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Write a story about a place that hides something beneath the surface.

Posted in Short Story on Apr 25, 2025

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✍️ 84 stories

Ancient Creatures of the Black Ponds on the World Voyages of the Destiny's Dreams

Submitted to Contest #300

A gigantic bone stuck up from the black goo like something beckoning from beneath the surface.It was the 1800s. Anya, the Storyteller of the Blue Lantern, stopped breathing and her heart pounded.Her thoughts raced. “The legends are true. It is them. Underneath. How many are there? What are they like?”The stories carrying ancient wisdom awakened deep inside of Anya. They bubbled up from somewhere beyond time.She could almost hear sounds coming from beneath the shiny dark surface of the seepage. It was neither liquid nor solid. The dark slime ...

34 likes 35 comments 35
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Chaltier's Well

Shortlisted for Contest #300 ⭐️

Chaltier's Well had stood for three centuries at the fringe of Western settlement, neither prospering enough to expand beyond its original boundaries nor failing enough to join the ranks of ghost towns that dotted the region like abandoned chess pieces. The town maintained precisely 1,876 souls – the same count reported in the census of 1876, and every census since.People didn't leave Chaltier's Well. Not permanently. Those who tried found themselves circling back within months, drawn by what locals called "the tug" – a homesickness so profo...

26 likes 26 comments 26
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Elves vs Vampires

Submitted to Contest #300

Christmas Eve at the North Pole. Jingle bells in the air. Gingerbread in the oven. An improbable architecture overwhelmingly inspired by peppermint. Santa's sleigh has just departed, and the elves are wrapping up production before the end of a successful year.CC, the elf in charge of candy cane development, said, "Merry Christmas," and put his pants back on.Noelle, a lollipop parked between her teeth, squeezed back into her stripey tights. "You're not allowed to pay me in candy anymore.""What?" CC hissed. "Of all the bureaucratic...I mean, I...

22 likes 15 comments 15
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Ghosts

Submitted to Contest #300

Unlike many other California Gold Rush towns, Columbia never died. Perhaps it was still infused with the energy and optimism of the 1850s, when rich deposits of gold had briefly made it into one of the largest cities in California. Perhaps people here clung to their family histories, their deceased ancestors in the graveyard, the memories they held. But for many decades after the placer ran out and the miners mostly moved on, a few hundred people called Columbia their home.The tiny downtown itself was mouldering and on the verge of literal c...

19 likes 16 comments 16
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Sunlight and the Bones of the City

Shortlisted for Contest #300 ⭐️

Every solstice, the city forgets itself—then remembers.It’s built on ruins: layers of failed empires, lost languages, ancient tech, and stubborn hope. And every year, when the sun crests the old spires and the veil thins, the past returns—hungry and bright. People come from across the continent for the ancestor festival. But for my family, the day is everything.In this city where time frays at the edges, where buildings hum with the echoes of rituals once sung in a dozen forgotten tongues, we hold onto what we can: the scent of citrus and sp...

18 likes 7 comments 7
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The Mirage Hotel

Submitted to Contest #300

Act I - The Welcome The Mirage Hotel was never built to be found.No map showed it. No phone signal worked inside.But once you stepped through the revolving doors, the world outside simply forgot you. I checked into the Mirage Hotel on a Tuesday. By Thursday, I’d forgotten my own name. The bellhop wore a velvet uniform stitched with threads too fine for mortal eyes to see. His gloved hand hovered, and somehow the room key was already pressed against my palm — cold, weightless. I stumbled through a lobby carved from impossible dreams: glass f...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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A Precious Package

Submitted to Contest #300

The telegram arrived after dark bearing the cryptic message: a package is ready for delivery. Six short words, yet much hung on their import. These words were followed by an address. Christina Akka*, smoothed her graying hair and twisted it into a knot. She snatched her ready-made duffle, wrapped her plain, cotton sari neatly, and slipped wordlessly through the high gate. Her flashlight bobbed bravely as she headed down the sandy road to the bus stop. The road ran through Dohnavur village, a cluster of earthen dwellings with thatched roofs a...

16 likes 11 comments 11
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Raising Braess

Submitted to Contest #300

The daily life at Kubbeli Evler continued as the seasons passed since the arrival of Pluto and the seven cats of Kubbeli Evler. Sun was a natural leader of the group, because he had started life as a domesticated pet kitten. Sadly, he was later abandoned by his Ba family, and became like the rest, a typical stray cat fighting for survival. Fortunately, he was adopted and joined the dysfunctional family of Pluto and Luna under the watchful eye of Wicked. The seven cats of Kubbeli Evler. The stray abandoned kitten was taught the rules of the s...

15 likes 9 comments 9
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Room 6

Submitted to Contest #300

Barreling down the highway at over 90 MPH with no real destination, Frank Marsheton pressed harder on the gas pedal. Ghastly blue moonlight revealed stretches of farmland around him as he took another pull from his beer.The windows were down. Cold night air rushed across his face, but it didn’t sober him. Beer dropped from his chin, and he wiped it lazily with the sleeve of his blue flannel before tossing the empty can onto the passenger floorboard.Resting on the seat was a manila envelope that changed everything. He grabbed another beer fro...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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Remembrance of Childhood Imagination

Submitted to Contest #300

“Quiet down now, Ash,” I say softly to the grey tabby cat that is sitting at my feet and meowing.I am sitting in front of the vanity in my room, doing my hair for the day.“Is there something up with this mirror? Or am I going insane?” I ask suddenly, glancing behind me at the white bookcase in the corner.I swear it just changed colors. In the mirror it looked…black?I look back at the mirror and see that the bookcase is back to normal.If I mentioned this to my mother, she would call me crazy, but I know what I saw. It's the mirror. Not my eye...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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Beneath It All

Submitted to Contest #300

The emaciated corpse lay cloaked under a Union Jack flag, the dried blood staining the cement beneath. It was an odd scene, even for the eyes of seasoned Hong Kong Police Detective Angus Poon, and he immediately knew this case could spell trouble.His partner, Wong, a rookie barely six months out of the academy, fidgeted nervously beside him. “Did you know about the tunnels here?” he asked.Poon didn’t answer. He’d walked past Leighton Hill countless times and never noticed the tunnel entrances. Ten years in the force, and the city still found...

13 likes 10 comments 10
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A Soul for a Contract

Submitted to Contest #300

Act I: The Bookstore Beneath the Storm The smell of powdered sugar and chicory was thick in the air, sweet and bitter in equal measure.I sat at a corner table in Café Du Monde, my yellow legal pad spread open before me like a tattered relic from a pre-digital age. Distant emergency sirens and a radio announcement describing a hurricane stronger than Camille expected to hit land before dawn filled my ears.People rushed past the cafe in clusters, arms full of bottled water, batteries, diapers, and dread.But I stayed, sipping my coffee, the rim...

12 likes 3 comments 3
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The Artist's Alibi

Submitted to Contest #300

Content warning: story covers themes of crime and a presumed suicideMost people looked at Bob’s paintings and saw peace. No one ever noticed the clues in the trees.From where I sat at my desk in the third precinct of the Sunset Valley Police Station, my wall was starting to look more like a gallery than an office — a gallery filled with Bob Ryan’s paintings.Around here, Bob was a minor celebrity. Everyone knew him: the calm, grandfatherly figure who taught weekend art classes at the library and spent weekdays inspiring kids at the school. Hi...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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The House of Mirrors

Submitted to Contest #300

The House of Mirrors “That Mr. Noel ain’t right in the head,” Dad told me as we sat among stacks of liquor store boxes, gnawing on our discount frozen dinners that tasted like meat flavored salt. I could complain, but it wasn’t going to do any good. First he had lost his job and then he had lost his wife. Well, she really lost herself in what the boxes around us had once contained, now they were packed of memorabilia from a time when my parents were maybe, actually, happy together. They must have convinced themselves that one was happi...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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The Empty Layer

Submitted to Contest #300

Tam liked it best when the wind came from the north. It always smelled salt-sharp and rattled through the shore grass at fixed intervals like a metronome. On days like that, the world seemed to align. Tide tables matched, seabirds wheeled in clean arcs and her soil samples behaved. She catalogued them by scent, by particle density, by microscopic texture. The work made her feel briefly and exquisitely tethered.Greynest was the kind of place that was too forgotten to even be on a postcard. It was six winding streets, two pubs and one disused ...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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