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Weekly Contest #346
The first thing I see is the hospital bracelet still on his wrist. White plastic. Black letters. A barcode. The kind of thing you can’t argue with. You can argue with a person. You can argue with a text message. You can argue with silence. You can’t argue with proof.He stands in our hallway with a paper bag that has PHARMACY printed on it in loud red. His coat hangs off him. His eyes are dry. That scares me more than tears.I don’t say welcome home. I don’t say how are you. Those are the words people use to make themselves feel useful.I say, ...
Weekly Contest #345
Content note: This story depicts the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, including severe injuries and civilian casualties. Hiroshima, Japan — August 6, 1945 — Late MorningThe girl’s shadow still wore a ribbon.It was burned into the stone steps as if she had stepped out of herself and left the outline behind—head tilted, arm half-raised, frozen mid-greeting. Not a silhouette in charcoal. Not a stain. A shadow that had become permanent.Aiko forced herself to look at it.“Don’t,” Dr. Morita said, quiet enough to feel like a confession...
Weekly Contest #344
The night the Wall opens, I’m standing under floodlights that make everyone look guilty.Not afraid—too clean. Not brave—too cheap. Guilty, because a city split by concrete teaches you that every joy comes with a receipt.My name is Anja Kossmann. I’m thirty-one and I work for the Ministry for State Security, which is a long way of saying I make a living out of other people’s silence. In our building, corridors smell of damp wool, paper, boiled coffee — a place designed to outlast whoever occupies the desks.Tonight, the desks are losing.At Bor...
Weekly Contest #343
I am not the one holding the knife.That is the first thing you need to understand.My hand is wrapped around the handle. My knuckles are white. There is blood on my sleeve, bright and theatrical, as though staged for a crime show. The kitchen smells metallic and sour. Something is dripping. The sound is steady. Patient.But I am not the one holding the knife.“Put it down.”The voice comes from behind me. Male. Careful. Trained to sound calm.He thinks he is speaking to me.He isn’t.—You want a monster.You want fractured mirrors and childhood trau...
Weekly Contest #341
Belgium, October 1917My dearest Rose,I have started this letter three times already and torn each beginning away from itself. Not because I do not know what to say, but because every opening feels like a lie. “I hope you are well” is too small. “I miss you” is too familiar. “I am still alive” feels like tempting fate, and I have learned not to tempt anything out here. Time behaves strangely in this place. It looks orderly from a distance, but up close it carries different weight. Some days collapse under their own meaning. Others survive eve...
Weekly Contest #340
He appears halfway through a sentence. Unannounced, unintroduced. Just there, on the screen, inside my running line. As if he existed before I wrote him, and I’m merely unlucky enough to have to pin him down now.“This isn’t right,” he says.I keep typing. That usually works. Characters you ignore dissolve. They become background. Set dressing. A name without weight.He stays.“You’re a mediocre writer,” he says. “But even for you, this can still get worse.”His voice comes from the screen as if the laptop is ashamed to transmit it. The webcam l...
I am the first one awake. This is not because I choose it, but because my body does. Before light reaches the curtains, before the pipes creak or the birds begin their negotiations outside, something in me lifts its head and listens. The house is still breathing. That is how I know the night has not yet let go.I stay where I am. I have learned that movement has consequences. From the floor, I can see the underside of the table, the chair legs like thin trees, the shoes lined against the wall. They smell of outside. Old rain. Stone. The plac...
Weekly Contest #339
I take an orange from a mesh bag. The net is red and rigid, made to keep everything together. I cut the fruit in half. The scent breaks open, sharp and sinful. My stomach reacts before my thoughts do: a brief contraction, as if someone were pulling too tight on a rope.I am standing in the kitchen of the house that once belonged to my mother and now seems to belong to me. It is an awkward truth: I own her things, but not her reasons. The tiles gleam; as if someone had exerted themselves today to wipe away the imprints of a life. My coat hangs...
Weekly Contest #338
The museum always smells different at night.During the day it smells like school coats and impatience, like warm dust and cheap perfume. Now—five minutes past five—it smells like wax, stone, and something older that never quite leaves: metal that has forgotten what it was forged for.I stand alone in Gallery 4, keys heavy in my palm.“We’re closing in ten minutes,” echoes softly from the ceiling speakers.I don’t answer. I never do.The voice isn’t for me anyway. It’s for people who still believe museums are about seeing.The last visitors shuffl...
PresentThe diary lies on the kitchen counter with a note from my mother.“Here you’ll find the answer to the question you never dared to ask.”I pick up the dog-eared diary. It has been used often. The pages are yellowed, some of them coming loose. Many are creased where corners have been folded down.Her death is so recent my grief hasn’t yet had a chance to begin. Or perhaps I already went through that process while she was still alive.It’s the first time I’ve entered her house when she isn’t here. In fact, it’s been years since we last had a...
Weekly Contest #337
1. She – Friday morningThe bathroom smells of menthol and stale damp. In the corner of the mirror there’s a haze that never lifts, no matter how often I clean it. I can already hear him shuffling on his socks, the rhythm of someone who knows his house but has lost his reason for being there.“Els?” he calls.My hand hovers for a moment above the toothbrush rack. My name is Mara. It feels as if my identity is dissolving now he no longer knows my name. Els being the name of his first wife bothers me less.“Els?” again, a little louder now, as if...
Weekly Contest #336
“You’ll be able to say goodbye shortly,” the funeral director says.“But he’s still alive,” she says.The man checks his watch. “That doesn’t change the schedule.”The funeral director strides on, hurried. His face is greyer than that of his average client. Deep grooves in his forehead. Drooping corners of the mouth. But that may be occupational deformation. In his line of work, there is no laughter. His profession is solemn. Oppressive. He has adjusted his character accordingly. Like an owner who slowly starts to resemble his dog, he is starti...
Can you please let go of my hand? I’m not in the mood to pretend everything’s fine.I’m just trying to keep things calm. Maybe we could both try that today.Keep things calm? You mean act like nothing’s wrong? Because holding hands doesn’t feel calm at all right now.Don’t make such a big deal out of it. There’s nothing going on. You always read something into everything. We’re not doing this now. Not at my parents’ party.I read something into everything? I heard you last night.Whatever you think you heard, we’re not having this conversation no...
Weekly Contest #335
"I think I know you," a voice says in the half-dark.I flinch and my dog, Luka, barks sharply, nervously, as if he sees something I don't. The park is almost empty. Streetlights cast dull circles of light onto the wet gravel. A man is sitting on the bench."He's wearing a long black leather coat with matching boots and a hat that keeps his face partly in shadow." Everything about him seems deliberately chosen, as if he didn't simply sit down here but was placed.I walk faster. My breathing quickens. Still, he keeps talking, calm, almost friendl...
Weekly Contest #334
The mirror does not lie. It only lies just enough.In the penthouse above the city, it hangs on the wall like a window into another reality: tall, narrow, framed in black glass that never seems to gather dust. Everyone calls it the Mirror, as if it carries a title. As if it is more than an expensive object.But I hear everything.I have been hanging here for years. Bolted in place, calibrated, fed by cables running through the walls like veins. I see light. I measure heat. I read microtensions around eyes, the tightening of a jaw, the sheen on ...
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