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Start your story with a character finding an old heart-shaped box in their house.

Posted in Valentine's Day on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 77 stories

My First Valentine

Submitted to Contest #133

You know when you can no longer fit your clothes - as opposed to when your clothes no longer fit you, but that is a different story for a different day - but when your clothes no longer fit into your bottom left hand dresser drawer, you know that there is a problem. What in the devil is in that drawer anyway? It’s your dresser. You’ve owned this dresser for the last, do we want to think about age here? Okay, upper level math skills being tasked here - years married, plus the apartment, minus the year in storage during the teeny tiny apartmen...

43 likes 42 comments 42
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Sincere Feelings

Submitted to Contest #133

~ My anticipations of waiting for him slowly started to dwindle. He was nowhere to be seen or found and no one knew him except for me. It was as if someone like him never expected. Wish it would be a dream, but no it still haunts me up to this date. The fact that he left me all alone on a cold bed, on such a day still haunts me to this date. The only thing that stopped me from going crazy was this box that was beside me the moment I opened my eyes, after his disappearance this was the only thing that remained with me. Everything else about...

31 likes 27 comments 27
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Curse in the Heart-Shaped Box

Submitted to Contest #133

When I used to lie in bed, and my mind would drift through millions of random thoughts, I’d often wonder if I were to die—what would be the best way? Suffocation? In my sleep? A sudden fatal accident? But I never thought it would be this and I certainly never thought I’d be stuck inside a box tucked away in an attic waiting to be discovered like some type of morbid genie.  I had no idea how long she had cursed me into this box, but I know how I got here. Ellie. Ellie was once the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen with long, blonde ha...

27 likes 6 comments 6
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My Heart in Your Hands

Submitted to Contest #133

Misty Hargraves stared up at the house’s dim windows and fiddled with the keys.The Sun twinkled above and left half the building in shadow. The blue door sat beneath an eave, its letterbox mouth a straight line, its glass eyes black. The front windows showed the same, in that they showed nothing but darkness. Misty squinted, but the upstairs rooms offered no further insight. Finally, her gaze rose to the attic window in the middle of the pointed roof. Her eyes played a trick on her, and something shifted behind the glass. But that would be r...

26 likes 5 comments 5
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Froggie and Toad

Submitted to Contest #133

Who can truly know their parents, beyond the superficial aspects they share? ‘She was a good cook.’ ‘…Tidy.’ ‘Faithful.’ Can we know more than stock phrases? Do we want to? What key events ruled their lives? How did they see themselves? What wounds did they nurse? How did they connect with others? Parents are like mountains. You might scale their heights. But who can penetrate their depths? What lies veiled behind those mists? Or in those distant forests seen from the paths leading to the summit? By the time we become aware enough to ask, t...

24 likes 10 comments 10
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Forgotten Memories

Submitted to Contest #133

There it was, I pulled up to the driveway and a rush of dread came over me. I haven’t been back home in almost five years. It looked exactly as I left it. The peeling paint and shingles that needed replacing. A place that use to feel so full of love now just looked so empty. I wish I would have come back sooner. I had no idea what I was walking into.As I made my way inside, I was hit with dust and childhood memories. Mounds of things were piled everywhere. These things that used to be everything to my parents are now just… things. Walking th...

22 likes 4 comments 4
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Dusty old love

Submitted to Contest #133

 There is was the dusty old heart-shaped box. Sitting on the similarly dusty shelf in the huge attic at the very top of the ancient manor. A harsh reminder of a time long past. Way back, when she was younger and beautiful. Not the haggard, sagging mess she had become. She had used to be the talk of the town, the jewel in the eyes of most men, waiting to be plucked from the golden crown that was her father's estate. She sighed. Long gone was the seemingly endless line of gentlemen. All of them prying for a chance to court her. To win...

18 likes 14 comments 14
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Be Mine

Submitted to Contest #133

           Betty gazed down upon the tattered heart-shaped chocolate box that she held in her hands. The faded words, “Be Mine” were written upon its face. She thought back to the first time she had ever read those words.            It was Friday, February 14, 1975. Betty and her friends were huddled around the cafeteria table talking about all the boys that they thought were cute at their high school, when from behind, Betty heard...

16 likes 0 comments 0
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apricots and the sun

Submitted to Contest #133

Warm sunlight sifted through the thin wooden blinds, the golden glow flickering across the yellow porcelain tiles, now faded with age. Lark watched as the strands of light danced on the breeze, snaking across the floor like ancient serpents in battle. The soft brush of a rolling pin against fresh dough and melodic humming filled the air with a calming warmth. Lark tucked her legs beneath herself on a plush stool. Her hazel eyes captivated as her grandmother gently pressed the metal cutters into the thin dough, then scooping them gently onto ...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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A House and a Heart and a Ghost and a Box

Submitted to Contest #133

I have a house. There’s a box. Would you like-- Would you like to see-- I saw. I saw a ghost. I saw a ghost of a heart in the box. The parade came through and I chiseled a statue of the ghost. The ghost and not the ghost of the heart. Up to the steps came the parade. Turrah, turrah--tangle me up. That’s how it sounded. My ears play tricks on me, but never my mind. Never my eyes. I can see the fire trying to lick up the heart-shaped box and it won’t. It can’t because it doesn’t know the combination. Everything ...

16 likes 8 comments 8
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The Jar of Nothing

Submitted to Contest #133

It was only 2pm, but it looked like twilight outside. The windows shook in their frames, pummeled by the wind and rain. I turned the page of the book I was reading, comforted by the weather. It matched my mood. It was only my first week in the new house. I was adjusting to living here alone. Life didn’t always go as planned, and I was trying to be okay with that. Thinking back on the chaos of the last year, I felt a tightness in my chest and suddenly found it hard to breathe. This was supposed to be the home I shared with the love of my life...

16 likes 11 comments 11
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Boxes in the Attic

Submitted to Contest #133

Boxes in the Attic Some time ago, in the midst of those young and foolish days when such things seemed to matter, I promised myself that I would get organized at least once every ten years. The last day of reckoning was sixteen years ago. Better late than never. I was already having a tough time doing much of anything, even those things that I once liked to do. Fishing poles and golf clubs, which had seen sporadic, limited success in their previous lives, now only served as home to an impressive collection of spider webs in a dark corn...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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Chocolate box

Submitted to Contest #133

Leon realised that he needed a bigger screwdriver to dismantle the crib. He roughly opened a cabinet, which disturbed a delicate equilibrium and a cascade of boxes toppled from the top shelf, bounced on his head, and lay in disarray on the floor.“Damn, woman!”, he vented his anger on an absent Sophia.His bedroom was already a mess. He had not bothered to clean it after Sophia had left him some days back, taking their infant son with her.“Never throws anything away,” he kicked a dented shoe box clear across the room. The kick revealed a heart...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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This Is Me Trying

Submitted to Contest #133

This Is Me Trying I remember this, I whisper to myself, as I hold the old, wooden, heart-shaped box in my hands. I brush the tip of my thumb over the engraving, written in a childish scrawl.  Written by me, years ago.  Misty-eyed, I read “To Mom, Love, Em.” The word “Mom” is much bigger, and slanted sideways. “Em” is extra small, and if you didn’t know this gift was from me, you probably wouldn’t be able to make out the name.  It seems so impossible, the world in which this tiny box was made. Years ago, more than a decade,...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Welcome Home

Submitted to Contest #133

Surrounded by piles of old newspapers and trash, I ran the back of my arm across my sweaty forehead to keep flyaways from getting in my eyes. There hadn’t been much here worth saving, so I was mostly just stuffing everything my gloved hand touched into trash bags. I was attempting to push my foot forward through some empty cans when I lost my balance and ended up on my butt with an avalanche of useless objects falling on top of me. Disgusted, I started to dig my way out when something out of place caught my eye. Pausing in my effort, I reach...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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