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Weekly Contest #367
What does humanity have permission to do to individual humans in order to ensure humanity survives? ** Seven years ago, Ark: Varaha was home to more than four hundred thousand people. Only a fraction of those escaped The Closure.No human has entered Varaha since. Nor has any human left.We know not everyone left onboard was infected. We do not know how many survived the first month after the doors were sealed. We do not know how many survived the first year, nor do we know if anyone aboard is alive today.What follows is not an attempt to answ...
Weekly Contest #366
I fought beside a man called Robert Jordan when I volunteered in Ukraine.I usually lead with that. I don’t tell them he died until later. First I give them the summer of twenty-twenty-four. Borscht in foxholes. Every now and then they need convincing so I tell them yes, they really serve borscht near the front.I’ll show them the old bloodstained Australian flag patch in my wallet after I’ve told them about the International Legion. They want danger and adventure. To believe that exciting things happen when I’m around.Why’d you go? is usually...
Weekly Contest #364
I’ve had good moments in my life. I’ve had more horrible ones. I know you want me to start from the beginning, but there are two beginnings. You already know the first. The second happened last Friday when I was cleaning the cupboards. I started on one, it hadn’t been opened in years, the one beneath the stairs, where everything goes when neither of us can bring ourselves to throw it away. There was an old birthday present we never got a chance to give, nor had the heart to get rid of...You know our story. At least what was reported twenty-t...
Shortlisted for Contest #362 ⭐️
How much fruit is too much?How do you know if it’s not enough?Do kids still eat muesli bars? Is peanut butter banned? Did I cut the sandwich wrong? Should I leave a note? Is that weird? Do dads… stepdads leave notes?I never thought these would be the questions keeping me awake at night in my thirties. Never thought a peanut butter sandwich would be more intimidating than a mortgage.They were the questions I married into.One day I was deciding where to take this beautiful, amazing woman on a first date, and before I knew it there was a six-ye...
Weekly Contest #359
The nurses knew her by sight. Every Thursday at three o’clock, she would arrive carrying the same worn leather handbag and wearing the same grey coat, regardless of the weather. She would sign the visitor register, smile politely at reception, and make her way down the corridor to Room 18.Nobody questioned it anymore. Why would they?“You’re here to see Frank?” one of the nurses asked as she passed.Sarah just smiled. “That’s right.”The nurse returned the smile. It was the same smile they always gave her. Warm. Sympathetic. A smile reserved fo...
Weekly Contest #328
The air used to taste of rain. Now it tasted of copper and dust.We had been warned, of course. For centuries. The satellites sang the same melody, year after year, the rising carbon, dying algae, oceans blooming red with organisms that ate what they should have only tasted. It should have been obvious. But we were too proud to stop. Too distracted by profit and progress, and the soft narcotic of thinking we had time. We chose to be oblivious.I record this now from what’s left of the Northern Hemisphere. Our towers are empty. The atmosphere d...
Weekly Contest #309
The kettle clicked off. Margot, hands slightly shaking, reached for the chipped floral teapot with the kind of reverence reserved for sacred things. Two cups. One sugar in his, none in hers. Just like always. She shuffled across the room with slow, careful steps. Harold was already waiting, sitting up straight in his chair, trousers freshly pressed, hair combed to one side. A gentleman. “Afternoon tea,” she announced, offering him his cup with a soft smile. “You always make it just right,” Harold said, his eyes crinkling. “You spoil me.” Mar...
Weekly Contest #308
He stepped out into the washed-out light of a winter afternoon, boots sinking into black, rain-softened earth. The kind that clung to your soles and didn’t let go. Behind him, the bush whispered, not with wind, but with memory. Damp eucalypt, distant crows, the smell of wood rot and something older beneath it.The others were gone. Lost, maybe. Or had he left them?Three days, I muttered. Three bloody days, and not a soul in sight.He had come inland with maps and a rifle, a man tasked with “opening up” country for a settler’s road.. though no ...
Weekly Contest #307
I didn’t believe in ghosts. At least not in the way whitefellas talk about them.To my professors, spirits were metaphors. Cautionary tales for primitive minds.But to my people, to the Noongar, spirits were real.Sometimes sleeping. Sometimes walking. Sometimes watching.But always there.So when I saw the artifact in the museum flyer, I knew exactly what it was. Ngarlu-Kurr. A black stone. Swollen. Intimidating.Unearthed by BarrowCorp miners near the Porongurup Range. Now on display in Perth, under halogen lights.They called it the Warding Ston...
Weekly Contest #306
Prelude: The Forgotten War of the East Oftentimes, the Second World War is remembered as a European conflict—an arena of white armies, white victims, white heroes. We are taught to chart its beginning from 1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. We learn of Nazi death camps, Allied resistance, and the fall of Berlin as if the world outside Europe were only a backdrop.Japan is mentioned—briefly. Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, maybe the Rape of Nanjing if the syllabus is generous. But even then, Japan is cast as an antagonist whose atrocities are co...
Winner of Weekly Contest #300 🏆
I’m a miner. I dig holes for a living. ‘Dig’ is a generous word, really. I blow things up so we can go deeper. Drill, charge, blast then bog it out. Then repeat. It’s loud, dirty, and dangerous. But it’s honest work, and there’s a rhythm to it, one that makes sense. Until the day it didn’t The mine is called Kalgara Deep, carved beneath the sun-blasted hills of Western Australia, three hours from the nearest servo, and six from anything you could call a town. It’s not on any tourist map. Just a dot behind a red dirt road lined with scrub and...
Weekly Contest #299
I swear it wasn’t my fault.Okay, yes, I was standing in the middle of the Queen’s botanical garden at three in the morning, covered head to toe in goose feathers, holding what appeared to be the missing ceremonial orb of Saint Winifred, and yelling something about the moon being a hologram. But if you just give me one minute—just one—I can explain everything.It all started with a pigeon. A very suspicious pigeon.I was walking home from work. Mind you, this was a normal Tuesday. No prophecies, no strange lights in the sky. Just me, a sad litt...
Weekly Contest #297
The first bullet cracked past my ear like a snapped branch. Then came the rest, a hail of them, chewing into trees and mud around me. I threw myself down, breath caught in my throat, chest tight with that sudden, electric terror that you don’t think about. You just react to it. My rifle slammed into the dirt with me. My cheek stung where gravel bit into it.“Left flank! They’re fucking moving up!” Pasha’s voice came from somewhere through the chaos, maybe ten meters behind me, muffled by the roar of gunfire and the ringing in my ears. Or mayb...
Weekly Contest #296
I had always believed my son was good. Henry was a good kid. I knew it in my heart. Not perfect. No, of course not. No child is.Sure there had been fights in school, broken windows, a stolen wallet in eighth grade. But boys made mistakes. Boys learned. I raised him to be kind, to be strong, to do the right thing. I believed in him.I believed in him once. I really did.But with the detective sitting across from me, with her eyes like polished stone.Doubt crept in. Does that make me a terrible father? Am I a bad dad for doubting my own?“We have...
Weekly Contest #293
“Timothy, sit down and shut up. Don’t make me tell you again.”“But Dad, I want to see how far I can jump.”“Sit. Down.”“But daaad—”“Not here. Not now. Don’t do this to me, Tim.”The father exhales sharply, pressing two fingers to his temple. Three hours. That’s all he’s asking for. Three quiet, uneventful hours from Perth to Adelaide. No screaming kids, no feet kicking his chair, no running up and down the aisles. More specifically, could the one causing havoc please not be his own?Timothy crosses his arms, sulking. Flying is boring. Why could...
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