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Write a story that includes the line “I don’t belong here” or “Don’t mind me.”

Posted in Short Story on Aug 29, 2025

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✍️ 77 stories

The Little Bear

Winner of Contest #318 🏆

My parents loved me. I knew they did. However, in their quest to remain young and relevant, they failed spectacularly to embrace that I would, inevitably, grow older. At some point, they would have to acknowledge the chubby toddler fat would give way to sprawling, awkward limbs, the dawning muscle of youth, the sinews of which would become the solid flesh of adolescence. From there, we were but the briefest amount of time away from when adolescence would become the teen years. I don't think they thought much about how my growing up would eve...

88 likes 66 comments 66
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A Shot in the Dark

Shortlisted for Contest #318 ⭐️

“Well, here’s how I see it,” said Amaryllis. “The trouble really began when Miss Nedry started to get romantic feelings for Professor Sinclair. Not one to be cooped up in his office all day, Professor Sinclair invited his new teaching assistant to join him for coffee while they went over the day’s lessons, and the poor girl was so moved by the gesture that when he asked her what she wanted, she simply stuttered that she would have whatever he did. Sinclair was a black triple-shot Americano man, while Miss Nedry self-consciously concealed a p...

28 likes 21 comments 21
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A Whimpering Roar

Submitted to Contest #318

His applause, instead of echoing off the walls backstage, soaked into the thick red curtains. Paul Blaggert’s hands started to hurt, so he stopped clapping. Lisa couldn’t have heard him, she was on stage taking her bows. But he knew that she heard it in her heart. “Paul! Stop staring and pull the curtain!” shout whispered Mrs. Golden, the stage director. He grabbed at the rope, and yanked on it. The cardinal drapery swished and swayed, and then Lisa’s hand pushed it aside, and gave Paul a big hug. “We did so well out there! Don’t you think w...

21 likes 10 comments 10
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Don’t Mind Me

Submitted to Contest #318

Don’t Mind Me The house fire had been the town’s salvation. Flames devoured the crumbling clapboard structure at the edge of Delhaven, painting the night sky in orange and black. The blast was so fierce it rattled windows three streets over. When firefighters finally smothered the last ember, they discovered little more than a husk of twisted beams and collapsed stone. In those ashes, the police claimed, were the remains of the monster who had haunted them for years: the Crimson Artist. For half a decade, his work had been displayed across a...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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Home, and Not Home

Submitted to Contest #318

Standing in this tiny airport, if you can even call it that, she was losing control. The backs of her eyes started to sting, blinking to focus, as she feigned hunting for something in the front pocket of her backpack. From the corner of her eye, she watched her boss’s truck kicking up dust from the gravel road as it peeled off back to the highway. She needed to get out of this building. It was suffocating her.Filling her lungs to steady herself, she stood tall and staggered towards the door, not wanting to draw the attention of the three oth...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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Where the Desert Keeps Her

Submitted to Contest #318

Most people only find the Moonlight Motel after they’ve already lost something important — time, a memory, someone they loved, or a version of themselves they can’t seem to properly grieve. It doesn’t show up on GPS. The road that leads to it isn’t paved, or even named. One moment you’re driving across the Mojave with sweat on your upper lip and static on the radio... and next thing you know, you blink and it’s there: a glowing oasis off the shoulder of nowhere, pulsing faintly under the weight of starlight. The air around it tastes like ozo...

17 likes 5 comments 5
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I don’t belong here…the bath…the room

Submitted to Contest #318

Title: I Don’t Belong Here⸻SPOTLIGHT on RITA.She sits in a simple chair, rosary beads in hand.The world beyond her voice is only suggested—light, shadow, faint sounds.⸻RITAThe lo-fi chalet alarm woke me that morning.Not jarring. Gentle.Like it knew my heart was too raw for anything else.I opened my eyes to a burnt-out candle by my bed—Divino Niño.It had gone out on its own, and I thought,of course it did.Friday.The day San Miguel takes the fight.So I prayed. Five mysteries, five intentions.One for the Pope and the Church.One for my parents.O...

16 likes 1 comment 1
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Mr. Mustache

Submitted to Contest #318

Cam Collier shields his eyes against the glare coming off the Sinclair Building.He checks his watch. It’s almost noon.On the roof of the skyscraper, Dickie Diamond, a light-hitting, tiny infielder for the Texas Rangers, is preparing to drop a baseball four hundred feet.Smiling at the curious crowd, Rowdy Robinson pats a first baseman’s glove, confident he’ll catch the ball. If he does, he and The Coogan Kid’s Memorial Fund will receive $25,000 from Pastel Aeronautics.Known as Mr. Mustache, the 6’ 2”, thirty-seven-year-old, seldom-used utilit...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Listaholic

Submitted to Contest #318

I was reflecting on how many people (particularly women) I know rely on lists. We played Who Knew the other day, and I had six excellent options. I needed to rank them from best to least favorable. Among the six items, I had French fries, hot sauce, sleeping in, mountains, etc. I opted for making lists. Lists help me relax. I feel overwhelmed by trying to keep everything in my head, and worrying about forgetting something takes up mental space. It's not just about how helpful it is; I felt almost breathless just thinking I couldn't make list...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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The House of Saint Etienne

Submitted to Contest #318

Don’t mind me, I’ll just stand here. Well, to be fair, “stand” may be a strong word. I guess “stay” would be more appropriate. It’s not as if I can move, right? But anyhow, this story isn’t about me. It kind of is…maybe, but it’s really about those who inhabited me. I guess it started around fifteen, no, twenty-five years ago. This cute old couple bought me from my previous owners and came to live within my walls. They were in love. They had been for a long time. He was quiet; she moved a lot. He stored his wine in my cellar and cut wood i...

15 likes 1 comment 1
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The Angry Ocean

Submitted to Contest #318

The beach doesn't care about my bare feet. This is the wrong time. Late Autumn. The wind creates lumps in the sand that look like dead bodies. There are no bodies now, living or dead. The bodies are home, working and driving and sleeping in their beds. They’ll be back, though. Alive. The beach isn’t a bed now. It’s not a place to rest. The sand accepts this simple fact and waits.But the ocean is always angry. He is a shark with his teeth out, row after row. People or no people, it’s all the same for him. A tortured force. He tumbles and ...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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Crystal View Hotel

Submitted to Contest #318

Crystal View Hotel Dreams, both in the literal sense and the figurative sense of the word, can be beautiful, wondrous things, but they can also be dangerous. In the figurative sense, Martin Luther King had a beautiful dream of equality for everyone, but a dickhead named Hitler had a dream about society that was not so equal. From the literal standpoint, they can be portals to worlds full of magic and wonder not unlike the world of Harry Potter, but nightmares can be windows to other more dangerous places. That was a lesson that came at grea...

14 likes 0 comments 0
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No Drama Queen Here.

Submitted to Contest #318

Stampede, or it felt like it could be. Caro had made it on time to Railway Central, but there was thick grey smoke lingering in the air. People were trying to turn back to reach the top exits, the commuter trains were all cancelled, ramped up in rows. No one was getting anywhere near their home suburbs that night in any hurry. "Stop panicking!" Caro tried to tell herself, as she could feel the familiar gasping for breath of her mostly forgotten anxiety disorder. Finally, she arrived at the exit, and started wondering how to get home. The neo...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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I Believe

Submitted to Contest #318

When he told me I was so very pleased. I was also confused and in that confusion, I realised I was scared. This inexplicable feeling of fear clutched at my heart with ice cold fingers making me feel nauseous with the bad eventualities I regularly torture myself with. However often you go into battle, the fear never leaves you. All you can do is embrace it and make of it an ally and a friend. Learn from it. Relate to it. Comfort it with your actions despite its protestations. You see, every step he takes out into the world now is a step away ...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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Essenash's Guide to Blood Curses

Submitted to Contest #318

I have learned in my extensive travels that, in the East at least, it is customary to begin an epic tale with an invocation of one’s muses. To that effect, I invoke the name of Essenash:Essenash the Spectacular. Essenash, (formerly) of the Flying Citadel.He of the Golden Bough, found via miracle by Lithilin the Splendid in the divine ancestral lands of the Procyonids across the Great Ocean.To him I dedicate this, my autobiography.I shall begin at the beginning. Not my beginning, but the beginning of everything: The antecedent of everyone who...

13 likes 8 comments 8
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