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“Your character is traveling a road that has no end.”

Posted in Adventure on Mar 13, 2026

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✍️ 62 stories

The Road That Has No End – Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

Winner of Weekly Contest #346 🏆

The Road That Has No End - Mariah Lightening’s Last InterviewAs the curtains close on a life and career, the 54 year old rockstar gives her final statements to her beloved fans and staunch critics. She’s hardly recognizable. The once powerfully strong build that performed olympic level dives off arena stages is now an amalgamation of flimsy bones on a hospital bed. Her iconic glittery unitard has been replaced by a gown. The only music in Mariah Lightening’s presence these days is the beeping and groaning of her dialysis machine. She’s bee...

59 likes 42 comments 42
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Where the Veil is Thin

Weekly Contest #346

The liminal spaces are haunting. They follow. Each footfall leads closer to that line, the one where ghosts tread. It is dusk. Jackson Square awakening to all its infinite possibilities. Tarot card tables are strewn along the cobbled path. Candles flicker below the rising smell of sweet incense. Accosted by a putrid scent of human refuse. Debauchery with a mix of sainthood. I like to think I lean toward goodness, but I know the sins I am capable of indulging. This is my New Orleans. The sun slanting to the west is a foregone conclusion. The ...

35 likes 33 comments 33
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Hard Shoulder

Weekly Contest #346

There is a breed of workaholic whose fuel is ambition. Zack knew it; he saw them every day—youngsters, mostly, flitting about the building like immaculately dressed hummingbirds. He wasn't like them. Whatever goals he'd had—if any—were long forgotten. He was a different breed. "What?" he snarled into his hands-free. "What do you mean they only just got the Burke memo? No, not tomorrow—now. I don't care if it's 11:30 at night! I said now, damn it!" He stabbed the end-call button on the console. "Fuck! Incompetent cretins!" At least the traffi...

26 likes 6 comments 6
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A JOURNEY TO INFINITY

Weekly Contest #346

On the telemetry console aboard Orbital Station Asteria, a valve indicator flickered for just a second. On Earth, a monitoring computer in Houston logged a transient pressure irregularity in the maneuvering system of the attached exploration craft Aurora. The computer flagged it as a curiosity. No alarm sounded. Up on the station, Commander Elena Markovic floated beside the hatch, checking the tethers on a supply pod. “Ready to detach?” asked Flight Engineer Daniel Cho. Elena glanced out the viewport. Earth hung below them like a luminous ma...

25 likes 12 comments 12
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The Road That Painted the Sky

Weekly Contest #346

The Road That Painted the SkyA story about a painter, a choice and a road with no end "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."~ Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken Part the First: The Two RoadsEveryone in the small river town of Salmara agreed that Mira was a perfectly sensible woman, except for the paint jars. She had seventeen of them; small, fat-bellied glass jars lined along her kitchen windowsill where most people kept salt cellars or photographs of relatives who never ...

20 likes 10 comments 10
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An Adventure with Bob, Fred, and Doctor Dill Pickle

Weekly Contest #346

Once upon a time in the land of Snackville, Bob the Cheeseburger, with his cheese self and Fred the Taco with his spicy salsa, and their wise friend Doctor Dill Pickle decided to take a bus trip. They wanted to visit the Great Picnic Park, where the grass is always green, and the lemonade is always fresh.They packed their bags (Bob made sure to bring extra ketchup) and hopped on the Snackville Express Bus. But as the wheels rolled along, something strange happened: the road kept going and going! It twisted, turned, and stretched on forever. ...

18 likes 15 comments 15
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The Infinite Road

Weekly Contest #346

No one knew where the road began. No one knew where it ended. Some people said it had once been a normal highway connecting cities and towns, but the maps had long since failed to show it. Others believed the road had always existed, stretching quietly across the world like a line drawn by an absent-minded god.Elias had been walking it for three years.At least, that was what he believed. Time behaved strangely on the road. The sun rose and set, but sometimes days felt longer than weeks, and sometimes weeks slipped by like moments.The road it...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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End of the Line?

Weekly Contest #346

Jack looked at his motorcycle and sadly shook his head, the local cops all know him and his bike, he needs something more discrete to vanish from the law. With a tear in his eye he sadly runs his hand down the side of his Firebird, yeah it’s fast, so fast, it passes everything but a gas station. The ‘Bird is built to race not for road trips.With an exaggerated sigh he looks at his beater Dodge van with the bed in the back. Because a lot of people have vans his won’t stick out like a sore thumb. Luckily most of his stuff is already in the van...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Where Endings Begin

Weekly Contest #346

Everyone who has done it told me the same thing:You won’t come back the same.They say it with a knowing smile, like they’ve seen something I haven’t.Like they’ve survived something.The idea of the unknown, Discomfort. Spontaneity. All in a foreign country.They are assuming I would want to come back.But hey, it’s about the journey. The spiritual side. It’s the inside that counts.That’s what people say. At least the people I admire most. The ones who seem to understand life. DAY 1 Here I am. Walking. Putting my whole life on pause to… walk.I f...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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Writer’s Roadblock

Weekly Contest #346

Plunk, plunk…Used to be clack, clack. Or scritch scratch. The more things change…I wrote the short story, ‘On the Edge.’ You’ve heard of it. Maybe not. Been a while.That story grabbed everyone who read it. A published jewel, it glowed. Every sentence perfect. It stunned.If AI could dream, it would wake up screaming at its lack of imagination…AI might regurgitate all the experts, but can it capture a beating heart? A shimmering soul? Pain? Make you cry? Or care?Ahh, but with ‘On the Edge,’ readers’ mouths dropped open. And the last sentence? ...

12 likes 7 comments 7
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The End of The Road

Weekly Contest #346

He wears a brown-and-white-checkered shirt with buttons. He stays in motels and out of bars, and the only sound he hears is the turn signal in his ‘98 Buick LaSabre. He’s been driving for a while, and the last highway sign said:THE END 267He’s on the final leg of his journey. His earliest memory is waiting in a car while his parents busted Timothy Leary out of jail. His last memory was the girl who asked where he was going. Gas was $1.09, and so were her heart-shaped sunglasses. She said she was 19.Heading toward the end clears one’s mind, t...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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The Road Less Traveled

Weekly Contest #346

The road didn’t begin, nor did it end. It simply existed, already beneath her feet by the time she realized she was standing on it.But it wasn’t just the road.It was everything around it.The land stretched outward on either side in long, open swaths that felt too wide to be empty by accident. Not fields, not desert—something in between. The ground was a dull, muted tan with patches of dry grass scattered unevenly, as if they’d tried to grow and then thought better of it. The blades were thin and brittle-looking, bending slightly even though ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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The Bell Curves

Weekly Contest #346

The Taco Bell at Mile Marker 38 sits on a road that does not end.If you are reading this story to understand the why or the how of that situation, I am sorry to disappoint you. Talk to the math or physics people in the government vans. They have clipboards and measuring devices and long words like topology that seem designed to explain things no one else noticed were a problem.If you want to discuss romance, talk to Suzy from the 7-11. Everyone loves Suzy.I am here to tell you about the business of running a Taco Bell on a road that doesn’t ...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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Merging

Weekly Contest #346

We were on the road to Lily's mother's house for Easter weekend when it happened. Black SUV going 90. Drifted into our lane. “Honey!” Lily had gasped. I turned to her just in time to see the other driver's red fingernails claw at the steering wheel. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. She sent us hurtling sideways, tumbling over the highway, Lily's limbs lurching like a marionette's — Until we landed in a crash of metal and glass against cement. I tried to reach for where Lily lay; but my arms wouldn't obey — tried to call for her, but i...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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Cosmic Highway Construction Corp

Weekly Contest #346

Sam shook in her new body. It was the predictable convulsions that happened after every transfer. Then came the heaving, gasping cries and steady stream of tears. Alex followed. His body thrashed harder and louder, but his shaking always transformed from crying to laughing first. The two of them found each other with their hands, then eyes. They held each other, scanning faces and hair. Pulling away to inspect the rest of their own and each other's bodies. Alex wiped away Sam's tears and kissed her on the forehead. Sam laugh-cried, “Why i...

11 likes 8 comments 8
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