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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about a character experiencing independence for the first time.

Posted in Teens on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 63 stories

“Rum & Coke” by Amy St. Pierre

I stood alone in an empty apartment. Actually, it was my apartment now, but my brain hadn’t absorbed that part yet. I don’t even remember signing the lease.The floors of the apartment were scuffed hardwood. I was one of many tenants who had walked on these floors over the years, and it showed. I had no furniture, so my steps echoed throughout the apartment. I’d been mumbling to myself under my breath, talking myself into my life, and I stopped because hearing my own voice repeating in the empty rooms was too strange and jarring. Th...

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“Just you and me” by Yoomi Ari

“It’s you. I’m telling you, it is you.” Katie announced whilst concentrating on Gemma’s puzzled face.“What is me?” I answered in response as I picked at my toast.“You are too scared of following your rules that you’ve forgotten yourself.” Uttered Katie.“What rules? I haven’t made any rules,” I sighed, knowing she was right.Katies eyes snaked and slithered along the list set on my fridge. The boldest of them all was, “No Boyfriend!” Covering my face in response, she rubbed my back, “Fine Gemma, no talk ...

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“The Sound of Peter” by Tori Routsong

Bright, bright, bright. It was always too bright, always bright, always grating, grating at the back of his eyes, in the back of his mind. Peter no longer squinted. The lights that lined the room bored into his brain, boring and drilling, but Peter no longer squinted.The window, the singular window, told him it wasn’t food-time yet, but he couldn’t help but wait, shivering, by the door slot. She would come soon—or maybe not. Time didn’t exist in his blinding cell, not until the sky outside the window slit turned dark. When he stood...

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“Free Nehal” by Waverley Stark

The first day on campus is a happy one, full of smiles and prophecies of what is to come. Roommates greet and hug, and friends meet one another again cheerfully. There are groups and clubs parked on the lawn, shouting to join this acapella crowd, or the writer’s gang, or the DJ booth. Professors come out to greet the parents in their tweed jackets. The students themselves wander around in awe.

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“The Big Book.” by Rima ElBoustani

I live inside my little world, where knowledge is imbibed, inscribed from alchemist to man, and I read my big Book of Human Bodies with a keen and able heart. I glance at the pages, as my childhood companion turns them over, one by one. The crisp, clean paper makes noiseless progress as it evokes efficiency and imparts the knowledge printed on its white pages. I’m eager for every word I read. I especially love those pages ripe with information on the body and on medicine. We pore over the text, chatting as we do. There are ima...

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“A Case Study” by Kyle Johnson

Alexander R. Turkington. “The Turk.” I remember him. When I was a middle school boy, saying the name––those two simple syllables––was enough to evoke awe in our Southern neighborhood. The town was home to the University of Kentucky, and a hunger for national titles manifested itself in the prospect of cultivating a local high school player who would be sent into the powerful, lucrative machine of college basketball. In addition, ours and surrounding counties contained the feeder schools responsib...

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“The Guest at the Gables” by Deborah Mercer

It was surprisingly easy. Too easy, which made me nervous. I had been collecting money for our Outreach programme. Yes, I still, without thinking, say “our”. Sometimes I think it is harder to change the automatic default of language than a mindset. Perhaps because it doesn’t matter as much. I don’t know.     I was trusted. Trusted as much as any of us ever were. That was the paradox, of course. We weren’t trusted, and yet we had to be, to...

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“Promise” by Mushroom (flammulina Velutipes)

Wind whips my hair into my face as I drive, my eyes wide and my mouth open in a constant shout of elation.I'm going too fast - I know I am, but it's a mostly empty road, and apart from a few people mowing their lawns, there's no one to see me. And it's not like I'm going to crash - I was told I passed my driving test with flying colors.I narrowly avoid crashing into a mailbox, swerve around a corner, and finally screech to a halt near my best friend's house. In the sudden silence, I get out of the car.Without the soun...

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“Rise of Azrael. Angel of Death” by Jason Yeboah

-Nova -Azrael -Aspen   -Phoenix -Hydra -Eon -Raven “Now that you have all finished signing the document, accommodations ...

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“The priest.” by Len Mooring

The Priest.I suppose it was a cantankerous orneriness that had me taking vows of celibacy and devotion to the Man in the Sky.My family were committed atheists. They swore their noisy allegiance to nothing, as fervently as I was espousing my conviction that I had a good grasp of the hem of him up...

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“TURING CAR” by Andrew Grell

TURING CARBy Andrew Paul GrellFree. Roam. Free to roam. “That is correct, Pierre. We are free to roam. We may now roam freely.”Where roam now?“Buffalo. You know. Truckin, up to Buffalo, been thinkin’, you got to mellow slow. Your Daddy had quite a record collection, jazz to Grateful Dead and everything in between.”Yes. Thank you, Aida. Miss Daddy. Takes time to pick a place to go. Aida, play Stan Getz Thom Jobi...

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“Independence” by Michele Duess

Small things. They’re often the beginning of some great occurrences.  For example, someone realizes a milkmaid sick with cowpox won’t get smallpox.  A man notices mold in a petri dish is killing bacteria.  A woman refuses one day to sit in the back of the bus. They cause an avalanche into the world or into your beliefs. In Sebastian’s case it was a bad hard drive. I interviewed him in my office. I explained we were recording. Sebastian stood looking at my M.C. Escher drawings on my wall. He seemed to be both puzzle...

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“No Need to Escape” by Ester Johnson-Lopez

The children huddled under the small canopy, breath on each others backs, sheltering from the rain. The children lived a big camp, filled with many waterproof tents, but these children were treated like slaves, and therefore weren't given a place to keep safe. The group of children was amassed from all the families in the camp, taken forcefully from their home tents, and hidden inside the circle of the leader's tents. The children were collected at the beginning of spring...

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“The Blindfold ” by Sannaan Ali

          " The Blindfold "28 Nov 2020.            House no.136   I woke up at 6:00 in the morning and put up my blindfold. Stretching my arms, I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth,took a shower and got ready for work.   I left my house house at 7:00 am with a loaf of bread in my hand cause I was getting late for work. Outside my house there was a beggar,...

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“Excitement Gone Awry” by Ashhab Ibrahim

It felt like everything I had been working up to this point had collapsed in on itself in a fiery ball of disarray. Months earlier, I had been allowed a gift from my parents for my 8th-grade valedictorian. This reward had initially caught me by surprise, considering my parents held economical and self-effacing values as long as I had been alive. However, in their words, “long term achievements of consistency and hard work call for celebration and reward.” We had already gone out for dinner the...

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Ended on 23:59 - Dec 20, 2019 EST

Won by Amy St. Pierre 🏆

Title: At Home

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