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Start or end your story with a heatwave announcement.

Posted in Summer on Aug 2, 2024

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✍️ 34 stories

All That Could be Said.

Submitted to Contest #262

 “… thanks, Tom. Heads up, folks, the National Weather Service has issued a heat warning for Fort Worth and Dallas, as well as surroundin’ counties, as you can see…”Norah looked up from her phone, alarmed.“… highs of 120 over the next week’r so…”She was up in an instant, rushing for the front door, grabbing keys from a dish and hat from a hook.“Norah? Where’r you goin’?”This from Clyde, her husband, whose head had appeared around the corner from the kitchen.“Checking on dad,” she said, already half out the door.His brows knitted a foreh...

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The Restless Prince

Submitted to Contest #262

“Hear ye! Hear ye! Your attention please!” The official kingdom crier stood at the front of the room, dressed from head to toe in the palace’s royal colors of purple and yellow. All eyes were upon him. No one spoke or moved. Everyone was simply too hot to do much of anything. The large gathering hall, used for meetings with dignitaries and the kingdom’s royal subjects, was particularly stifling. Although it had a high, vaulted ceiling, the room was airless due to thick gray stone walls that heated up like an oven. Moreover, the room’s n...

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The Last Heatwave

Submitted to Contest #262

The sun was just barely peeking over the top of the Cedar Rock Mountains, casting a fiery glow over the sleepy town of Wynnemiller. The morning dew was still thick on the grapevines that crept up the town sign – proudly announcing, “Welcome to Wynnemiller, Innovation Central!” Static cracked on an old radio as the familiar voice of DJ Lynn Sparkling filled the silence. “It’s going to be a scorcher today, y’all. The local weather service has issued a severe heat advisory for the tri-county area, starting this Friday through the weekend. Temp...

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Bubblegum Bat-paste

Submitted to Contest #262

Hanging upside down for twenty-four minutes really had to suck. The thought made Brady’s head swim—probably because all the blood in his body had rushed there two days ago when he swung the backs of his knees around the monkey bars and dangled for at least two whole minutes, at least by his friend Vinnie’s count.  But Vinnie was a stupid bullshitter who lied a lot; he underestimated things that made other people look good. And what was absolutely not good was that the metal had only taken those “two minutes” to burn red stripes into Bra...

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Do not Turn Up the Heat

Submitted to Contest #262

"Due to the extreme heat forecasted for the next few days, cooling centres will be open across the city. Please visit our website for locations and hours of operation."Tailed Flower, a girl, is studying for the Panhellenic exams to enter the university. The study started two years ago with private lessons and group lessons. In the mornings she was at school, in the evenings she was at the tutorial schools, and she was studying at night and noon. Two years and the only thing she could hear was: study, sleep, eat. the exams are always in June....

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The Glory of Nothingness

Submitted to Contest #262

The swallows dipped and dive-bombed, feathered pilots dog-fighting across a cloudless sky. My skin was sun-kissed, burnished gold in the unexpected July heatwave. This was England. Temperatures above 21 degrees Celsius were not something we understood. There was nothing to be done but spend the long days wearing a big hat and big glasses, posing by a turquoise pool in a motif reminiscent of Golden Age Hollywood.  This glamourous visage was in fact staged in Surrey, in a corner of lush growth tucked away in the garden of England. The onl...

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Leaving Las Vegas

Submitted to Contest #262

Trigger Warning – Murder, domestic violence, alcoholism, explicit language= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =NVC003-090000-/O.CON.KVEF.FA.Y.0035.000000T0000Z-280806T0000Z//00000.N.ER.000000T0000Z.000000T0000Z.000000T0000Z.OO/Clark NV- 855 AM PDT Thu Aug 6 2028 /1155 AM EDT Thu Aug 6 2028/ ...EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM PDT /11 PM EDT/ Thu Aug 13... * WHAT...Extreme high temperatures and unusually strong monsoonal flow will lead to **EXTREMELY DANGEROUS** conditions with dew points near 72 and record heat ind...

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Nine Lives

Submitted to Contest #262

Carolyn – “Tilly, Tilly come on then, nice puss, come on Tilly, foodies, come on now, come on.” She shook the bag of biscuits and rattled the bag of treats. Nothing. No Tilly. “Bloody cat, this is serious, where the hell is she,” she mumbled. Carolyn had been all over the house and garden, for half an hour, rattling the bag and calling out. She looked in the cat's usual hidey holes. But there was no sign in any of them.  Little bitch, she thought, she must have found a new one. Typical, any other day it wouldn’t matter but today, o...

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Heat Wave

Submitted to Contest #262

In the town of Steam Pump, known for its scorching summers, the unwelcome news of a heat wave had spread among the residents. With temperatures usually in the high 90s, the projected temperatures exceeding 100 and reaching the scorching 110s caught everyone’s attention.While checking the time on her cell phone screen, Marcy turned the ignition key, putting an end to the supply of cool air pumping into the now empty transit bus. Even with the A/C unit running full blast, the interior of the vehicle was like a sauna; only ten degrees cooler th...

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What Happened To Summer?

Submitted to Contest #262

“…Crank up those AC’s, it’s hot out here!”The heat was UN. BEAR. A. BLE. I sat backwards on a kitchen chair with my sweaty chin rested against the headrest. Dizziness engulfed my head while I spun myself round and round for air. My sister laid flat on the counter beside the radio as she fanned herself with a pink folding fan.“…temperatures reaching about—Huh?” The radio broadcast continued, “Hold on folks, we were just informed—NWS issues a warning for an extreme heat-”“Phbbth…!”My little sister, clearly uninterested, blew raspberries. She t...

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The End of the World, Together

Submitted to Contest #262

“You’ve heard it right folks, we have an even larger heatwave coming to hit the south this weekend, once again breaking the previous heat record. While we’ve had temperatures in the high 100’s this week, we’re gonna get up into the teens of the hundreds reaching at least 115 today.” “Man again? Texas is getting a little too hot for me,” said Melanie, my wife. We were just recently married three months ago but have been together for a little over three years. And she was right, it was getting way too hot. “We might have to move to Alaska or s...

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Flares of Exodus

Submitted to Contest #262

"Good evening, this is the headlines for tonight. Our top story: humanity's final chance for survival. In a historic and unprecedented effort, millions of people are set to leave Earth aboard massive colony ships as a catastrophic solar flare threatens to scorch our planet with a brutal heatwave set to scorch the earth. The International Space Agency, in collaboration with global governments, will send some 10 million to ensure our species' future on 100 potentially habitable planets. Cryo-sleep technology, still in its experimental stages, ...

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Parched

Submitted to Contest #262

Mason turned, showing off a dopey wide grin. He shouted over: ‘Goddamn nothing! Don’t worry Til! You just know one of these dumps is hiding a few bottles.’ His arm swung outwards, fingers stabbing through the blistering air at the next house over. ‘Pull yourself together Mason!’ Tilly replied. ‘You heard the guards: “Record heatwave”, as in the worst of the century…were you even listening?’In this moment he seemed more puppet than human, and the sun pulled all the strings now, leaving him to flail around with unpredictable rhythm. Tilly...

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The Sun

Submitted to Contest #262

July 19, 4324It had been a while now; no one in our town had seen the sun's warm light overcome the clouds, or the sky a shade of blue. The sky has been forever gray, the air forever cold, and the sun was hiding, retired it seemed, for a long time. As the days went by with each snow and each hail that fell from the sky like tears of the sun, many, too, shed tears for warmth; tired of the cold and longing for something different. Miles away from civilization, the endless abyss of white became our unchanging view. It seemed impossible to get b...

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We’ve all been dammed.

Submitted to Contest #262

The screen buzzed on, and the reporter mumbling behind his Mask. All eyes behind the Masks went to the screen, and the ones that weren’t were the dead ones. The mourge became silent, as if the silence before was screaming. “Laudate omnes gentes laudante” The reporter stopped moving entirely.The whole mourge spoke in unison, reciting the words that had been burned into their bodies and minds. “Magnificat in secula”The reporter moved once more. “Et anima mea laudate” And once again, the mourge spoke in unison.“Magnificat in secu...

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