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Write a story with the line “Don’t you remember me?” or “You haven’t changed…”

Posted in Short Story on Aug 22, 2025

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✍️ 93 stories

Your Heart Will Always Be Mine

Submitted to Contest #317

I still remember his number by heart -- the heart that he had breathed life into for a whole year before strangling it dry. My bloody fingers tremble as I punch his digits one by one, slowly, deliberately. I'm at a pay phone outside of Memorial Hospital. It's pouring outside the booth. The rain has comingled with the tears on my cheeks. Streaks of caked blood cover my face, my clothes, my hands. Neither the tears nor the rain have sufficiently washed away evidence of the carnage I have just witnessed. "Pick up pick up pick up," I mutter, my ...

34 likes 27 comments 27
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Downloading Hemingway

Submitted to Contest #317

Downloading Hemingway When someone dies, people bring things. Mostly, they bring food and alcohol, but even edibles and Xanax get passed around like breath-mints these days. Food you will never eat is on every surface above the waist. Personally, you’d prefer cash. These people who hold repast in their McMansions do so for fear of being robbed should they be away for any length of time. They hire a house-sitter for the service. They do not even submit an obituary until after the fact; just a very sentimental post on Facebook the next day, of...

33 likes 33 comments 33
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Way-Back Machine

Submitted to Contest #317

Way-Back Machine Was it my imagination or was it real? Was it truly him or did I only want it to be him? No. I didn't want it to be him. That would be too embarrassing.It was a casual shopping day so long ago I've forgotten many details. A common, at the time anyway, name brand large department store. Not even there anymore. Turned into a health clinic, I think. Not important.I was there alone. Where were all my kids? In school, I suppose. Who can get any serious shopping done with four kids in tow? Not me. Anyway, there I was in the drug st...

30 likes 18 comments 18
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Three Sancastles

Submitted to Contest #317

“You look worn out,” Scott said, stricken by the water dripping from his wife’s face. He would never have called it sweat – not for Ellie. “What do you expect?” she asked. “We’re in the middle of a heatwave.” The air was thick and oppressive, the fan failing to stir it. Even the curtains hung limp, too weary to move. Scott was heading to the fridge for ice cubes when she said the name aloud, as if testing where it might land. “Johnny.” Hearing it, Scott reeled. But with time running out, Ellie was reshaping boundaries. “What are you going to...

25 likes 33 comments 33
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Waiting

Submitted to Contest #317

A soft breeze brushed against her bare arms as Lillis busily cleared dirty dishes and arranged chairs that had been left crooked as customers had gotten up to leave. She wiped the dark wood surface of the tables and then pushed a broom around the stone tiles. Customers had filled tables as soon as they were vacated all afternoon, but the patio was finally empty. Except for the woman with the perfectly-styled dark blonde hair, shot through with white, who sat facing the steps down to the sidewalk, a glass of wine on the table at her elbow. Li...

24 likes 7 comments 7
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Resting Place

Submitted to Contest #317

Hailey was smoking on the back deck when she heard the sound of the party swell louder as the sliding glass door opened and closed behind her. She knew it was Milo by the sound of his boots on the wood deck, and sure enough, he appeared beside her, reaching for her cigarette as though four years hadn’t passed since the last time she’d seen him. In his other hand was a half-eaten, whole peach - juice dripping down his wrist. Since whole fruits are not typically the kind of food a host puts out for guests, it occurred to her that Milo was like...

22 likes 3 comments 3
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I Think I Love You

Submitted to Contest #317

I Think I Love You There’s a poster of David Cassidy on my bedroom wall, between a white MFI wardrobe and a bookshelf with blue-spined Mallory Towers and my mum’s copies of The Chalet School. A pack of Dr White’s Number One’s is on my bed, and a girl wrapped in the pink candlewick bedspread is clutching her belly. Of course, I remember; nineteen-seventy-three. She’s me – almost thirteen and wallowing in the misery of her first period, and the isolation of a friendless child. David is as gorgeous as he ever was. ‘You haven’t chan...

21 likes 20 comments 20
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… There You Are

Submitted to Contest #317

Tuesday, 28 April 2020 My brother’s wife sent an unsigned email today. This happens to be Junior's forty-first birthday. But my father couldn’t even let him have that on his own. Joan:Your father passed away this morning.Thought you should know.Funeral’s on the 5th.This is not an invitation. They married five years ago and are raising three-year-old twins—one of each. The kids are cuter than buttons, though they haven't met me in person. I haven’t had contact with family members in a decade—phone, email, text, or the newfangled Zoom meeting....

19 likes 7 comments 7
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Ākepa’s Mele

Submitted to Contest #317

Warning: You are about to be dropped into the middle of the sea. When I was a keiki, Papa taught me to hear the dead. He led me to the lanai, where olapa leaves whispered, bamboo knocked like drums in the wind, and birds sang as if the forest made mele just for us.My bare feet stuck to hot boards, splinters biting my toes. Flies buzzed over bruised mangos down in the yard, where earth was a kapakahi of color—gold goop mashed into red dirt, the air thick with sweet rot.Papa, midnight hair woven down to his calves, tilted his chin to the tree...

18 likes 17 comments 17
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Don’t You Remember Me?

Submitted to Contest #317

Don’t You Remember Me? The scent of grease clung to Eli’s clothes, seeping into his skin no matter how many showers he took. The restaurant where he worked was never truly clean—tables sticky with syrup, carpets faintly damp from old spills, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. He wiped down a booth for the third time, not because it needed it, but because movement was the only thing that distracted him from the gnawing emptiness in his chest. A vibration in his apron pocket pulled him out of his trance. He pulled out his phone, expecting a ...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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AGING GRACEFULLY…OR NOT!

Submitted to Contest #317

<Remembers the Banters? Yes, they’re still alive and back to lighten your day with some dialogue-only humor. Comments welcomed and appreciated. Enjoy!> Matthew, I’m really pissed off! Christophe? Who’s Christophe, Martha. I’ve never heard of him. Oh Lord, give me strength! Matthew, turn up your hearing aid for heavens sake. I’m two feet away from you and you can’t hear me? Or is it you don’t want to hear me? Which one? Martha give me a minute, love, to adjust my hearing aid and catch up with you. I’m sitting here quietly, reading my p...

16 likes 21 comments 21
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Shadows in the Rain

Submitted to Contest #317

The city had a way of swallowing people whole. Claire knew that, had always known it, but she had convinced herself that she’d outrun the shadows. Rain slicked streets reflected neon signs in fractured, trembling colors, and the wind carried the wail of sirens, the hum of traffic, and the occasional shout from someone unlucky enough to be caught outside.She rounded the corner near the old warehouse district, the storm having come without warning, and the umbrella in her hand barely keeping her coat dry. Then she saw him.A figure leaned casua...

15 likes 4 comments 4
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Swine

Submitted to Contest #317

My hand traced the polished oak of the casket. I refused to look inside. I was too afraid. At that age, death was impossible—until a peer proved it wasn’t. I cringed, pulling back my hand.The priest rose to the pulpit. He rested a palm on each end, then side-eyed me, an indirect way of telling me to sit down.I walked to the pew in the front row, which was weird. I thought the reserved seats would’ve been for the Harpers—after all, it was their son who died—yet they sat behind us.I squinted at them, questioning with my eyes, expecting a respo...

13 likes 8 comments 8
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Willameana Gilbrey

Submitted to Contest #317

You Haven’t Changed, By Willameana Gilbrey, she read. Holding the book up for her friend to see.She slowly sounded out each syllable of the name.“Surely that’s not a real name” she asked her friend.“That’s what it says, you can clearly see it” her friend snapped at her. She didn’t want to be at the book fair, but her friend had insisted they com in for a look.“I know that’s what it says, but it doesn’t sound real” she placed the book back onto the stand where it was being grandly displayed.“What does she even write, I ask you?” Her friend sn...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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The Best Revenge Is an Afterlife Well-Lived

Submitted to Contest #317

The nursing home’s windows cast pools of light on the street like puddles of luminescent dog pee.Albert Wilkinson made a slight ‘Hm’ noise in his throat. So, this was where his nemesis lived. The great Big Mean Hughie. It wasn’t as grand as Al had expected Hughie Tyler to end up in – gold, marble, gargoyles, guards. But he supposed one had to surrender such luxuries when one became a burden on society. Or, instead, your children surrendered them for you. He craned his neck and searched the facade.Panes of glass gazed back at him. Robed figur...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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