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Someone’s most sacred ritual is interrupted. What happens next?

Posted in Short Story on Oct 3, 2025

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✍️ 43 stories

Mummy

Submitted to Contest #323

Mummy TW: Some gore mentioned. Darius lifted the flap of the ‘ibu’ tent, his step heavier than usual. On the embalming table lay a woman’s body – and for a moment he was no longer the jackal-headed Anubis, protector of the dead and conductor of souls as chief embalmer – he was simply a man. Breath catching, he half expected the family friend who had helped raise him to rise and tease him about his big feet, as she had when he was a boy. Darius had never minded the teasing. Having lost his own mother at a young age and with a father who was e...

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The Ascendance Ritual

Submitted to Contest #323

Celebrities were terrific for the Millington tourist trade, the restaurateurs, the University, the congenitally floundering Coliseum that survived mainly on the Billboard/social media status of honky-tonkin’/flag-wagglin’ cosplay cowboys and sociopolitically suspect “motivational” evangelists.To Curtis, celebrities were antibiotic-resistant hemorrhoids with a side-order of jackhammer migraines and super-strained, scorching STDs. Curtis nodded empathetically toward the coroner’s guys, who having hauled the remains of America's newly departed ...

20 likes 13 comments 13
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To Catch a Fish

Submitted to Contest #323

The sun’s light peaked through the stained glass windows of Saint Neot’s, the twin fishes gleaming brightly. Father Michael Dravin stood for a moment, watching the illumination. That window in particular had grown on him in the last three years he had been here. When he first arrived, he didn’t understand why there was a church named after the patron saint of fish in a city whose closest body of water was thirty miles away. St. Neot’s was small, and an older building with a graying congregation. There was talk about closing the church, but t...

17 likes 19 comments 19
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No Más que la Torre, Los Feliz

Submitted to Contest #323

The chapel was not really a chapel, just a basement under a Los Feliz fourplex where the walls wept mildew and colored light leaked from stained glass scavenged from somewhere holier. Candles burned in bottles along the cracked floor, their wax puddling like melted bones. The air smelled of rosewater, cigarettes, and dust. They called it the Tarot Mass. Once a month, the congregation drifted in from the city’s margins—artists who had stopped making art, lovers who had run out of people to love, addicts still sweating out their poisons, stray...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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Rabbit

Submitted to Contest #323

‘Now I don’t mind having a chat, but you have to keep giving it that!’Chas and Dave, Rabbit (1980) The ProblemCaitlin’s broad arse was swaying in front of the stove. Geordie watched it in a state of detached mesmerism. The steady expansion of girth merely reminded him how much he loved her, like having a favourite cake and finding that it had doubled in size.He was in the middle of telling her about that night’s match; about how the new Austrian manager called everything 'sexy.' He told her about their placement in the tables and what the fo...

15 likes 14 comments 14
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The Tide Between Worlds

Submitted to Contest #323

One look at the sky was enough for Maren to determine that it was still too early for the spirits to be out. Its smooth, cloudless expanse remained an endless black, almost as if the night air was stained with bitter squid ink. The full moon still hung lazily in the sky, as round as a pearl, watching over the still sea below it with the sort of calm it could only feel when it didn't fear being outshone by the sun. And yet, Maren couldn't stop his heart from drumming in his chest as he steered his tired boat to shore. He had been a sailor for...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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Nightguard

Submitted to Contest #323

I wake to the sound of nothing, which isn’t right. Something’s different in the house. Time check: 4:55 am. I roll over, the tormented ghost of yesterday’s workout haunting my shoulder. Matt’s on his stomach, one bare foot jutting over the side of the bed, the other on my side, arms doing the “Y” of the YMCA dance, face entirely engulfed in the pillow. I’ve never understood how he’s able to breathe like this. This is how they murder people in movies. So I wait, monitoring for signs of life. My jaw tightens, jamming my night guard too snugly ...

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The Old Buck

Submitted to Contest #323

Most mornings start the same for me. I wake before the sun — sometime between 5:30 and 6 — and go through the small, automatic motions that make the day manageable. Coffee used to be the anchor; now it’s a cold can of C4. Pop the tab, take that first bite of fizz and caffeine, and the day lines up behind it like obedient ducks. It’s little, stupid, perfect. A ritual. This morning the fridge betrayed me. A bare patch stared back where a silver can should have been. I stood there for a second, feeling the ritual slip like a missed step. Then I...

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The Ecosystem Ritual: a Sanctioned Guide on the Safe and Legal Disposition of a Loved One's Body

Submitted to Contest #323

INTRODUCTION The loss of a Loved One¹ can be an incredibly disorienting experience. In the midst of grief and fear, those they leave behind can feel pressure to make hasty decisions, often leading to tragic and lasting consequences. It is for this reason that the Department of Interworld Affairs has published this official online guide on the safe and legal disposition of a deceased Loved One's body, in accordance with the legally sanctioned ritual of "the Ecosystem". This guide exists not only to ensure legal compliance but also to protect ...

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The Kite

Submitted to Contest #323

Davis patted his friend, Jed, on the shoulder. “None of my business, but you need to get over it.”“I am over it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”“Okay. But you’re going kite flying? Today?”“Davis… It’s windy. A perfect kite day. You goin,’ or not? Cool, either way.”“I’ll go. Might be fun.” Jed brightened. “Let’s do it.”Davis’s older sister, Kat, entered the room. “Whassup?” A high school senior, she had fun hanging out with her little brother.Jed said, “Goin’ to fly kites.”“Really? Today?”“What’s the big deal about today?”Kat could...

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Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

Submitted to Contest #323

"Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire…" the three sisters chanted in unison until Jasmine broke the flow with a sneeze that had her doubling over. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. Fair is foul and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air," she said, lapsing into a cackle heavily laden with labored breathing and the sound of phlegm-filled lungs." "Jazz," Ariel said, "you need to get to an apothecary or a shaman or a wizard or someone for a breathing treatment." "Ariel's right," their oldest sister, Tiana, responded. ...

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Following the Ritual Path

Submitted to Contest #323

It is a ritual for me where I drive each morning to my place of work. Sure it adds about a mile to the trip from the more direct way of getting there, and the traffic is slow. Still, it is a ritual, making a connection with a place of joy in the past. I got lost driving for the first time to my new work place, but that was not what made the drive taking that route a ritual. Being aware that I was well and truly lost and that being late would not please my new bosses. I had to do something. So I decided to pull over to a grocery store to...

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The Youth - Samiya Usmonkhonova

Submitted to Contest #323

“Nope, not happening.” Dahlia blurts out with no proper explanation to back up her refusal. I can’t mask my disappointment quick enough and she sees my disappointed expression and pursed lips. Danté, who was standing next to me, developed a similar expression. “We’ve never been out past 9 before! You know how important this is, so why won’t you help us?” I whisper, cautiously looking over my shoulder like an old-timely detective in this dim lit, windowless bedroom. “I want answers too, but I’m not stupid enough to get myself in trouble to in...

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Performance anxiety

Submitted to Contest #323

Inhale. Expand your rib cage.The music buzzes, then dies as someone yanks the phone off the aux cord. The door slams, cutting off my teammates’ laughter. Silence swells in its place.I’m alone now. Me, 5:23 of a yoga video and a fraying towel on the locker room bathroom floor.Exhale. Sink into child's pose.My arms stretch out, trembling.I take one breath.Then another.I forget to take the next breath, and my vision blurs at the edges.Red numbers glow 3:10, the time until the game begins.I don’t have time to finish the video.It’s fine.It’s fine...

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The Center Rug

Submitted to Contest #323

I kneel on my rug, back straight, elbows rested on the comforter of my bed. I am racking my brain for names and faces: people I know, people I once knew, people I barely am accustomed to, and people I hear about through others. The faces play across my mind like a slideshow, and I pray for each one of them, for their safety, happiness, and satisfaction. I pause on each face, spending ample time sending them all the heavenly good wishes I can. As the faces peter out, the film comes to an end, and I rise to my feet. The white glowing letters o...

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