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There’s been an accident — what happens next?

Posted in Short Story on Sep 6, 2024

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✍️ 67 stories

A Twisted Tale of a Fart Gone Wrong

Submitted to Contest #267

That was not a fart! I knew Taco Bell was a bad idea.  Number 35 stole the ball meant for me. "Hey, Ed! What the heck! Cut!" Darren yelled. It's true, the lane was open. However, my current situation did not lend itself to fast breaks. I slowly jogged back to the other side of the court, trying not to exasperate the mishap. Then it hit me — white uniform! We're the home team! The coach bellowed, "Get your butt back on defense!" My butt was precisely the problem. I needed to limit my movement as much as possible. If I keep moving, t...

37 likes 36 comments 36
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The Rag Man

Shortlisted for Contest #267 ⭐️

It was a fragile relationship. In decline since as far back as Edward could remember. Now, at twelve-years-old, he wasn’t surprised when his father ignored him, this time choosing his poker buddies over his son’s latest misfortune. Just more of the same.Thick and unmoving air collected above the city as it did each evening in summer as the sun withdrew from the sky. It was a Chicago sun, disguised by a permanently fixed haze, disappearing quickly for there was no horizon to delay its retreat. As the sun departed, twilight amplified the haze ...

29 likes 10 comments 10
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The Man with a Hole in His Head

Submitted to Contest #267

 Some people love cats, others dogs, some love good food, some love their local futball team. Johan Mahlman loved music. He loved music so much it almost killed him.The fateful night had started out like many of his evenings did, listening to a live band. A cybersecurity consultant in South East London, Johan had left his office early to find a perch at a pub table upstairs at The Old Blue Last. An obscure indie rock group was band number 841 on his quest to listen to 1,000 bands in one calendar year. “They sound like the...

25 likes 31 comments 31
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Claw Your Way Up

Submitted to Contest #267

In the still of the night, the fire on the other side of the city billowed its smoke into the navy blue skies.Philbert Bowman’s already knotted eyebrows further tied themselves together. He’d known it was significant when they’d woken him from his sleep with their call. But he saw the blazes on the city outskirts, where he lived in a cramped house with his wife and kids. That cemented the severity of the situation. Phil worried – to tell the truth, he felt petrified – that all his research and hard work had gone up in smoke. If that were the...

18 likes 12 comments 12
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Hello, I've Been Hit by a Truck

Submitted to Contest #267

So, I removed my cell phone from my pocket and dialed my wife who was at home with the children and said to her when she answered her cell phone, “Hello honey, I’ve been hit by a truck.” Needless to say, her reaction was quite shocked at my statement. “Hit by a truck?  Where are you?” She asked, sounding quite distressed. “I’m at the corner of Ray and Lindsay.  I was in the crosswalk riding my bicycle when a truck hit me as the light changed.” When we moved to Gilbert, Arizona from Alaska in 2004, I bought a bicycle to ride the can...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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The Time I Got My Second Birthmark

Submitted to Contest #267

        (my story) I’m not sure where to begin, maybe when I set myself on fire. And it’s funny, because I can remember that summer of 93’ like it happened yesterday, but if you ask me what I did last Sunday, I’d struggle to remember. I guess coming this close (my index finger and thumb are so close you could barely slide a piece of paper between them) to screwing my life up, you remember all the little details.            ...

17 likes 2 comments 2
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THE ICEBERG’S WHISPER

Submitted to Contest #267

Chapter 1: Captain Edward Smith, Titanic The Atlantic wind bit at my cheeks as I gripped the icy railing of the Titanic. The sharpness of the cold seemed alive, seeping deeper into my bones with each passing second, clawing its way into my chest. My breath hung in the air, wisps torn away by the biting gusts that rolled off the sea. The starry sky above felt unnervingly low, as if the universe was sinking toward us, pulling the ship into the vast, black void. The ocean stretched out like an endless mirror, cold and smooth, deceptively calm, ...

16 likes 12 comments 12
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By Accident

Submitted to Contest #267

At the corner of 8th Avenue and W 39th Street, David stands, blinking in the morning light, finally surfacing to air outside the tiled hallways of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the busiest bus terminal in the world. Slowly, dazedly, he paces to a street corner, shifting the shoulder strap of his overnighter. He’d slept jaggedly on the pleather seat of the Trailways overnight bus, and now is confused by this hectic city he’s been ejected into. He takes a deep breath. He touches his wallet in one pocket, his cellphone in the other. So far, ...

14 likes 11 comments 11
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I Wish Someone Told Me...

Submitted to Contest #267

Authors Note: This story has notes of mental health, drug use, drinking and suicide. I wish someone told me that life was so unfair. That the people you love most aren't permanent. Like if you had a great day at school, you got an A on the math test you worked so hard on, but as you’re running home you see police cars swarming your house. And then you know, life will never be the same again. “She could survive.” the police tell you, as if that makes anything better. And to make matters better, the person who hit her made it with ba...

13 likes 6 comments 6
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Life in the Key of Loss

Submitted to Contest #267

It began like any other day, wrapped in the familiar chill of winter, the kind of cold that nipped at your skin and whispered of the mundane. I pulled my coat tighter, oblivious to the tempest brewing beneath the surface of my ordinary routine. But as the frost clung to the windowpanes, I had no inkling that the very weather I took for granted would soon intertwine with the fabric of my fate, setting into motion a chain of extraordinary events that would forever alter the course of my life. Walking from my car to the elevator, the balmy 19-d...

13 likes 6 comments 6
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The Eternal Playground

Submitted to Contest #267

The world slowed the moment the car hit me. I didn’t hear the screech of the tires or the sickening thud of my body against the hood. Instead, there was silence—an unnatural void. Time unraveled, stretching thin as I hit the pavement. My bones cracked like brittle twigs, and blood pooled in my mouth, but my thoughts were somewhere distant, disjointed. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the playground across the street. The world felt... wrong. The edges of my vision blurred, everything dim and colorless. A deep, throbbing ache spread t...

12 likes 6 comments 6
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The Beheading of Sarah Churchill

Submitted to Contest #267

Victor Churchill turned off his 600W, 1700 RPM hedge trimmer and stared, open-mouthed, at his wife’s headless body lying on the lawn. The tray, which had slipped from her hands at the moment of decapitation, lay right-side-up, and although the tea was all spilt, the biscuits, sitting in a little pile on a bone china saucer, were perkily undisturbed. The silence was profound. Even the birds had stopped singing. As his senses adjusted to the reality of the moment, he heard the splashing of the ornamental fountain in the fis...

12 likes 7 comments 7
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Unconditional Love

Submitted to Contest #267

This story deals with death. It explores the difficult decision of parenting in the face of an adult child's independence to choose death. [Not the parents's choice.]Stefanie gazed wantingly at the pond and the steam fog coming off it, as her parents rarely let her outside without them---the mist as the water evaporated as it hit the cool morning air---even to the backyard to look at the pond.Stefanie awoke hours before her family to experience the pond's wonder alone. Her parents had liked to sleep in since they retired, and Stefanie liked ...

12 likes 6 comments 6
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Nuclear Fallout

Submitted to Contest #267

It’s funny, how life works with all its twists and turns, Lynn thought, sadly. I had so much more planned for us. Lynn gazed at her husband peacefully sleeping in the chair by her hospital bed and smiled. She knew he hadn’t slept much this last week, since her return to the hospital. He was there for her, as he had been these last three years.  It had been rough, and she had fought valiantly with him by her side. Each time, after returning home, he had supported her, only to get punched in the gut in the months following....

12 likes 9 comments 9
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Sheryl Crow, Eat Your Heart Out

Submitted to Contest #267

TW: Suicide and mental health topics. “I have been the last voice many people have heard before they died. That’s not hyperbole; that’s fact. It’s a strange reality to come to terms with, knowing that your words – your tone, your pauses, the breath between sentences – might be the last tether someone has to this world.  “At first, I didn’t realize the weight of it. It was just a part of the job. But over time, it crept on me. The quiet moment after the line goes dead, when the room is filled with nothing but my own breathing, became t...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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