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Two strangers discover they have a hidden connection that alters their understanding of each other and themselves.

Posted in Short Story on Oct 4, 2024

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✍️ 68 stories

Scarlett Crosses

Submitted to Contest #271

    Blustering winds carry the city’s garbage from one alley to the next. A muddy spring marks the onset of endless showers. Freezing rain that coats the buildings with a filament of ice and despair, praying for warm sunlight soon.            Accompanied by a derelict shopping cart, a displaced man covers himself with a used garbage bag and presses on past the storefronts of Northport Street. He is emaciated and worn down. His gray and black hair, damp in the early sp...

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Life and Death

Submitted to Contest #271

Life and DeathLife and Death sat across from each other in this empty void. It was neither light nor dark, bright nor dim, enlightening nor defeating. Just this neutral empty void both could discuss an endless possibility of enigma. “So,” Spoke Life. “Doesn’t this feel all too familiar?” Death, glanced off into the void, then spoke, “I suppose, it’s amusing how so much can happen and yet… it all concludes to nothing, nothing but us.” Life stared at Death and his pessimistic views.  “I wouldn’t say that.” Disagreed Life. H...

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More in Common

Submitted to Contest #271

Despite everything, I didn’t want to like him. And so I didn’t. That was that and we formed an uneasy arrangement which meant that we kept out of each other’s way as far as was possible. This arrangement was made all the more uneasy by my so-called friends. But you’d like him.He’s quite like you.I really don’t know what your problem is. I didn’t even know that I had a problem, and that was the way that it remained for quite some time. The entirety of secondary school, in fact. Then we went our own ways. Not exactly problem solved. More that ...

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Her First Orchid

Submitted to Contest #271

Her First OrchidTucker Bradley Sloan-This short story contains some substance abuse material, and mature themes.           Sally was shopping and spending more money than she should have for her husband’s upcoming birthday. 2010 was going to be a good year for the couple. Her eyes hit an orchid, and she said, “Come to my house. Come to my house to die.” Four months later- she still had that orchid. It had turned into an ugly little thing. All brown and blotchy with damp peat moss that sm...

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The Woman in Green

Submitted to Contest #271

Taryn sat at her terminal, staring at the mass of data shared to the data slates piled haphazardly on her desk.There was no question. No doubt in her mind anymore that the woman in green, the woman who had showed up just as she had thrown in the relationship towel, was who she knew her to be.For years—decades in fact, Taryn had been looking for ‘the one’. Growing up in a town in the north of jersey, she had spent much of her early life in another guise, shielding her own secrets from the demands of society. Her own quirks, her own instincts ...

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Threads of Kinship

Submitted to Contest #271

The rain drummed a steady rhythm against the pavement of Rookwood Avenue, where the streetlamps flickered like tired stars in the twilight. It was one of those evenings in the midlands where the air smelled of wet earth and whispered secrets. Inside a small café, warm light spilled through fogged-up windows, inviting the weary souls of the city to spill their stories into steaming cups of coffee. Maya sat alone in a corner, her gaze lost in the rippling surface of her mocha. She was an artist, or at least she had been. The easel and paintbru...

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Only Visible in Moonlight

Submitted to Contest #271

Detective Skreet Snickertooth picked up the bottle of new whiskey that he was currently indulging in and examined the label against the night sky. His long rattail flicked as he rested his furry brown head on his knuckles as a mysterious new record turned in the dark corner of his private eye office. It was dark and rainy outside, making the air fresh as it danced into his forgotten room. “Sade Mountain Whiskey,” he slurred, leaning in his leather chair. “Barrel aged. And look at that...” he said, turning the nearly empty bottle towards the ...

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Cats

Submitted to Contest #271

The computer was crashing again. Marie Hobbs struggled to keep calm. She shot a desperate glance at the small picture she kept of her cat Peaches on the wall beside her computer. She was a petite woman stuck in a tiny cubicle. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Her green eyes were focused on the wavering screen. The customer on the other end of the phone line repeated tersely, “I need my new cell phone today. I told you the model number. What’s taking so long?”           &nbs...

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Soft as a winter kiss

Submitted to Contest #271

It was a sunny day, slightly windy. The weather had changed, as it does by the end of September, and I had picked a light coat from my wardrobe after a few months of short sleeves and flowy dresses. I had bought it the previous year, in a second-hand store, because it had that classic touch that could match most of my clothes, and the touch of it was silky. After wearing it a couple of times, I realized that touching it was comforting, and that's why I had used it a bunch before the good temperatures arrived, and I chose more summery outfits...

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Lines We Can't See

Submitted to Contest #271

(This story contains war and weapons) “Hey, can you do me a favor?” I heard a voice coming from the shadows behind the electric fence.  --It was that kid, I thought. How dare he talk to me! Wasn’t this treason? But hearing his soft, raspy voice, I hesitated for a second. I had been observing him for a week—he looked about my age, maybe in 3rd or 4th grade. Both countries‘ patrols were getting younger and younger, no surprise since all the adults had been sent to the front lines. He didn’t seem too smart—he hadn’t even figured out where ...

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The Implications of Savagery For the Nuclear Family On Holiday

Submitted to Contest #271

Crispy shreds of fried potato broke beneath the press of the well-used fork I wielded in my right hand.  Then, a liminal moment of spearing and lifting before— sublime pleasure— a bite crackled between a crown and a filling.  Latkes, it would seem, were every bit as addictive as I’d been led to believe by one of the myriad Youtube videos my wife and I had watched about food in the waning hours of our shared evenings.  Channel name and creator’s face forgotten, all that remained, crystalline in my memory, was the content and it...

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YOUR HUSBAND, MY HUSBAND, WHOSE HUSBAND?

Submitted to Contest #271

YOUR HUSBAND, MY HUSBAND, WHOSE HUSBAND? “What a five-star day! Makes you forget all your troubles out here on the ocean. Have you ever taken a cruise before? Have you ever been to this part of the world …..before?”“Actually this is my first. My first cruise and my first visit to the Greek Islands. It’s thrilling.”“Mine too ... I don’t know why I waited this long. Oh, sorry, my name is Estelle. I’m traveling alone. ““ I’m Joy. Nice to meet you. I’m also traveling solo. But same here. I don’t know why I waited so long except, well, I wou...

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Stranger Than Fiction, Stranger...

Submitted to Contest #271

It was far, far away. It was so close that it defied space and time. It was beyond the physical. It was the physical. It was vast, like God. It was small and humble, like God. Honestly, I don’t know what it was. But that’s where the gods dwelt, and that’s where the Sol Shades came from. Who would contrive such a thing? The Nerd…He was busy in his tower—a tower perched atop a high mountaintop, overlooking a beach where waves crashed against jagged rocks. The Nerd Tower. Every evening, the sun sank into the horizon, smearing the sky with fiery...

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Three Encounters

Submitted to Contest #271

Encounter One Navigating an unfamiliar street teeming with late to work, workers, in a city I just arrived in an hour before, throngs circle, dodge, jostle, wind, and whine pass. It's already a hectic day.  Then, a roar more agonizing than proud, erupts. I eye him about half a block down.He stands over six feet, five inches tall.Enormous.  Brown skanky hair falls shoulder length onto clothes that barely hold their shape and a body which has seen too few showers. Settling on his reflection in a store window, people are giving t...

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Tangled Hearts Unraveling

Submitted to Contest #271

Mavis and I walked into the Shakespeare & Company café next to the bookstore. The place was relatively quiet at ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning, so we had our pick of tables. We chose one outside to take advantage of the cool September weather and sat, already discussing what we both wanted to order. France - and Paris, especially - holds a special place in my heart because my late husband was French. I never learned the language, unfortunately. Not for the lack of love, but for the fundamental reason that I just wasn’t linguistical...

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