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Weekly Contest #360
The waiting room had a clock with no second hand. Xander had been staring at it long enough to develop opinions about that: a deliberate kindness, maybe, or the cruelest design choice in the building. Right now, 2:45, it felt cruel. The minute hand hadn’t moved in what felt like a week. Forty minutes until visiting hours ended. Forty minutes until his father, three floors up, drifted back into the sedated half-sleep that passed for rest these days, and the window — the actual, literal, hospital-policy window — closed until tomorrow. Except t...
Weekly Contest #359
"You are not a mother," said the man in the white coat, and he raised a reprimanding finger—not at me, precisely, but at the swollen belly I had long since ceased to regard as wholly my own. His junior colleague flinched visibly at the word. That is among the first lessons taught within these walls: the word mother is a protected trademark. It belongs to women with flower subscriptions and oak nursery furniture. We are called carriers. Climate-controlled production environments in biological form. My tongue, as ever, moved more swiftly t...
Weekly Contest #358
The neon tube above the sink did not buzz; it throbbed at exactly sixty hertz, matching the pulse in Matteo’s left temple. Matteo was a silvering man who collected empty frames. His apartment was not small, but it was narrow, shaped like the inside of a clarinet. Every surface was covered in brushed aluminum foil, which he applied daily with a soft felt roller to ensure no seams showed. Seams allowed the outside to leak in. He sat at the zinc table. On the table sat a single, unpeeled hard-boiled egg."One," Matteo said to the egg. The egg di...
Weekly Contest #357
The tremor began in the tip of his index finger, which pressed dangerously hard against the starched tablecloth. Beneath the spotless white linen, his nail left a pale crescent mark. The man at the head of the table did not notice. The room seemed to move with his slow, deep breathing. He sat leaning forward, his heavy laughter vibrating through the solid oak of the dining table. With a casual, intimate gesture, the older man reached across the silver platters and placed the tenderest slice of meat onto the younger man's plate. Exactly a...
Weekly Contest #356
The apple tree had been there longer than the house. She had watched the road arrive one summer, a scar cut through the field that healed into habit. She had watched the fence lean and lean and finally give, the posts going dark with rot before they went down, the wire just lying there in the grass after. She did not mark these things. They happened, the way weather happened, the way the field went gold in August and grey in November and came back anyway. The boy came breathless, always. Shoes off before he reached her, dropped in the gras...
Weekly Contest #354
He waits until the remaining movement in her begins to recede. Not surrender. Not yet. Just the moment her shape seems to feel there is nowhere left to continue toward.She stands at the counter with her hands against the granite: fingers spread, trying to leave a small trace of existence.He doesn’t come closer. He gives her space.“Try again,” he says.The object still rests where she abandoned it. Dark surface. No invitation left in it.She doesn’t recognize it and looks away.Good.That’s where it begins.A minute passes. Or five. Even time know...
Weekly Contest #352
“Eight,” Philip said. He felt it immediately—too fast. The class laughed. “There is no eight,” said the teacher, too quickly for it to be kind. “Look again.” He did. Brown dots. Gray dots. “Still eight.” Luc De Smet, front row, a face arranged by God for betrayal. “Maybe he’s blind.” “I am not blind,” Philip snapped. “You are not blind,” said the teacher. “Some people see colors differently.” Luc smirked. “So he’s half-blind.” It was his mother that evening, slicing carrots into a pan. “You’re not missing much.” “Apparently I am.” She did no...
Weekly Contest #351
Martin Hale didn’t speak immediately.He just watched Aaron. The city flickered behind him, reflected in the glass like something alive—restless, electrical, waiting. Aaron felt it in his chest before he understood it. This wasn’t a meeting. It was a test. Aaron sat on the edge of the chair. Too straight. Too aware of his hands. He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t stopped talking.And now Martin was looking at him like he already knew the ending. He had spent three years in a damp basement, building Aether: an AI model so advanced it bordered on the super...
Weekly Contest #350
Barnaby Q. Flinch was not a man built for high-stakes felony. He was a man built for spreadsheets, lukewarm chamomile tea, and the meticulous preservation of his collection of 19th-century buttonhooks. His most daring act to date had been returning a library book two days late in 2012, an event that had caused him a mild stress rash. Yet there he was, standing in the middle of the most secure vault in the City National Bank, holding a sandwich baggie containing what appeared to be the Star of Azkaban diamond, while wearing a pair of neon-pin...
Weekly Contest #349
The rain in the High Sierras didn’t fall; it eroded. Lucien, a field geologist whose skin had taken on the texture of the shale he studied, sat in a lean-to that smelled of wet wool and woodsmoke. He was thirty miles from the nearest human pulse, surrounded by granite giants that had forgotten the feeling of footsteps.He hadn't come for the scenery. He had come for the "Grey Gap"—a three-mile stretch of topographical silence where satellite imaging consistently glitched. On the maps, it was a blurred smudge. In reality, it was a jagged throa...
Weekly Contest #348
He stands over the bed with the pillow in his hands. His knuckles are white with tension, the fabric compressed under the pressure. It would be simple. No mess, no blood, no questions. A palliative patient who simply stops breathing in his sleep. It happens every day.But simple is not the same as right. Simple was too easy, too fast.Jonas lowers the pillow and carefully puts it back in place.The man in the bed has been reduced to a skeleton draped in parchment skin. The same man who used to be able to suck the air out of a room with a single...
Weekly Contest #347
He had sworn it at fourteen, with his right hand raised higher than his eyes were allowed to wander.Not to the sky. Not to the birds. Not even to the hills beyond the city, though they rose like a promise he had never been taught to interpret.He had sworn it to a portrait.The frame was thick, lacquered, and always dustless. The glass held a reflection he avoided—his own face, flattened into obedience. Behind it, the Leader smiled with the kind of calm that made silence feel like virtue.“I will never betray the homeland,” he said then, voice ...
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...
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