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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about a character who smells something familiar and is instantly taken back to the first moment they smelled it.

Posted in Short Story on Oct 26, 2022

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 219 stories

“Daisies” by Justine Laboriante

Submitted to Contest #61

It was again the time of every year. I was never a fan of any flowers. Thinking that it was too cliché to like flowers because of how women would like it- "but I am a girl", I said to myself. But I knew to myself that I am not the any kind of girl that would typically love anything unless there's something about it. It was a typical Sunday morning. Woke up with my alarm feeling irritated since I forgot to turn it off because I thought I had to work, but luckily, its a rest day. I went downstairs to make a cup of coffee to make myself go...

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“The other half of it” by Siú Valery

Submitted to Contest #61

A long time ago I left my hometown Caracas to live in the countryside and now I have returned. Over forty years passed and, although the city looks the same, many an old building has been demolished and a new one built, others have been just renovated giving them a nicer look. I was enjoying my recent retirement and since I had nothing better to do but sightsee, I decided to take a long walk from Chacaito, where I was residing at the moment to Petare, almost nine kilometers, something that I did almost daily during my preteen years, while l...

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“Blooming Love” by Siana McKechnie

Submitted to Contest #61

Sarah walked to school, sipping her extra dark coffee, the hot liquid burning her tongue. She winced and blew on the coffee. Today was going to be a long day. She listened to the cheerful birds chirping and the silent crunch of the leaves beneath her feet. she glanced at some beautiful pink flowers and stopped, smelling them deeply. Her mind went back to the past. She was 15 then. She smelled the flowers and sat down on the bench. That's when she first saw him. His thick dark hair waving in the gentle breeze, his eyes focused on the book he ...

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“The Campfire” by Kiryn Bell

Submitted to Contest #61

The night was beautiful and full of peace. The stars sparkled above her head as they never would in the city and the crickets filled the forest with song. Dyani sat on her mat and stared down at the open locket in her hand. A small picture showed her mother was slightly in front of her father looking up while his arms were around her and his head tilted down toward her. Even with the small picture, she saw the warmth in her mother’s eyes and the sparkle of joy in her father’s. She took in a deep breath, it had been a long time since she had...

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“The Call of the Forest” by Shanna Adams

Submitted to Contest #61

I walk the same way every morning. It's so ingrained in my body that I don't even have to pay attention to where I am going anymore. I pop in my headphones, and off I go! I space out and drift into my own little world as I make my way to work.  Today went quite a bit differently. As I plodded along in my zombie state, a flowery scent touched my nose ever so slightly. Its vague subtlety awakened my senses enough to force me back into life. I stopped and looked around. Everything looked normal. Well, I think it does. I don't remember an...

1 comment 1
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“The Man Hidden By Light” by J.M. Topp

Submitted to Contest #61

Harsh light from a torch awoke me from my slumber. The gatekeeper had probably risen early this morning searching for a bite to eat from the larder as per usual. I yawned creaking my wax limbs and shaking the soot from wick atop my head. He would usually visit thirty minutes before the break of dawn but there was an odd look on his hardened face this morning. He was worried about something. I sniffed the air as he passed me. Sulfur and gunpowder. I felt chills through my brass base. He smelt of a siege. A few replacements ago, some sixty ...

2 comments 2
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“That Smell” by David Dicaire

Submitted to Contest #61

That Smell Howard Small waited for the rumbling bus as it chugged down the street. It reminded the octogenarian of himself, slow, steady and making all kinds of noise. The vehicle eased onto the stop and the big doors opened. It took some effort, but he managed to climb the steps and waved his pass. He didn’t have to because the driver was very familiar with him. It was Wednesday, around three-thirty and Harold was going grocery shopping. This was a weekly ritual. He shuffled along and there didn’t seem to be an...

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“Soleil” by M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #61

BREAKING: DEPOSED DUFRESNE HEIR SPOTTED IN THE WAKE OF MURDER SCENE. He pinned the newspaper to the concrete ledge with a finely padded knee, a humid summer wind tugging at the headline with a fevered panic Alec Dufresne had not possessed in months. An eight-month-old picture grinned up at him, his clean-shaven face and golden curls greyed by the paper’s composition, bright blue eyes white on the page. His brother stood behind him in a matching suit, beaming like he’d won the lottery. Their faces were so alike that it was a wonder this p...

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“Somewhere near you ” by Monika Thapa

Submitted to Contest #61

It has been years since I am a teenager now. I am here alive and breathing but she’s not. I still remember that sweet peach smell she gave off. I tried looking for every product with the peach smell but none of them were like the enchanting smell she gave off. But who am I kidding with? I am standing here alone at the bus station; the exact location where she had her accident.  I wouldn’t have blurted out my feelings for her if I had known what was about to happen that day. Only if I knew that my life was going to be tangled right her...

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“The Smell ovf Rain” by Gloria Sendelbaugh

Submitted to Contest #61

Write about a character who smells something familiar and is instantly taken back to the first moment they smelled it. The Scent of Rain -       Gloria Sendelbaugh I am an older woman who has reconciled that as I age my universe becomes smaller.  That I can get in and out of a grocery store quickly remains one of my expectations. But today I am slowed down sitting behind the steering wheel of my car in a food market parking lot waiting for a spring rainstorm to move on and aggravate someone else...

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“The Grass Lady” by Sarah Elkashief

Submitted to Contest #61

  She sits motionless in her armchair. She hears her neighbors shouting, and laughing, simply alive. She stares at her book of Virginia Woolf’s The Room of One’s Own and never turns the page over for the last hour. Is she reading? Is she pretending reading? Is it just an escape from her reality? Is it just fantasy?     She is half dead, half alive. She remembers that she has been in this room for 2 years now and has never been out. Her room is familiar to you as if it were the real version of Vincent Van Gough’s...

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“Vienna ” by Cherie Friedman

Submitted to Contest #61

Vienna P O V: Keavy 2020 "Oh, dear God!" The world is spinning fast and dangerous as I close my eyes to block out the sickening dizziness. "Your warm, sweetie." the smooth, cool hands of my wife Lindsay grace my face and neck. "I'm sorry you feel so sick, sweetie. I hate seeing you this ill. Don't try to sit up, honey, I'm going to slide behind you." Lindsay gently slides behind my aching sore body laying my head in her lap; my head is spinning, pounding in vigorous expedite. My stomach is twisting in knots, shivers, and hot flashes p...

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“Cleaner Air.” by Ashley Guevara

Submitted to Contest #61

January 23: The hollows. Personally, I hate drawn out introductions, but I guess this is the beginning of the end of the world. To whoever is reading this, that is if we don’t all end in flames, my name is Phoebe Cathrine and I lost most of my senses three years ago. My eyesight is completely gone, doomed to throw me into a void of sightless behaviors, such as burning my fingertips and dropping various items that might never be returned to me. My friend Miles Reyes helps me with tasks that are far too embarrassing to list. My sight dog Hades...

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“Medallions of Wonderful” by Mary Capper

Submitted to Contest #61

Medallions of Wonderful Short story by Mary The old battle axe clomped around in the room above, thunderous in her enormous sensible shoes while we cowered below in the damp and rank of the dungeon plotting her death. It may be my most vivid recollection of Milly. My collaborator, at the tender age of five, was my sister Julie. Banished to the bowels of the house for having behaved like children for the third day in a row, we resumed deliberations and hypothesized that a simple nudge at the top step would send the old girl p...

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“Red Nectar” by Tom Williams

Submitted to Contest #61

Rose absolutely despised being a vampire.  For one, ageing incredibly slowly was actually not at all what it was cut out to be. You see, it provided you with a lot more chances to forget things, with Rose’s few memories of her early life now only shadows. Not being able to leave the house during the day was also horrible. She had loved rambling the pre-civil-war countryside in her youth, exploring valleys and glens and woodlands, but for four-hundred-and-a-bit winters, springs, summers, and autumns now she had effectively been housebou...

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