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Your character finally gives into a temptation they've been avoiding, and becomes better because of it.

Posted in Thanksgiving on Nov 24, 2023

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✍️ 31 stories

Don't Say It.

Submitted to Contest #226

"It kinda looks like—""Don't say it." Kenny nods solemnly, recrossing his long legs in the rusted lawn chair. The skinny blue and white plastic spindles weaving the chair seat have long since loosened and torn. His ass hangs out of half of it, but it doesn't bother him any. I watch him try to change the subject in his brain, can physically see the wheels turning, his lips twisting from one side to the other. It doesn't work, though, so he readjusts in his chair and tries again, "I'm just saying—""Don't say it.""It looks like a frig...

33 likes 25 comments 25
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The Occasional Assassin

Submitted to Contest #226

Author’s note: all quotes are from Voltaire.                                                               1945 Lizzie’s blunt pencil scratched across the surface of the foolscap paper. She wrote slowly, carefully, pensively. The light...

24 likes 13 comments 13
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Sidelined

Submitted to Contest #226

I never realized that becoming a parent would mean learning to hate Saturdays. If course I knew, intellectually, that I was signing up for at least a decade and a half of lugging lawn chairs and coolers out into the middle of a chilly, dew-covered grass field. I knew I was signing up for early morning extracurriculars that would make the weekday morning breakfast chaos feel like a welcome vacation by the time Monday rolled around again. I knew I was signing up to rotate in as the parent who would bring orange slices for half times and Capri ...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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resigned.

Submitted to Contest #226

“Hey Tammy, are you busy?” Clarke asked as he steps into Tammy’s cubicle. Her internal eyeroll is engaged with this constant question from those above her in the totem pole of office politics. She wishes she could ask them: “don’t you pay me to be busy?” Minimizing the document she had open on the right side of her double monitor, she turns to Clarke. Tammy is famous around the office for what everyone has taken to calling “Tammy’s waterfall”. She places all of her “to-do” paperwork on the left-hand side of her desk. The least important it...

12 likes 8 comments 8
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Shades of the Prison-House

Submitted to Contest #226

The glossy postcard from Australia depicted a lazy-looking town of empty roads, deserted pavements, and rows of identical little houses, each within a small square garden. To Simon Platt’s eye, it looked like a place for old-age pensioners and their fat constipated dogs. He flipped the card over and re-read his father’s short ‘miss-you mate’ message which was almost identical to the one he’d received a few weeks ago.Simon’s mother, Sylvia was exasperated at his disdain for their plans, “Your father says every day is like a summer S...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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Embracing my chaos

Submitted to Contest #226

Do you feel it?” someone whispered, her voice filled with concern. “Definitely…it feels surreal, to harness such power…it is dangerous though, Serenai” her sister responded, her voice becoming hushed in the end. “Agreed, but remember, we’re not alone here, we must be very cautious, someone might see you channeling, you know what happens to such people” Serenai told her sister, with a racing heart. Her stern eyes and trembling lips reveal that fear for her sister’s life since she is the only family she has in this heinous realm. Losing her ...

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The Blandishment of a Broken Heart

Submitted to Contest #226

I have everything under control.At least that’s what I try to tell myself as the holidays approach: the time of year that tests those very notions; and this year I tell myself I’m ready, I will be victorious against the heartbreak that has held me captive for the past several months. I do my best not to laugh at myself as I load up my journal full of self-empowering affirmations, make mood boards full of powerful, self-assured women in those smart, perfectly tailored business suits, who own the companies, that have the banks accounts flush w...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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Campfire Tale of the Sasquatch Temptation

Submitted to Contest #226

The Sasquatch Temptation “Silent steps beneath the trees, Blending with the whispering breeze, In emerald worlds of mystery, Sasquatch walks with secrecy.” Myths and legends, fantasy tales, Mystic Beach, where the storm wind wails, Blowing over spindrift foam,Tales of Sasquatch in its home. Adriana brought her Sasquatch books to the family reunion at Thanksgiving. Their large group gathered every year in the Mystic Beach wilderness on the Oregon coast. She could retreat and read if she needed some peaceful time. The family often g...

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The curse

Submitted to Contest #226

Nothing felt particular about that morning. I woke up at 6am and quickly hopped into the shower. I'd never been a morning person and the hot water would soothe me, warm me up for the day. I'd dreaded early mornings ever since I was in kindergarten and spent the first half of my 20s as a chronic snoozer, always having to negotiate with myself to get out of bed in time, to not go back to sleep for the ever-elusive "five more minutes". But as my career took off, I decided I needed to do everything within my power to resist the temptation of lat...

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Mortis

Submitted to Contest #226

The colt with the ashy colored coat stood upon sturdy legs at four months old and watched with keen interest as his mother was led from the stable once again. At just three months old, the wee horse had accepted the fact that its mother was led away often and knew she’d return before the sky grew black. He had at one month old freaked out as she was led away- bucking his sort of wobbly legs and crying shrilly. He'd been beaten then. With a wooden pole, hard enough to hurt but not so enough to leave scars. His mother leaving became a routine...

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LAYER CAKE

Submitted to Contest #226

Sexual Language Mentioned.                                              LAYER CAKE.     Melody sat by the window at Starbucks café with her hot chocolate drink and marshmallows. She watched as the people passed by. She gave the lake of chocolate a swirl dipping a marshmallow into the cup the...

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My Conscience in the Mirror

Submitted to Contest #226

Day 1     What would you do if you saw the devil in your mirror?  Freshly nineteen-year-old Chevelle Lowery was a good girl. A homebody. An introvert. On the night of her birthday, her parents got her a vanity that― not just by appearance alone— was out of her style. It was a pretty pink oval vanity with lights all around the rim. Despite the faded color- due to age probably―it was so bright compared to her cool-toned room.     She had no qualms against it until she found the light switch to the m...

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The Pipe

Submitted to Contest #226

TW: Mentions of past sexual abuse to a minor, mentions of violence, murder, unhealthy coping mechanisms. The pipe is dripping again.It’s her lullaby, her calming song, her heartbeat ringing in her ears. It lulls her in ways that the rhythmic twitching of her fingers, nor the hitching of her breaths that are beginning to sound like a beat to a song, cannot. She comes back to herself, sucking the air from the room and clenching those twitching, nervous fingers into fists that rest upon her bent knees.The blood is drying.It feels like the ...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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The Stairs and Her Tears

Submitted to Contest #226

Trigger Warning: Themes of sexual violence and death. “Crying is between you and God at night.” Her sobbing at night still played in my ears as clearly as a bird's chirp in the morning, but there was no denying that it was her body. I was no older than eight when I found my aunt Tesha’s body on the staircase: lifeless, melanated but somehow pale, puffy red eyes, and cracked lips. Those weren’t from death, but from the time she spent crying. She would let her tears slide off her face and onto the floor. That’s how my grandmother put it. “...

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Reflections on a Thanksgiving Past

Submitted to Contest #226

I’m going to begin by taking a bit of a punt and say that very few of you have ever murdered anyone. I could be wrong of course, for all I know the country could be positively teeming with mass murderers but for want of better knowledge I’m forced to go with the statistics that tell us that most of us are averse to frenzied violence. That is actual violence of course because I’m willing to bet that deep in your hearts most of you at some time has sworn death upon another and committed mayhem in your deepest, darkest thoughts. Tellingly, it’s...

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