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Weekly Contest #378
Whitney dropped to her knees as another bolt of lightning struck the mountain. The thunder came, and the narrow ridge ahead disappeared in white light. She pressed her palms against the rock, afraid to move. There was nothing on either side of her but a drop straight down, and the wind kept pushing at her back. She watched herself crawl toward the edge, watched one hand reach over and feel for something to hold on to. She wondered what would happen if she jumped. The thought was hers, but the version of herself on the ridge was only concerne...
Weekly Contest #338
Winnie leaned toward the mirror in her narrow bathroom, fastening the tag with her full name, Winslow Cooper, the letters too solemn for the face that studied them back. She pressed her collar flat, gathering her cardigan. Beyond the window the street waited, the hour of buses, bakery vans, stirrings of light. She swung her bag over her shoulder, locked the door, and stepped into the cold. The air nipped her cheeks and hurried her steps toward the library. By the time Winnie arrived, the printer was rattling out slips, the tray twitching wit...
Weekly Contest #319
The evening of the autumnal equinox settled across the playground with the color of ripe plums. Abigail darted past the swings with a group of children at her heels, her braids flying as she ran. Feet thudded against packed earth. A ring of girls skipped rope near a tree stump, their chant rising like birdsong. Two boys tore through the tall grass, leaping roots and flinging handfuls of leaves at each other as they ran. The air smelled of grass and chalk, the kind of scent that clung to skin after a long day outdoors. The sun slid lower, and...
Weekly Contest #317
CW:Sexual content Sloan froze when a photograph appeared on the screen. She dragged the page back up, certain her eyes had played a trick, and leaned closer to the light. A row of colleagues stood pressed together at the opening of a civic project, the ribbon stretched across the frame, every smile sharp with celebration. She barely registered most of them. Her focus locked on the man in the middle. The caption named him Blake, senior partner, innovator, mentor. She read the line twice, her lips forming the words while her mind clung to his...
Weekly Contest #316
By the time Gabriel and Avery walked through the door, Jules had already erased the evidence she had slept there. The sheets were pulled tight, the pillows stacked without crease, the faint warmth of her body traded for a starch-cold smoothness. In the kitchen the counter gleamed, though she remembered the knife dropping to the surface as she buttered toast in the half-dark. The mug she had used was wrapped in a grocery bag and tucked beneath the driver’s seat of her car, still damp at the rim. She let them step inside the house she had alre...
Weekly Contest #315
Audrey lay in the bath with her knees drawn to her chest, water grazing the underside of her chin. Evening had settled. The room had fallen into a tender hush, the only illumination coming from the streetlights that filtered through the blinds, cutting her pale skin into latticework. Her breath suspended just beneath the surface, carefully disciplined, steadily reined. Every inhale pulled in quiet resolve. Every exhale dared her to sink lower. She’d lived in the apartment for only twenty-six days, long enough to stop noticing the burnt bulb ...
Weekly Contest #313
The city had been dying for as long as anyone could remember. Now it just kept on dying. The sun loomed over the rooftops, its heat a relentless force, squeezing the life from the city. In the cracked canals, shallow water simmered, releasing lazy steam. Concrete walls, once sturdy, crumbled into chalky dust under the relentless sun. Roads, once smooth, lay fractured, their surfaces split like open wounds. The wind swept fine dust through the streets, moving it from one abandoned district to another. The desert, once a distant threat, had cr...
Weekly Contest #310
The river didn’t even touch her knees. She lay in the cold for a while, pretending to be dead, because it felt worse to explain. The dog barked from the shoreline. The boy, maybe sixteen, shouted something that didn’t matter. When the EMTs lifted her onto the gurney, she finally spoke. She asked for her notebook. They didn’t bring it. The pages must have floated downstream, pulped into something unreadable. She was dry by the time they reached the hospital. Later, a counselor asked why she chose that spot. Andi looked at her hands and said, ...
Weekly Contest #309
The boy known as Jonah wasn't born with that name; he discovered it in a small motel Bible hidden in the laundry chute at the halfway house. The pages were thin enough to roll smokes. When he first read about the man swallowed whole, he laughed because being devoured felt more genuine than being saved. He ripped out the first page and folded it into a little boat. He sent it drifting in the puddle behind the chain-link fence. It didn’t stay afloat. The water soaked in and dragged it down like a rock. "Nice metaphor," he muttered, giving it a...
Weekly Contest #306
"Let me tell you about my day," you type in the subject line. You woke up before Dan, as you always do. You moved quietly, taking great care not to stir him. It’s as if your presence is a nuisance. You make coffee and sip it alone while drafting an email to Midnight. Dan wouldn’t understand, and you’re not sure he’d even care at this point. Like every day, Dan stirs only when his alarm tells him to. He rolls out of bed, showers, dresses, and barely acknowledges you. No hint of remembrance from last night's discussion. You can’t shake it; Dan...
Note: This story contains the themes of physical and sexual violence. ENTRY ONE~ I was still. I wasn’t inert, and certainly not forgotten. But I was kept. In the hush of a drawer where I was held, nothing changed and nothing needed to. The touch I received hadn’t carried the weight of intention. Then, I was lifted. Without spectacle or ceremony, or even sound. A hand found me, weighed me, turned me and twisted me in its fingers as though memory could be traced into me. I didn’t know how long I had waited. And I also didn’t know if I had wai...
Weekly Contest #305
Samuel stood at the intersection, hands deep in his jacket pockets. The early April wind stung his ears and sliced his neck, clinging to winter. The wind paused, then resumed sharper. The streetlamp above flickered like a struggling eye. To his right was his apartment. Inside, a kettle sat on the table beside a half-finished set list and an unopened letter from his mother, who preferred letters' intimacy over texts. The last one was full of advice: "Eat better. Call your uncle. Think about your future." This one remained sealed. To his left,...
Weekly Contest #304
Thank you for calling the 24/7 GOD HOTLINE. Your call is important to us. Your soul, less so. This conversation may be recorded for purposes of celestial litigation. Belzebub used to command legions. Now he worked in a cubicle with angelic duct tape holding the corners together, a coffee ring that had bled into three dimensions, and a landline older than original sin. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent. Technically, this was a “transitional role” while HR figured out what to do with his unique combination of charisma, noncompliance, and inci...
Rick Mallory received the citation on a Thursday morning, just before sunrise. The mail carrier hadn’t bothered to knock. The envelope was crammed halfway into the box, plastic window already smudged with the dirty thumbprint of whoever had handled it last. Rick tugged it loose and carried it inside like it was a trap and he knew it. He stood at the sink and balanced the letter on his palm like a bad coin. The paper felt too thin. Government mail was always printed on paper that felt ashamed of itself. Behind him, the kids sat quietly at the...
Weekly Contest #302
Marion Cagle sent the email at 11:42 p.m. on a Thursday, five minutes after deleting a file labeled “Final_Letters.docx” and replacing it with “Final_Notes.docx,” which he assumed was the correct template. His eyes were dry from reading twenty-two stories in succession, and his wrists ached from annotating PDFs that he would forget the moment he closed them. He did not check the file. He did not need to. His commentary, written in a tone that confused incision with intellect, was thorough. The last story had been about a girl who drew horses...
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