Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Center your story around someone who yearns for something they lost, or never had.

Posted in Angst on Nov 14, 2025

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 72 stories

My Cherry Blossom

Submitted to Contest #329

We walk side by side down the long crosswalk, the cool wind gently disarranging our hair as we look at the beauty of the cherry blossoms surrounding us. I look up at Isak, and his wavy brown hair is softly tossed by the breeze, his light brown eyes reflecting the soft pink of the blossoms. He was taller than I, his features pronounced from this angle, casting a tender and profound expression. Beside him, my darker characteristics—my black hair and deep brown eyes—contrast so much with the night and yet harmonize with the shadows of the paths...

51 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

The Retirement Plan

Shortlisted for Contest #329 ⭐️

The Retirement Plan "This one's you grandpa!" James felt the warmth bloom in his chest as his grandson held up the drawing. A lopsided house with a crooked sun. Two stick figures, one with black and white hair, holding hands. "It's you, Grandpa," Eli said, pointing to the tallest figure. "And there's me."Pride. Joy. Love. The emotions swelled together, golden and full. James' hand moved to his phone before he'd consciously decided. Muscle memory. He opened the app, logged the feelings: Pride (child-related), Joy (familial), Love (grandchild)...

33 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

Sparks Fly

Submitted to Contest #329

Sparks Fly Parson Graves listened to Sheriff Claiborne's explanation why he brought Nellie-Rae Sparks to his house next to the church in Hollow Springs, Georgia so late in the evening. Sixteen-year-old Nellie-Rae shifted uncomfortably on the high wagon seat gripping her coat around herself as she watched the men discussing her fate on the front porch. The bodies of her parents still lay in the bed of the wagon, victims of a brutal attack by a gold seeking robber at their mountain cabin homestead in the woods.The only reason she survived was ...

31 likes 35 comments 35
Read story

Where the Daisies Grow

Submitted to Contest #329

Daisy knew the moment she saw the coffin that forgiveness had come too late.Daisy remained still, her eyes fixed on the casket as she wiped away a tear. The lifeless figure before her confirmed it—hope had died long before her mother’s body turned cold. Her chest tightened as numbness crept through her limbs. Once, everything had felt whole—until that tragic day.The scent of roses pulled her back in time. Conversations around her softened and faded. She was again in a yellow polka-dot dress, sitting on the gray carpet of her mother’s flower ...

27 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Snowblind

Submitted to Contest #329

Even though it was two in the morning, Martha Wilkins finally turned off the lights at Enterprise Car Rental. A small Idaho airport, Enterprise waited for the bus when airlines couldn’t land, like now, in a snowstorm. She told Jessie about his Uber fare waiting once he came out of the men’s room.“Where is she?” Jessie asked.Martha threw a thumb at the entrance. “Another reunion gal I suspect. They’re gathering like flies to honey. You should go to the reunion yourself, Jessie. Hoot it up, see some old high school friends.”Jessie glanced back...

21 likes 17 comments 17
Read story

Phantom touch

Submitted to Contest #329

She passed on the twentieth of November, 1816.‘Passed’ isn’t the correct term of course, because it soon became apparent to me that, while she had died (that much was painfully, excruciatingly clear) she had not left, not ‘passed’ anywhere.I had never bothered with such nonsense before, having more than enough to do in the one world we have all been fated to inhabit. My life is devoted to the pursuit of chemical philosophy, so I know there are more than enough questions to answer about the very things we can see, before we can turn our atten...

20 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

The Days I Never Lived

Submitted to Contest #329

The sunlight on her skin smelled like crushed pears. That’s the last thing I can remember about the day I stopped being a man. And tonight, on the one night the dead are permitted to remember, they say the sun will return, just for me.I press my palm against the broken conservatory glass. The shards catch moonlight, fracturing it into pieces that look almost warm. Almost. Outside, the town of Brașov celebrates Halloween with American fervor they learned from television. Plastic jack-o’-lanterns glow in windows. Children dressed as monsters p...

19 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Willow Always Stayed

Submitted to Contest #329

The bright curtains were drawn back, engulfing the diner in a brusque pale December light. The waitresses moved swiftly, placing cups and plates between plastic carnations. Willow sat alone in the corner booth, her elbows on the grey window ledge, watching the Main Street wake up. An elderly couple passed, hand in hand, matching each other’s pace and steadying without thought. Willow’s curious gaze traced them, drawn to them by a flicker of familiarity. The overhanging bell of the door announced their entry a moment later and the couple sat ...

19 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

Faith and Magic

Submitted to Contest #329

Summer 1948: ROY So far this summer, skinny little Roy Parr has unearthed three chunks of petrified wood—crumbly but real enough, pink and brown and crystalline white—plus some hunks of charcoal and driftwood, flat tan pebbles, and two Indian arrowheads. Today Roy is digging again in the sand lot across from his home in Miller, Indiana. He burns with excitement as, an inch below where he was digging yesterday, he finds two objects. One is small and shaped like an arrowhead. Those he found before were similarly sharp, slender brown triangle...

17 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

The Glass Between Us

Submitted to Contest #329

The apartment was too quiet for sleep. Wait, scratch that. It was the wrong kind of quiet. The kind where you can hear your own thoughts bouncing around like pinballs, each one lighting up another worry you'd forgotten about during the day.Susan lay in bed staring at the ceiling. One-thirty in the goddamn morning. The radiator was doing that clicking thing again, tap-tap-tapping a language she didn't speak. The bathroom door was open just a crack because she hated sleeping with it fully closed (childhood thing, don't ask), and the mirror in ...

17 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

The Flood (Part 2)

Submitted to Contest #329

This story imagines Noah as a horrible human, chosen by G-d to watch the world die as he saves his family and a menagerie. There is graphic violence. She knew that when he was in this trance-like state he could be that way for hours. She also knew that he lost all awareness of time. He would wake up and feel like only moments had passed.She was going to take advantage and finally get on the ark. She wanted to see it for herself.She watched for Naamah to start cooking the large dinner. It was Friday. She should be home but her mother would no...

16 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Cement Mixer

Submitted to Contest #329

They’d come to a darkened bar in the city where they were laying over between shifts, ostensibly gathering for one of their birthdays or workiversies or some other celebration that was happening, or had already happened, or would soon happen, back on whatever day it was wherever they called home. “Shift work disorder,” Sean, one of Match’s spicier coworkers, had called it. The bar was little, divelike, named no-name bar, with a roulette wheel in the back someone had hand-painted black and red. Everyone in Match’s group was voluntold they’d b...

15 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

The Ferret's Amulet

M B

Submitted to Contest #329

The ferret girl scampered down the cobblestone street, scurrying past some older beasts on a corner who growled in annoyance at the kit and her mischievous grin. Their annoyance would turn to anger later when they discovered their missing baubles, but by then she was long gone. Stealing came easy to the ferret, who was not even in her teenage years yet. She had picked the skill up easily, having lived among street thieves her entire young life. She saw the subtle ways they moved their paws and for her it came naturally. Now she found there ...

15 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

You Don't Know My Name

Submitted to Contest #329

"When did you know that you loved me"? I asked him. Looking deep into his dreamy brown eyes brushing my fingers against his caramel skin. We sat on the carpet by the furnace in our newly furnished Brooklyn brownstone, surrounded by the aroma of mahogany-scented candles that filled the air. At the same time, the small flickers of the fire reflected on his skin, making it shine like diamonds. It was a quarter past 12, and the bright orange moonlight glow seeped into our living room through the patio, turning our sapphire walls into a somewhat ...

15 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Sealed With a Promise

Submitted to Contest #329

It was the stamps. Church Sheridan wasn’t in the habit of noticing stamps, and he rarely got letters anymore. Nearly everything he received had those pre-stamped things that read “PRESORTED FIRST-CLASS MAIL”. If there was a stamp, it was one of those soulless “FOREVER” stamps. Little wonder that stamp collecting had gone out of fashion.It wasn’t just the stamps. The small package was yellow with age, the address handwritten in neat script. Still, the stamp showed the black silhouette of a soldier. The words read, Appomattox, With Malice Towa...

14 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about a character who is haunted by something or someone.

Halloween – 98 stories

Write a story from the point of view of a ghost, werewolf, vampire, or other supernatural creature.

Halloween – 81 stories

Make a character’s addiction or obsession an important element of your story.

Dramatic – 47 stories

Write a story that includes the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night,” “Skeletons in the closet,” or “Digging up the past.”

Dramatic – 56 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel