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Write a story about someone who sets off in one direction and ends up somewhere else.

Posted in Short Story on Apr 25, 2025

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✍️ 51 stories

The Big Deep

Winner of Contest #300 🏆

I’m a miner. I dig holes for a living. ‘Dig’ is a generous word, really. I blow things up so we can go deeper. Drill, charge, blast then bog it out. Then repeat. It’s loud, dirty, and dangerous. But it’s honest work, and there’s a rhythm to it, one that makes sense. Until the day it didn’t The mine is called Kalgara Deep, carved beneath the sun-blasted hills of Western Australia, three hours from the nearest servo, and six from anything you could call a town. It’s not on any tourist map. Just a dot behind a red dirt road lined with scrub and...

49 likes 21 comments 21
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Welcome to the Town of Else

Submitted to Contest #300

No one drives to Else on purpose; it's the kind of town you end up in when your GPS dies and your secrets get too heavy.Martin Halperin had been driving for seventeen hours straight. The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the cracked Arizona highway, distorting saguaro cacti into accusatory fingers. His phone buzzed again—a text from his sister. Third one today. He silenced it without looking."Rerouting," announced his GPS. "In one-quarter mile, turn right."Martin ignored it. Right meant east. East meant facing what he'd done.The dashboa...

41 likes 24 comments 24
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Sunshine Beams

Submitted to Contest #300

The Marcy wagon train headed west to California from Independence, Missouri right on schedule. During the five days it took to reach Topeka, Kansas, Ford Marcy, the trail master would often visit the newly joined Potter three-wagon party mostly talking to the seventeen-year-old person in charge, Kendra. He became enchanted with her. She always looked forward to his drop-in visits no matter how brief they might be.Tragedy had struck Kendra's family and she had given up on her Pappy's dream of going to California. Trying to help her choose a n...

26 likes 26 comments 26
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The Gamble

Submitted to Contest #300

“What if I fall through?” She clicked her pincers together three times, like a quick knock at the door. “You doubt me so?” Her voice was teasing, nearly kind. The silken web beneath my feet quivered slightly as her spindly legs stepped around me. “If you fall through,” her eyes bore into me, prickling my skin, “you’ll die.” I swallowed. Dew stuck to the threads ahead, bouncing lightly with the breeze. The web itself connected across three trees, hundreds of feet above the forest floor. All I could see of the ground was a light blanket of mi...

22 likes 10 comments 10
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THE SHOEBOX

Submitted to Contest #300

Enough is enough Julie decided. I’m old and I’m cranky, and today I’m crankier than usual. I’m sick to death of everyone telling me what to do and not do, what to eat, when to go to bed…next thing they’ll be telling me when to fart and where! After 80 years on this earth, I think I know my way around. Julie grabbed her favorite cardigan from where she’d tossed it on her favorite recliner and pulled it on over a light summery dress. Just in case it gets a bit cooler toward 5. I probably won’t be out that long as I’ll need to be back to make...

19 likes 7 comments 7
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Nothing But the Sea

Submitted to Contest #300

At three in the morning, Mary's Ark unmoored herself from the New River and drifted eastward on the outgoing tide through the Port Everglades channel. From there, she slipped quietly into the Atlantic. Nobody noticed. Clay Strauss awoke hungover in the cabin six hours later. Sunlight filtered through the shades of the sole porthole to paint yellow stripes across the floorboards. The familiar scent of damp oak filled his lungs. Rolling waves, muted by the thick wooden hull of the houseboat, had rocked him out of slumber. Waves. For a few seco...

19 likes 8 comments 8
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Line 217

Submitted to Contest #300

LINE 217Los Angeles Metro line 217 runs on Fairfax Avenue from Hollywood and Vine all the way to La Cienega and Washington Boulevard approximately every 12 minutes starting at 4 a.m. until around 2 a.m. It's one of the first bus lines to service the Greater Los Angeles area, and for the last fifty years, it has been my principal mode of transport from my humble apartment on near the Farmer's Market on 3rd Street to my job as an usher for the once famous, eventually infamous Vine Theater at the end of the line.My name is Simon Finkelstein, an...

17 likes 4 comments 4
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The Compass Rose

Submitted to Contest #300

When Lena boarded the 7:45 a.m. train from Pretoria to Durban, she carried with her a single suitcase, a folder of resignation papers, and a bitter sense of relief. After ten years in an unfulfilling marketing job, she was finally leaving it all behind for a fresh start—a six-month volunteer program building eco-homes along the Wild Coast. She’d chosen it on a whim, craving escape more than purpose.“I’m not running,” she’d told her sister the night before. “I’m walking away. There’s a difference.”The morning train hummed steadily along the t...

15 likes 11 comments 11
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~ Dead Things, Part 2 ~

Submitted to Contest #300

~ DEAD THINGS ~ ~ Part Two ~TW: Contains themes of violence, sexual abuse, and self-harmApproaching the front door prompted Meta to ask for identification from the 9 foot Giant. Lucuis ignored the request and tried the knob. An electric shock that would incapacitate a normal man caused him to snatch his hand back. It pissed him off more than hurt. He kicked the door in easily and ducked low to enter. He was pleasantly surprised to find 10 foot ceilings. He loved the old houses. Meta’s voice rang throughout. “I am calling 911. You are being r...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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We Hold These Truths

Submitted to Contest #300

Everyone from New Jersey has a different explanation as to why the state doesn’t deserve the reputation it gets. “If you lived here, you’d understand…it’s not like what you see in ‘____’, on ‘____’ TV show, at ‘_____’ rest stop.” Personally, I stand up for my home state because it represents what its country represents as well—the organized chaos of everything shoved into one place. By “everything”, I mean every type of person, landscape, political belief, class. We make it work. We have our loyalties and our grievances. We truly are not lik...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Inevitably, Ending Up Here

Submitted to Contest #300

The fluorescent lights don’t bother me like they used to, as I wait for Dr. Berg. In the past decade, as they’ve done in so many doctors’ offices, biophilic elements have been added, cheering up the otherwise gray, sterile room. Photos of blooming flowers. Peaceful pastures. Ocean waves, forever half-cresting onto a pebbled shore. Impatiently, I check my phone again. He’s still chronically late, it seems. I tried making a morning appointment, but he was booked for the next four months, and his nurse stressed how urgent this follow-up was, no...

14 likes 5 comments 5
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Key Largo

Submitted to Contest #300

The man was already half in love with her before she even said his name."Danny," she drawled, letting the syllables melt like rum over ice. "You smell like driftwood and other people's mistakes."He laughed too quickly — shoulders tight, eyes flickering like they'd misread something. A laugh that begged: please, let this stay simple.She leaned in, close enough for him to catch the synthetic coconut oil in her hair — not the kind from real fruit, the kind that lingered like a dare. His eyes dropped to her neckline. Habit, not hunger.Danny was ...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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Lone Patrol

M B

Submitted to Contest #300

The expanse of space stretched on to infinity and all that separated Kairi from the endless void was bits of metal and a forcefield in the form of a small shuttle rocket. The blue-skinned woman with the elfin ears in the Star Patrol jumpsuit regarded her reflection in the reflective crystal instrument panel, her red hair primped up. She’d gotten used to that image, but usually in the company of others on a big ship... not alone in a small shuttle on autopilot. A quick glance at the dimly glowing instruments told her she was slowly approach...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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A Strangeness Comes To Town

Submitted to Contest #300

The metro tossed me out into a muggy summer evening. Corporate towers crouched around me, while banks prowled up from the noxious gloom. I shivered, abruptly feverish in this city that now seemed so strange. Of course it had all been just the same this morning, but getting fired from a job you love adds ten degrees to every gulp of air, and another hundred faces to the faceless, frothing crowds.I gritted my teeth, and made my way to the museum. Passing the overflowing trashcan at its entrance, I tossed my useless shop key into a bucket of sp...

9 likes 0 comments 0
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A Love Letter to the Art of Not Taking Things So Seriously

Submitted to Contest #300

There’s a kind of quiet magic in deciding - in only a moment - not to take everything quite so seriously. It’s the sigh you let out when you take your hands from the keyboard and stop trying to win the productivity Olympics. It’s the moment you realize the dishes will still be there tomorrow and waiting until then to do them will not change the trajectory of your life.For most of my adult life, I spent believing that being a successful adult meant color coded calendars, crumb-free counters and cleaning baseboards on Wednesday's. But as I mov...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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