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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story that takes place in a waiting room.

Posted in Thriller and Suspense on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 256 stories

“Skinning Shed Smell” by G Wingard

Submitted to Contest #49

Smell is the strongest sense. The olfactory bulb sits right on the brain and scents trigger emotions, thoughts, memories, and associations that our conscious mind barely registers. Science still isn’t sure how the chemicals we inhale cross the neurological barrier to the brain, but the effect is profound. Profoundly disturbing in this case. All I could smell was death.            I’d grown up around that smell. The musky, pissy aroma of animal pelts and the sweet, rotting smell of offal....

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“A Lifetime of Keys and Doors” by Vie Prado

Submitted to Contest #49

The waiting room is occupied. There they are again, seated across the gates of infinity, in wait beside each other. It’s been the nth life they’ve appeared here with his dirt-stained clothes and her quiet demeanor, like the past histories before them. They sat in silence. The white wall served as a backdrop, giving the two familiar strangers a sole spotlight for the waiting game. He straightens up and clicks his neck, adjusting the collar of his white uniform before placing his palms flat on his lap. She blinks and leans back against the f...

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“Sharon's Turn” by Glenda Bailey

Submitted to Contest #49

                                           SHARON’S TURN          Sharon Morgan sat in a chair beside her husband’s hospital bed listening to the steady beeping of the monitors attached to his body. Darkness would be welcome, but the fluorescent lights flickered, never dimming comp...

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“The friendship promise” by Mia J

Submitted to Contest #49

My goodness, how many more Women’s Health magazines are there here?Vanessa thought as she placed the June issue back on the brown table in front of her. In all fairness, she shouldn’t have been surprised. The only other magazine she saw was a People’s magazine and she wasn’t the type of person to keep up with celebrity gossip. However, she still needed a distraction from the various conditions surrounding her.For starters, the waiting room was freezing. It felt like she was sitting in Antarctica instead of the waiting room of a gynecologist'...

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“Blackout” by John White

Submitted to Contest #49

It was early December and cold with it. Rob had driven down from his place in the Chilterns and got me there just before the deadline. He’d been about to go out that evening and wore a long black jacket with square shoulders and embroidered cuffs over tapered trousers and pointed shoes. I’d not seen him for the best part of a year and felt bad about him seeing me in my stained orange sweater and cords with flecks of mud round the bottoms. At the same time I was kind of proud this elegant young guy of twenty four was my son.  I was hap...

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“THE WAITING ROOM” by Beatrix Weber

Submitted to Contest #49

When the last words are written in your story, when your path ends, and your journey is complete, your soul is put to eternal rest. Exactly what comes after death is unknown and often debated. Though, many find comfort in the belief that there is life after death and as your tangible life ends your second life begins. Your final resting place is often said to be determined on the “judgment day”. This day you are judged by your actions in the past life. If your behavior on earth exemplified the requirements to rest in paradise, then the gate ...

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“BE NEGATIVE” by Dolapo Omoleme

Submitted to Contest #49

I reclined in my chair and stared blankly plain white roof of the diagnostics center. It was our second trip to the center, the first time was terrifying. I drove past the center four times before I summoned the courage to drive through its gates.  I’d never been to a diagnostics center in my life, hell, I’d never even been in a hospital. All my life, my health challenges had been solved with easily-procured over-the-counter medication at pharmacies, so this was a first for me on multiple levels. “How can I help you today?” the rece...

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“Freedom Train” by Mercy Duke

Submitted to Contest #49

A thick blanket of dark clouds covered the sky, large droplets of water started to hit the ground forming small cups on the ground. I made a small prayer that the rain god stopped the rain a bit so I can get my ticket first. I followed the slow moving queue with large raindrops hitting my body, I didn't have an umbrella, when I left home it was hot and sunny, I never expected any rain. I finally got to the ticket office, the wait was like eternity. “Harambe, Freedom Train”, that’s all I said and the lady in the office tossed a pink ticket ...

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“Talk Shows” by Blisters Wournos

Submitted to Contest #49

Sick-yellow hospital walls and the smell of sterility. The waiting room to be evaluated before being moved to the mental ward is twice my body head-to-toe in one direction, three times in the other.  I watch a talk show where they spin a wheel to decide which man to paternity test.  I watch a talk show where a man spent all his wedding money on strippers.  I watch a reality show where a mother tells her daughter that she doesn’t love her.I am not allowed to have my crayons yet, or my coloring book. The...

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“The Picture” by Adriana Farias

Submitted to Contest #49

After running up two flights of stairs and down a long hallway, she abruptly opened the light, wooden door into the dull waiting room. She was seven minutes late for her optometry appointment. The force with which she opened the door noticeably startled some of the people inside. She rushed to the receptionist's window in a hurried strut, thankful that nobody else was in line. As someone who meticulously made sure to always arrive either five minutes early or on-time, she was especially annoyed because only she was to blame for her tardiness...

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“Plum Foot” by Rodge Rules

Submitted to Contest #49

A bronzed hulk of a man strode in next, lacking the fanciful clothing and armor adorning many of the room's occupants. He didn't just lack dress that was fanciful, he lacked much clothing, period. Strategic leather straps held a variety of stabbing, slashing, and bludgeoning instruments loosely in place while the voluminous black fur cloak was free to billow. His left shoulder was capped with the upper half of a monstrous panther's maw. The whole ensemble would have been quite impressive if it wasn't matted with grease, grime, and dust from ...

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“The Accident” by Lu Brosamer

Submitted to Contest #49

Anticipation. Suspense. Worry. Distress. Everyone tries to paste a label on a situation. It was scary. It was traumatizing. No one understands that sometimes everything is too confusing to even know how you feel yourself. Everyone asked me if I was ok, and all I said was ‘I’m fine’. I didn’t know how to describe what I went through. And even more so, I didn’t know what would happen to everyone else. After a while, all I felt was guilt. I didn’t understand why I got to be fine, but everyone else suffered. I’m just me. Me who loves singing, an...

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“The Waiting room” by Catherine Howard

Submitted to Contest #49

The dreadfully cheap looking wall clock ticked past another minute. Sarah glanced at her wrist. It didn’t make any difference. The same time as the clock stared back at her. Tick, there went another minute. Why was the time going so fast? She wondered. In places like this, time usually dragged and while it was true that her turn never seemed to come, the actual time available to her, her lunch break, was dwindling fast. At once stage she had even contemplated walking up the hill to do this chore but the worsening weather had convinced her to...

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“Hidden Stories” by Mai Sumner

Submitted to Contest #49

This truly is a depressing place. Cracked chairs, chipped paint on walls with drab, dull colors, overwhelmingly bright lights. The impeccably clean floor is shiny and reflects light, but at a closer look, there is filth under the metal chairs and stuffed into the crevices between objects on the ground. The sliding doors with black carpets seem to add some comfort compared to the white vinyl floor, but the floormat is stained with the wipe of despair and confusion flowing down sick, skeletal bodies walking in. It is hard to not to look at the...

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“A Place like This” by Dan McKeon

Submitted to Contest #49

I try not to tinker with it, but my finger is almost magnetically drawn there. I pull my hand away and just stare. The cumulous puff of white teases me. I can nearly hear it screaming my name. I want to resist, but my index finger reaches beyond my conscious thought and begins to stroke the stray batting poking through the cracked vinyl of the armrest. The chair that supports my slumping weight is a gray, powder-coated aluminum and I can feel its bitter chill press against the calf of my leg through a hole in my jeans. The armrests are cover...

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Contest #49

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Title: When The Northern Lights Finally Reach You

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