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Write a story in which the first and last words are the same.

Posted in Short Story on May 23, 2025

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✍️ 99 stories

Fever

Submitted to Contest #304

Fever Fever. Feel it in the air. Lawd! It's hot. Louisiana hot on a summer Saturday night. Not a breath of a breeze. Sultry. Like trying to inhale a sponge.Gossamer iridescent wings of dragonflies helicopter above clouds of gnats hanging low above the muddy waters of the wide Mississippi. Mosquitoes hatch and blacken the tall marsh grasses in the ditches still sodden with flood waters from the last downpour. Bullfrogs croak as if they are dying, poisonous snakes slither unseen, gators lie in wait with only their beady eyes peering above the ...

41 likes 34 comments 34
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The Milky Way

Submitted to Contest #304

"Smile. . . it confuses people." Mrs. Miller encouraged her student. The teenager groaned and then rolled his eyes before walking to the front of the class. It was speech day, the last one of the year, hopefully forever, because he hated speeches. Suddenly, he stopped and looked at her as if he had just realized what she said. "What did you say?" he whispered to her. "Smile?" she asked inquisitively, unsure what was wrong. "uh, no. . . after that." "Oh. . . it confuses people," she paused, "because you are always so serious, you know? As a j...

31 likes 8 comments 8
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Life Sentence

Submitted to Contest #304

"I wonder where they're going." Edna voiced these words to herself but also aloud - as she sat in the pool area of her Deerfield Beach apartment complex. She was seated next to her friend and neighbor Janice, who had a glass of iced tea and a book by her side. Both women had short, grey hair and were in their mid to late 70s. This was South Florida on yet another sunny, routine, and rather dreary day. It was the end of April - but did that even matter? After all, one day was just like the next. April was the same as June - and July and Augu...

24 likes 16 comments 16
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Oathkeeper

Submitted to Contest #304

Oath. The word floated through her mind like driftwood on a dark sea, carrying weight she couldn't name.Ser Athelyn found herself walking through woods where black-green mist hung between the skeletal trees. Her spectral form cast no shadow on a ground that wept something darker than blood, the earth itself seeming to mourn beneath her feet. The trees here were wrong. Twisted into shapes that hurt to look at directly, their bark bearing wounds that never healed. Dead branches reached toward a sun that gave light but no warmth, its pale rays ...

21 likes 12 comments 12
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Upside Down

Submitted to Contest #304

Upside down, Curly’s arms splayed up and out over her head, the ends of her tentacles spiraling into eight circular buds. She floated patiently as the crowd’s murmurs hummed behind the glass and flashes of light sparked from all directions.“Oh! I know!” A flicker of movement broke the group’s stillness, a small figure bouncing in the blurry shadow. “Flowers! It’s flowers!”The recognition settled into the crowd through gasps and appreciative sighs, and ultimately, an applause. Curly untangled her tentacles and swam upright, providing her with...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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When the Pun Stops, It’s Time to Get Real

Submitted to Contest #304

“Lily! How will you mark the neighborhood today?”Dr. Finley looked pleased with himself as he resorted to his endearing habit of ascribing animal behavior to the humans in his life.Lily didn’t think she could squeeze out a drop of wisdom, let alone leave a mark on this dreary Monday. She was not feeling anything resembling pride for her role as kitschy content creator for the marquee in front of the Pawsitive Vibes Pet Care office. She read last week’s message and felt a wave of disgust: “IF YOU KNOW A BETTER FISH PUN, LET MINNOW."Lily had w...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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Friend

Submitted to Contest #304

Ashwater was what the troll called the place beneath the glacier, where the snowmelt turned gray with soot, where the birds never flew, where the rocks wept black tears no one could explain. He said it was older than language, deeper than death, and that only children could find it.Brynja was nine the first time she heard the name.She had wandered past the schoolhouse fence on a Wednesday afternoon, chasing a dog that wasn’t really there. Past the sulfur springs, past the collapsed turf church where moss grew over gravestones and the wind ma...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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Let's You and Him Fight

Submitted to Contest #304

Hickmanville, Kentucky. We moved there from Illinois in 1972. I was ten years old. My grandfather had been having heart problems and his doctor had advised him to give up running the family business, Walker’s Grocery. The folks and me moved there and lived in a double wide that sat behind Pap and Mamaw’s house. By the time we had lived there for two years, I was pretty well settled. I made good grades and I was the starting shooting guard on the Caudill County Junior High Hornets basketball team. I had made friends. My best friend was Lefty...

15 likes 3 comments 3
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Between the Lines

Submitted to Contest #304

"Eleanor," Pappa said as he lowered himself onto the curved leather bench, his coat folding around him like a closing door. "Take us to the Wrong Turn.""My pleasure, Sergio. We will arrive at the Wrong Turn in forty-three minutes."Eleanor’s voice was warm, obedient, and just artificial enough to make Mikey sit up straighter. Forty-three minutes. Enough time to change destinations. Enough time to turn around."Pappa," Mikey said, careful and quiet, like he was correcting a test paper. "The Wrong Turn isn’t... it’s not on the list of government...

15 likes 8 comments 8
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Strigoi's Awakening

Submitted to Contest #304

Awakening. It began not with the gentle hum of twilight, but with a jarring disruption to the ancient quiet of the Richmond cottage, a sharp, insistent rap echoing from the surprisingly sturdy oak front door.Greg Strigoi, the cottage's sole, nocturnal inhabitant, stirred. His awakening was usually a slow, deliberate affair, but this was different. This was a deliberate, human knock, insistent and desperate. A flicker of panic, a sensation he rarely felt, tightened his chest. Visitors were… unheard of. Undesirable. Dangerous.He rose silently ...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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~ Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Gloom of Night ~

Submitted to Contest #304

~ Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Gloom of Night ~Mail. This is where it all happens. The Post Office. Citizens are already bustling in and out of the front doors. My pickup is in the shop and I’m running late this cloudy May morning, so my wife is dropping me off at work. We head around to a massive warehouse entirely lined with loading docks. Here in the back lot are two long rows of 50 blue and white Postal Trucks. Uniformly opposite each other and angled away, all looking exactly the same. The scene reminds me of the stripes on a Zebra. The ...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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Under Cheyenne's Skies

Submitted to Contest #304

TW: Themes of death and dying, bullying, sensitive language Cheyenne Blackburn deserved more than this world gave her. She was one of the first friends I made when my mom and I immigrated from Toronto, Canada to Catskill, New York. We were both certified Horse Girls, and so we met at summer day camp at Catskill Equestrian Center when we were just 7 years old. Cheyanne had long thin legs like winter tree branches, hair as light as melted butter, and striking caramel-colored brown eyes. Her hair was so thin you almost thought it might melt aw...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Mosaic

Submitted to Contest #304

Humanity had not collapsed into chaos as many had feared; instead, it had morphed into something far more insidious—an ironclad version of order. Centuries after the Collapse, the remnants of the world reorganized themselves not along the traditional lines of geography or culture, but based on belief systems, sharper and more rigid than any border that had ever divided nations. These ideological constructs came to be known as Orders. Each Order was governed like a sovereign state, complete with laws, institutions, and borders, yet beneath th...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Feedback

Submitted to Contest #304

Feedback day comes around more frequently than my pay checks.It started as a simple half yearly check-in, then changed to quaterly, monthly and now it’s every fortnight. Thats because Gorman Green is continually finding ways we can improve. He loves the word improve and can find a way to fit it into nearly every sentence. He also loves hyphenated or compounded words like teamwork, problem-solving and time-management. He loves cliché phrases like help me to help you, and let’s circle back on that. He opens with the line what do you think you’...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Stay

Submitted to Contest #304

Kelsea Stay. He didn’t know. He was never going to know. I was never planning on telling him. But, all he needed to do was say the words and I would have stayed. Lord help me I would have dropped everything. No questions asked. I should have been elated. This was everything I had ever wanted, everything I had always been too afraid to ask for. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to finally talk about things that really mattered. Goodbye weather reports, and celebrity gossip segments. Hello real stories. I should have been run...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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