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Weekly Contest #296
“Turn back,” I whispered, my voice nothing but a breath of wind on the rugged mountainside. But she did not listen. She did not care. She was oblivious to my watching. Sara trudged forward, her snowshoes crunching in the snow as it piled higher and higher around her. The water in her hydropack began to freeze in the tube between her sips, the reservoir still liquid only because it was pressed against her body in the pack she wore. As the white-out conditions intensified, she pulled out a compass to check her bearings. She was already fifty m...
Weekly Contest #295
I was in 7th grade, trying to comb through my tangled mess of hair, when I stumbled across a claw clip hidden in the back of a bathroom drawer. It was made of white, opalescent plastic, and the tabs you squeeze together to open it were formed into butterfly wings. It looked like something that came from the Claire’s store in the mall, but for the life of me I could not remember where it was from or how it had gotten into my cluttered collection of hair accessories. My hair was not only tangled, but quite greasy. Rushing to get ready for scho...
Weekly Contest #294
I parked my car outside of Mystic Maggie’s Hair Salon, wondering if the ad I saw claiming “Heartbreak healed or your money back!” was true. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall joint sandwiched between a Greek restaurant and an insurance agent’s office in a strip mall that had its heyday a decade or two ago. The parking lot was nearly empty on a Tuesday morning, which I felt didn’t bode well for the efficacy of Maggie’s services. Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and sighed, willing to try anything to erase my pain. Mystic Maggie’s Hair Salon was ...
Weekly Contest #293
I boarded a flight in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 16th and immediately put on my noise-cancelling headphones and played “Fourth of July” by Sufjan Stevens. Gratefully, the two and a half hour flight to Portland was sparse, so there was no one else seated in my row. When the song ended, I played it again. And then again. Soon we were in the still-dark sky as it turned from black to blue with the sunrise. I set Spotify to repeat that single track as a cumulation of tears that I’d been holding in since mid-afternoon the previ...
Weekly Contest #292
Red. The color of my blood as it dripped down my arm. Their ice blue eyes, fully dilated, followed the trail of crimson beads dribbling onto the ground. For a vampire, they were quite self-controlled. I’d been injured before in their presence, of course. It never caused a problem. But it was not their hunger that was problematic. It was mine. I didn’t believe love at first sight existed until I glanced upon their face. An androgynous mix of features unique to them and them alone. I pined in secrecy, knowing that a creature as beautiful as th...
Weekly Contest #291
Coming back to life is an ordeal. This is what the spellbooks say, and they are correct. There is something deeply unsettling about coming into consciousness while your body is still trying to reassemble itself. This is The Traveler’s Guide to Resurrection. The pieces of your skull pull themselves together first, knitting the broken bits back into a cohesive dome. Next, your brain fills in the empty space, making way for your eyes and ears to return to their orifices. This is about the time you’ll realize, with horror, that you are nothing m...
Weekly Contest #290
Bea heard the faint sounds of the king’s soldiers getting closer to the center of the forest. Gripping her greatsword tighter, she glanced over her shoulder at Hallie. “They found our tracks,” she whispered. “It’s only a matter of time before they find this place.” “I’ve almost got it,” Hallie replied, her back to Bea. She was standing at the threshold of a massive tree, trying to figure out how to dispel the magic protecting it so that she could extract the briarheart from the trunk. “Just hold them off until I’m done.” “Of course,” Bea sai...
Weekly Contest #289
Crystal Collection For Sale, $20 Large collection of polished stones and raw crystal clusters, including amethyst, obsidian, selenite, tourmaline, quartz, jasper, lapis lazuli, and many more. My wife is devastated to say goodbye to them and we hope they end up with someone who will appreciate them. Purchase at your own risk, these crystals are considered “anti-Christian occult tools” and are banned by the Department of Faith. We are under investigation and cannot have these decorative items in our home when the feds come by later this week. ...
Weekly Contest #288
Nettle darted around the mountainside, desperately trying to stuff as many mushrooms as she could find into her basket as the first snow of winter rolled in from the west. She expertly sliced the fungi at their stems with her curved knife as snowflakes swirled around in the howling wind and landed on the carpets of moss blanketing the forest floor. Just a few more she kept telling herself, knowing that once nightfall came and the storm swept over the land, whatever remained would perish in the ice. Winter always came early at this elevation,...
Weekly Contest #287
Captain Fletch knew she was walking into a trap, but she couldn’t help herself. She and her Engineering Officer, Paola, and Weapons Officer, Jenkins, stood on the bridge of the Starling Sunstrider waiting for the ship’s scanners to verify the distress call they’d received. Fletch was quite familiar with the supposedly derelict ship that floated aimlessly nearby. The distress call from the Bittern Blight said the crew had abandoned the vessel and stole the two escape pods, but not before removing the antimatter synthesizer, rendering the ship...
Weekly Contest #286
The wolves howled and the ravens croaked as a woman lay dying in the midnight forest. Sorena pressed a hand to her belly as she collapsed, the blood a pleasant contrast to her cold fingers. The knife wound to her abdomen was quick and precise, the mark of a skilled assassin. She felt the frozen earth below her, a bed of soft pine needles cushioning her body in its final resting place. The pain blurred her vision, but there was one thing she was able to pull into her awareness in her last moments. Aurora, her greatest source of warmth and lig...
Weekly Contest #285
It was close to midnight as I pressed myself into a damp maple tree, my gaze fixed on the four-eyed, twelve-hooved stag in the clearing. Its antlers were twisted and tangled and reminded me of the roots of plants kept in pots too small. I trained my arrow on the beast, following its four glowing eyes reflecting the moonlight, my bowstring tensed and ready to be released. Just one of its golden eyes plucked from its skull would pay for a year’s worth of magic lessons at the academy. All four plus its pelt would pay for my entire education and...
Weekly Contest #284
Wren sat at the campfire examining the golden bracelet, wondering why the magistrate was so eager to gift it to them. Amelia sat next to her, running a cloth across her greatsword. As adventurers-for-hire, they’d seen many magical objects, and been rewarded with numerous strange gifts in payment for their work. But this piece of jewelry seemed different. Their employer for the day seemed glad to be rid of it and assured them it was quite valuable. “Well, put it on,” Amelia urged, grinning at Wren as she wiped the last bits of goblin blood fr...
Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #283 ⭐️
I was rotting in a dive bar on Christmas Eve when the goddess of death found me. Facing away from the door, I felt a wave of winter chill flush against the back of my neck when she came into the dimly lit tavern. The bartender blanched when he saw her, then wordlessly pointed a finger to himself to ask if she had come for him. “No, Gary,” she said, her voice low and husky. “Not today.” I did not look to see who had just entered The Rusty Pearl. She placed a hand on my shoulder and her skin was like ice. The cold soaked through my cardigan al...
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