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Write a story inspired by the ultimate clichéd twist: it was all just a dream.

Posted in Short Story on Feb 21, 2025

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✍️ 96 stories

REM Job

Submitted to Contest #291

Eli awoke with a start. The sensor attached to his left pectoral tugged painfully at gray scrub as he jerked back into the conscious realm.It was just a dream, Eli told Eli.“Good morning, Mr. Trainer! Please stay as still as possible until we can remove the leads.” The voice was somehow, simultaneously, cloying and utterly perfunctory, practiced and patient, and, as a result, Eli absurdly, simultaneously, somehow felt the desire to please and to bitch-slap the man in the observation booth.“Did you sleep well? Do you feel rested?”Eli worked h...

35 likes 20 comments 20
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Maria Would do Anything for Love

Submitted to Contest #291

All Maria had ever wanted was to fall in love. To find someone who was her whole world, and she theirs. She pined over the romance stories she edited as a freelancer, swooning over the passion of star crossed lovers and forbidden romance. Oh, she had had her fair share of partners, lovers, and one night stands. But nothing that she would call ‘love’. All of that changes tonight, Maria thought to herself for the hundredth time. Tonight, I will find the one. She nodded at her reflection in the mirror, adjusting her purple-tinted hair and addin...

28 likes 22 comments 22
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Transference

Shortlisted for Contest #291 ⭐️

Shea butter. Hibiscus perfume. Smells distinct from the chemical staleness of the group home, signaling Miss Greenwood's arrival. Lenny looks up from his sketchbook as her dragonfly eyelashes carry her into the room. Heels today, pearl earrings, a navy pantsuit that clings to her form. "I'm told there's a boy here that puts Picasso to shame...is that you?"She's always making him blush. As they walk together, he wishes she would take his hand in hers and he could experience the smoothness of her palm again. She never does. Something to do wit...

25 likes 9 comments 9
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Timeless Castles and Dreams

Submitted to Contest #291

There is nothing more beautiful than a child’s dream, a dream of a place where love never dies, a place of sunshine and goodness. And kind Ms. Linville knew for certain, there are never dreams that cannot be. ***Sophie dashes up the street, dodges a flower vendor, jumps an open sewer ditch, and runs through a cluster of empty chairs spilling out over the sidewalk from a street café. She hears the street cries, a symphony of sing-song chants, a music box of sound, calling: cat meat, herring, second-hand clothing, kitchen utensils, pots t...

22 likes 11 comments 11
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Tea Made From Seawater

Submitted to Contest #291

Warm liquid pours from the spout and into my teacup. As I hold it out for her, my palms grow hotter with the cups increasing weight. I can make out a faint green shade coming from the teapot. Steam rises, filling the room steadily with the smell of sage. She cuts the stream and sets the teapot down. The china against her wood coffee table makes a faint sound, one barely audible under the distant crashing of Atlantic ocean waves. Lei leans back in her seat that faces me, grabbing a notepad and pen. I admire the view of the ocean through floor...

20 likes 4 comments 4
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I'm awake!

Submitted to Contest #291

Trigger warnings: car crash, drowning. Dark clouds hung in the distance over the ocean. Waves were crashing on the hard-packed sand, much bigger than I’d ever seen. I was a passenger in my cousin’s old, yellow VW bus as she drove us along the low road that seemed it might get washed away by a strong high tide any day. We loved that road, and her bus, almost as much as the shore. Racing the storm, we wanted to reach our favorite rocky outcropping to watch it. Although we suspected the drive might be scary, those waves were utterly terrifying....

20 likes 2 comments 2
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Rumble Strips

Submitted to Contest #291

I am reminded that there is a duality to life. An inherent dichotomy to our nature. Two sides to the same coin. Darkness and light. We are conflicted. A constant disagreement shuffling around in a state of confused bickering. Yet we’re sold a pup and made to believe that we are one. Coherent. Together. A single being. We are given a name for this singularity of ours. A cursory label. Those around us use that label and we all think that is who we are. I am Adam, named after the first of my kind. A good, strong name. Pure. Steadfast. I have ne...

19 likes 4 comments 4
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Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Submitted to Contest #291

Sasha’s arm ached from the lack of motion, but she knew that even the slightest movement could bring instant death from a German Karbiner 98k rifle. She hadn't yet spotted an enemy sniper, but she believed that he was near, hidden somewhere in the rubble of her beloved city.A light snow fell, and Sasha recalled the childhood fun of catching the first winter snowflakes on her tongue until a series of muffled explosions and the chatter of machine gun fire quickly disrupted the cherished memory. Through the acrid smoke that had engulfed the cit...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Good Old Days

Submitted to Contest #291

I wake with a start and find myself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. I blink and rub my eyes. Where am I? My attention turns to the wallpaper decorated with delicate wild strawberries and the ornate wooden furniture tastefully placed around a bedroom I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen before. A noise brings my gaze to the bed and I startle when I realize I’m not alone. My bedmate rolls over and I suppress a gasp. Todd? I haven’t seen him since I broke up with him the day before I left for college. He was devastated. I was ready for new adventu...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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DANIELLE’S ENERGY PODS

Submitted to Contest #291

The night the enormous boom came, all the children at the playground scattered homeward. No one lingered. Everyone got up and left‌. Their moms ‌waited at the entrances to greet them. They got there before the rain intensified from a drizzle to a monsoon-like deluge of volume and duration.  The air raid horn blew, and they headed to the basement shelters. A genuine threat materialized. The drills they practiced at school weren’t in vain. Fancy that! Even while sheltering underground, the sounds of explosions reassured the townspeople th...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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The Bedroom

Submitted to Contest #291

Jake awoke to distant voices and sounds he didn't recognize. It must be those damn neighbours partying again! His bedroom was at the back of the house and it overlooked the neighbours patio, so he was used to the late parties and usually could sleep through the noise. Jake wanted to get up and yell out the window, but he just didn't have the energy. Jake's bedroom was his sanctuary, the place he could get away from it all. "The bedroom," as he liked to call it, was covered with poster's of his favourite bands, cars and of course some sw...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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Black Ice

Submitted to Contest #291

Amy’s mother had always told her to look out for black ice on the road when she drove, it was a killer, and she should always be careful to watch the road and catch it when it appeared. This need to constantly eyeball the surface before her gripped to her mind and never let go, deep into adulthood she would drive confidently all year and then, as soon as the cold set in, she refused to get behind the wheel of her car for any reason.Her boyfriend, Mikey, didn’t mind having to drive her everywhere in these times, but he for sure knew that one ...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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Echoes of Waking

Submitted to Contest #291

Veda counted heartbeats instead of seconds while the ferry crossed the strait toward Ithaka Island. Thirty-seven days since the fever dreams began. Eighty-three nights since she last slept without jerking awake, gasping from visions of a lighthouse.Rain pelted the deck. Other passengers huddled inside the cabin, but Vedas stayed at the rail, letting droplets blur the boundary between sea and sky. The odd crescent scar on her wrist—appeared the morning after her first dream—prickled beneath her watchband. Her doctor called it a stress reactio...

13 likes 11 comments 11
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Curls, Coils, and Chaos

Submitted to Contest #291

Keisha had always been at war with her hair. Not in a tragic, identity-crisis kind of way—more like a sitcom battle, with her coily strands playing the mischievous villain. She loved her natural hair, truly, but every twist-out, wash-and-go, and "quick" detangling session felt like negotiating peace with a nation that had declared independence decades ago. One humid Brooklyn morning, Keisha woke up, stared at her reflection, and sighed. Her hair had formed what she called "Defcon 4 Frizz." The satin bonnet she’d worn had clearly taken the ni...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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7 of Cups

Submitted to Contest #291

I must, but I don’t have to write prose in the style of Witold Gombrowicz at the creative writing course. I say: - Why not? It was decided that we’d come. Then he asks: - Huh? And will it be? I respond: - Yes, it will be! At the pastry shop, or Cofetterey, as we call it. He says: - Where?! I don’t change overnight. And he grumbles: - I don’t change like the wind blows. And he gets angry: - Who do you take me for? I am who I am. And continues: - The envoy, the inspiration, the guide, the daddy, little shit! I am the Representative of Prose, o...

13 likes 0 comments 0
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