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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...
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...
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