Write a story that includes the line “Fate is resourceful.”

Posted in Short Story on Oct 25, 2024

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✍️ 77 stories

“In the Wake of Silence” by D.J. Schriefer

Submitted to Contest #274

Jacob Miller had never owned much. He was the seventh generation farmer for a stretch of land in the middle of nowhere Kansas. He often found himself gazing out into what locals called the Three Horizons. North, East, and south was nothing more than sea of golden wheat with a long road to nowhere running through the Western side.One day, toward the end of summer, Jacob ventured out into his vast field with a bad feeling. You know how sometimes people can feel storms coming because of the pressure on their joints? Jacob was like that with inv...

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“How the cookie crumbles” by Ramesh Matham

Submitted to Contest #274

The diamond twinkles, dancing to the flicker of naked flame of the oil lamps. It reflects light back also onto the face of the black granite idol. Idol of the god Murugan, the presiding deity of the Chellur Murugan temple. The diamond, the size of a raisin, is embedded in the head of the gold-plated wooden mace in the hand of Lord Murugan. I stand there transfixed, stupefied by the diamond’s beauty. It is speaking to me. Winking, naughtily mockingly. Like it was snapping its fingers, crooking its index finger challenging me to come and take ...

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“Confessions of a Time Traveler” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #274

The alias I have used for the past 25 years is not my real name. When I was an active agent I was sworn to silence but now I am free to tell the story of my travel to the past, the advantages it gave me in work, money and relationships, and the nightmare when it was taken away. I was a low-level operative whose safehouse and reporting location was a foreclosed textile building in downtown Richmond, Virginia. I would always return from various cities to this building using my key; the lower f...

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“Rivals' Gambit” by AJ McKenna

Submitted to Contest #274

It takes hours longer than it should to discover the violently shattered body of Juliet Wyndham. It stormed the night before and the late-fall air still hangs in a stubborn fog over the cooling earth. The few early risers walk past without sensing anything out of place. No one knows she is missing, much less lays dying on the ground. The world takes no notice when she stops breathing. Finally, the sun hovers over the horizon just enough to illuminate the broken form and the blood shining below a cloud of gold-lit fog. After that, it doesn’t...

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“The Sailor ” by Shaaista A.

Submitted to Contest #274

It’s incredible how fate is resourceful and the lives of people intertwine in the strangest of ways. Everyone had heard of Christopher in Sundown Bayou, a small fishing town off the coast of southern New Zealand. As a boy, he’d roamed the village on his little yellow bicycle, sometimes alone and wandering and sometimes selling his mother’s homemade jars of preserves. At fifteen, he had sold his bicycle for a small sum, bought a second hand pair of sailing shoes and wasn’t seen again for seventeen years. Years passed and some things cha...

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“Transit” by Adelino Carbonera

Submitted to Contest #274

The sky was a deep blue when the ferry entered the channel that cut through the lagoon. We were sailing between two dawns: on one side, the moon was setting; on the other, dawn was rising, tinting the sky with pink hues. Zaraqadir was no longer just a whiteness on the low coast; I had arrived in the radiant East.I saw minarets, mosques, and palm trees appear. Trains passed along the shore on their way to Goletta. Leaning on the railing, I felt an unparalleled sense of well-being, as if I were being reborn into a new life, in a time paced mor...

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“Cost of a Human Mind” by Kelly Drake

Submitted to Contest #274

Come, my darling child, and let me tell you a story. Yes, get comfortable. Snuggle into the warmth of your chair—or don’t. Don’t listen to me at all, if it suits you more, I suppose. You have free will, after all. Our hero, on the other hand, did not. Well, not exactly. Pacisor was a fine gentleman. He was the picture of perfection. If I may, I’d say he was also incredibly cunning. He had everything a man could want. He had knowledge greater than even the king’s advisor. His riches ran like syrup down his stairs. But, oh, his blood ran even ...

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“What Hides Beneath the Mud” by Laurie Jordan

Submitted to Contest #274

The mudslide came down the river, crept over its edges and stretched its arms like octopus tendrils out into the neighborhoods. Singular streams, rolling mercury, traced the cracks in the center of the road, filling them with its precious collected items along the way. A vile of medication in a pothole, a contact lens case snuggled into the yellow reflector – Ode to the champions of sight! The orange construction cone upside down in the ditch – a mud ice cream cone for those who liked to press the sweet chocolate treat down with their tongue...

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“Erase the Past” by David Dean

Submitted to Contest #274

Jose Manganes, associate professor at Lima University on social anthropology, spoke to an attentive class of undergraduates,‘Good afternoon, everyone! Today, I want to pose a question that may seem bold, even a bit extreme: What if you, as budding scientists and thinkers, could invent a time machine with a singular mission—to go back and erase the Nazca lines from history? Now, this mission may sound drastic, even sacrilegious, but there are compelling, and very real, reasons that governments might find such an idea worth pursuing. So let’s ...

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“After Actaeon” by David B

Submitted to Contest #274

Please note: contains brief but explicit sexual assault and non-explicit but plot-central violence. Fate is resourceful. The fates are resourceful, they have to be, with so little to work with: one eye shared between three, with vision that sees just barely into the future, not further than the end of your nose; no ears, unable to hear pleas sent to them; just enough fine spiderwebby thread to keep time moving forwards, as long as they occasionally unpick and reuse what came before. This is why history repeats, dead end stories spun back int...

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“The Dandolo Theatre House” by Deniz Aktaş

Submitted to Contest #274

I remember the times when my mother and father figured out that I had a talent in literary arts. They’d say that my name is written in the stars, bound to shine and haunt as if I was some kind of a Shakesperean newborn. How inversely the fate could turn after all? My world was not ought to be a stage but the stage was ought to be my world. Tragedy could made me bleed on paper and nail on me on the stage. Back then I did not know, I was actually fated to live tragic endings rather than to write them. There would lay upon a voice in my ears th...

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“October at Tricklestone's” by Sally Gillie

Submitted to Contest #274

October at Tricklestone’s Tricklestone’s Antiques was in a building so old it was an antique itself. The store had been in my dad’s family for three generations, starting with my great-great-grandpa Merritt Tricklestone. It began as a general store, but at some point the family decided to have a go at selling old stuff. The place loomed at the higher end of First Street in Cadyville, a small sleepy town nestl...

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“Monster Resources” by Lynn Petko

Submitted to Contest #274

Monster Resources Not far down on The River, way up high, there’s a place you can’t get to by boat because the surrounding cliffs might get you first. Into the side of one of these cliffs, you can see, spanning an area 500-foot long, a winged image in flight etched into the rock face. If you’re not too afraid of the buckshot that rains down maiming or blinding you from these cliffs or the boulder-laced rapids drowning you, you might get there. You can try to scale these cliffs, only to slice your way through the fog and foliage that pounce u...

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“Thank you wave.” by Hannah Orr

Submitted to Contest #274

Finals hadn’t been over more than 48 hours before Sonny was barefoot on her beach again. She would have been back sooner if her cross-country bus hadn't gotten a flat no more than 20 miles out of the Manila city center. You don’t hop on a bus in the Philippines and expect to get anywhere on time. Despite her thick black hair sticking to her neck and having to sit with her backpack in the only space for her feet to go, she was relaxed knowing she was en route to her home island for the summer. The tourists fly but the locals take the bus, the...

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“Better Demons” by Garrett Hillman

Submitted to Contest #274

“Will this be my fate, Elias?” The pale woman asked, her partner holstering his revolver. She tried to ignore the body. He had fired four shots. Each one deadly, but it took four to do the job. How can he be so calm, she thought, as he wiped blood from his face. The werewolf hadn’t even fully transformed and managed to pin him to the ground. Even still it’s nothing to him. “I feel like I’m just rolling stones uphill.” “Didn’t you use to say Fate is resourceful?” Elias said, and picked his nose and spat. She thinks too much about Fate. ...

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Write a story that includes the line “Fate is resourceful.”

Submissions are closed

✍️ 77 stories

“In the Wake of Silence” by D.J. Schriefer

“How the cookie crumbles” by Ramesh Matham

“Confessions of a Time Traveler” by Len Rely

“Rivals' Gambit” by AJ McKenna

“The Sailor ” by Shaaista A.

“Transit” by Adelino Carbonera

“Cost of a Human Mind” by Kelly Drake

“What Hides Beneath the Mud” by Laurie Jordan

“Erase the Past” by David Dean

“After Actaeon” by David B

“The Dandolo Theatre House” by Deniz Aktaş

“October at Tricklestone's” by Sally Gillie

“Monster Resources” by Lynn Petko

“Thank you wave.” by Hannah Orr

“Better Demons” by Garrett Hillman

🌟 Similar prompts

Center your story on a character filled with love and fear in equal measure.

Use a personal memory to craft a ghost story.

Write a story where a creature turns up in an unexpected way.

Center your story around a childhood fear that – as much as you try to shake it – still resonates in adulthood.

Contest #274

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

406

Contest entries

120

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

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