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Submitted to Contest #339
It was unseasonably hot in the June sun and the house felt like a swollen, airless lung, but Mary wouldn’t open the French windows—she knew what came if she did. She sank into the hall chair, watching the early evening light fall across the faded doormat, and wondered if anyone else would notice the small rhythms of a house like this. She had crawled into the house at 6.30 p.m., her body a map of localised fires. Despite care taken, a supportive manager, and the kindness of some of the volunteers at the charity shop where she worked, the fla...
Submitted to Contest #337
What the smoke left behind I teeter along the narrow aisle that leads to the back of the staff room in kitten heels, already aware that I don’t quite belong anywhere I can be seen—or reached. A few bobs of acknowledgment are thrown my way as I move through the fug. The GANG OF FIVE, as I’ve come to think of them, sit together inhaling cigarettes with varying degrees of impunity. Bodies curl into the shabby sofas, lightly touching—conspirators in a world that may not like our smell, but still tolerates us. Health warnings on packets don’t ma...
Submitted to Contest #334
In a land far, far away, there lived a young dragon who pretended she was part of a tree.If you had passed through Deep Oak Wood during the old days, you might have thought the thick, high twisting branch was simply another knot of bark, silvered with lichen and bent by centuries of weather. Unless you were a toadstool or a fairy, you probably wouldn’t have noticed how it breathed, slowly and carefully, or how the leaves around it leaned inward, as if listening. Unless you were a wise woman, that is. Or a dragon.Like Minna.Minna was perfecti...
Submitted to Contest #332
Winter’s cold eyes seemed to watch her from the other side of the glass. When Rhea opened the blinds, the garden crouched under a hard, pewter sky—colourless, waiting like an adversary she’d never agreed to fight. Even the air seemed poised to steal something from her if she stepped outside. She drew her dressing gown tight and muttered the dreaded word—Christmas. It offered little relief; it merely voiced the echo of a life that felt unreachable, though saying it aloud shifted something inside her chest. Every year, she and Lyndsey had stoo...
Submitted to Contest #331
Alone in the charity shop, Karen watched the snow fall against the window, each drifting flake a reminder that life had a way of delivering things you hadn’t asked for. She was counting the minutes until closing when the door opened, and the man in black stepped inside—the one who always arrived too late and lingered too long, a small frustration in a day already full of them. The last globe had been perched precariously near the door, and when he brushed past, it toppled. He stooped, long coat obscuring the breakage, and even offered to pay...
Submitted to Contest #330
I was forty-seven when I felt my first real hug. Not the stiff kind you endure at weddings or funerals — all elbows and air. A real one. The kind that melts something inside you that you didn’t even know had hardened.Until then, I’d never let anyone get too close. Not even my children. I held them, fed them, rocked them — but I didn’t hug them. Not really.I raised them well. Mostly alone. But always at arm’s length.I couldn’t give them the touch they needed.Not after…That sort of thing. Then one day a hug came along and cracked my prison ope...
Submitted to Contest #329
It could’ve just been the pipes creaking—the shop was an old building, after all. But no one really believed that. It was always in the small hours. The thudding heart. The taut chest. The breathlessness after waking from the same dream that had haunted Sylvana since visiting the cellar and finding the corpse: the feeling of being smothered, trapped in suffocating darkness. And yet it wasn’t the memory of Digweed’s body—discovered while searching for a missing Rhea—that held her. It was the unknown presence behind that cold, damp wall. Even...
Submitted to Contest #328
According to the guide, this had been Agnes Ganley’s bedroom. The young visitor — about the same age Agnes had been when she lived here — paused before a framed picture: a cluster of mostly older women in dark cotton dresses, looking fiercely solemn. She was drawn to the woman in the back row, and not just because she was younger. There was something about the fragile yet resilient figure; she was holding an hourglass that looked like the one on the walnut chest of drawers standing next to the window. Typically Edwardian, the drawers had swa...
Submitted to Contest #326
CW: Mental health, bullying Today, when my granddaughter returns from school, she is silent, the usual laughter absent. I think I can guess the reason. “Tell me a story – about when you were my age,” she says, her voice quiet. So I tell her a story– a small window into the 1980’s, when beauty and cruelty often shared the same face.*** I hope Tess Hartless doesn’t return from whatever has kept her away.Forever wouldn’t be too long. A high-pitched thrum in my head.A pulse fuelled by dread.My choices are limited.Essentially – fight or flight. F...
Submitted to Contest #325
Coming off the sea, the breeze is restless, but not unpleasant. Savouring its feel, I taste the salt and fear that it carries. Somewhere beneath the tide, I almost hear children laughing – or maybe it’s only the wind rehearsing old sounds. If I could, I’d roll back time like a beach mat and start over. Here, all I can do is make the most of the golden hour, and October’s latent warmth before winter claws its way back in. Apart from the odd straggler, the beach is deserted in the deepening light. I’m rarely drawn this way and hope my wait won...
Submitted to Contest #323
Mummy TW: Some gore mentioned. Darius lifted the flap of the ‘ibu’ tent, his step heavier than usual. On the embalming table lay a woman’s body – and for a moment he was no longer the jackal-headed Anubis, protector of the dead and conductor of souls as chief embalmer – he was simply a man. Breath catching, he half expected the family friend who had helped raise him to rise and tease him about his big feet, as she had when he was a boy. Darius had never minded the teasing. Having lost his own mother at a young age and with a father who was e...
Submitted to Contest #322
“You know what, Karen?”Irene’s voice was brittle, stripped of its usual warmth. Karen looked up from the till.“What?”“I’m too old for all this crap. I don’t need it. I’m sorry, Karen, but I’m quitting.” The words landed like stones. Karen’s heart sunk, gripped by a weight that seemed to drag her down. For a wild moment, she wanted to unclip the keys from her belt, throw them clattering on the wooden floor, and say, “You know what? I quit too.” Floundering, all she could come up with was, “Oh. Right...” Irene’s face had a set look. “The trou...
Submitted to Contest #320
We are not all the same. In my youth, I was one among many: all different sizes, shapes and textures loving and breathing, each wonderful in its own way. As we sprang up, some were lost, but many grew sturdy and strong.Even though I’ve never seen the ocean, travellers passing through described it. I imagined us to be a living ocean of green as far as the eye could see. The sun filtered through layers of leaves, warming me and giving me energy to grow. I felt my roots reaching into rich, dark soil, drinking deep, while slender threads of fung...
Submitted to Contest #318
Other than a faint glow coming from the back, the town’s only charity shop was in darkness, its front door locked. Though it had opened in 1985, the building had been used as a pharmacy, a bank, and even a tavern. Close to the river in Marpleton, an English market town with priory ruins nearby, it carried its past heavily. Across the road, stone monks still watched over the diminished market square.Now, regulars peered through the shop window searching for signs of movement. The main lights stayed off, but a handful of helpers were huddled i...
Submitted to Contest #317
“You look worn out,” Scott said, stricken by the water dripping from his wife’s face. He would never have called it sweat – not for Ellie. “What do you expect?” she asked. “We’re in the middle of a heatwave.” The air was thick and oppressive, the fan failing to stir it. Even the curtains hung limp, too weary to move. Scott was heading to the fridge for ice cubes when she said the name aloud, as if testing where it might land. “Johnny.” Hearing it, Scott reeled. But with time running out, Ellie was reshaping boundaries. “What are you going to...
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