whenever a vehicle passed over it. A powdery beige film coated the roadside vegetation, obscuring the natural colors and leaving everything dull and muted. The relentless summer sun, high temperatures, and weeks without rain left the grass crunchy, brown, and dormant. Kitchen gardens yielded limp and drooping stalks, with leaves so yellowed and curled that plants were unrecognizable. The pulverized gravel hung in the air, d...

7 likes

The Truth Show

Danielius Spamas

Submitted to Contest #316

On the far couch, Sentinel sits hunched, elbows on knees, spine shaped like a question mark. No wedding ring. No nervous fidget, either. Just tremor, clockwork and incurable. Mara makes a note on her tablet: “minimize closeups.” They’d rolled out the promo campaign last week: “A Night With Sentinel—An Icon Returns.” Hashtag: #FirstAmongUs. Old newsreel cuts, drones screaming over city skylines, the slow-motion shot of Sentinel punching through the river wall at Carthage. Twenty years ago, every other apartment had his face on the fridge. Now...

6 likes

The Real Mask

A.L. Short

Submitted to Contest #316

The alarm clock screamed at 6:47 AM, same as every weekday for the past three years. I slapped it silent and stared at the water stain on my apartment ceiling—a brown blotch that looked remarkably like the outline of Eastgate City, complete with the harbor where I'd once thrown the Crimson Reaper into the bay.Funny how even the rot in this place reminds me of what I used to be.Forty-two isn't old, but some mornings my body catalogs every beating I ever took like a sadistic accountant. Every broken rib courtesy of Sledgehammer Sam. Every disl...

5 likes

Awful Truths

Vanessa Osbourne

Submitted to Contest #316

[ - mentions of hospital death - ] In nursing school, they warn you about a few things when performing life resuscitation measures.They tell you you’ll be winded. Exhausted.They tell you that you must take breaks and rotate so the patient has the highest chance of survival when your body becomes too weak to be fully efficient.They tell you the ribs will break. You hear it, too.CPR is painful.It’s a visceral sequence where primal instinct and adrenaline override logical thought, your body giving, giving, giving—trying to give life.When you h...

5 likes

The Mother, the Boy, the Bugs, and the Truth

Submitted to Contest #316

It was oppressively hot. The kind of hot that immediately melts the ice in your iced tea, skipping from cold directly to lukewarm. It was the kind of hot that rendered many a young lady's face a seeming rictus of pain not long at all after melting off every last molecule of makeup. It was the kind of hot that made the gnats leave their nests to find somewhere with water where they could dive-bomb for respite in exchange for their brief lives. Something about the heat woke both the cicadas and the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes could be diverted ...

5 likes

I'm No Hero. Neither Was I

Submitted to Contest #316

The was concrete unfairly cool on the backs of her thighs, to the point that she couldn’t care less about the dirt and dust that would surely work its way onto her, or the scratchy red marks the texture would leave. She was tugging her shirt at the chest in another vain attempt to cool herself in the heat, how Lily and Ryan were sitting next to her completely fine in the awful heat, she had no clue. “I swear you were built for winter or something, Thea,” Lily almost mocked, stretching out her legs from underneath her, but not looking up from...

4 likes

Undercover Hero

Sally Lotz

Submitted to Contest #316

A sliver of light shimmers on the horizon. The midnight blue sky gives way to the morning. Dawn is always my favorite time of day. It’s the best time to sit with a hot cup of coffee, my feet perched on the porch railing, and watch the sunrise, alone. It wasn’t simply the coffee or the sunrise and silence I savor–it is the absence of JD. JD never had a quiet thought. If I were lucky, he’d sleep past 10 AM. I am not lucky. At least not yet, anyway. Today, it’s different. Who’d have thought 24 hours ago, I’d be standing here, my hands literally...

4 likes

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