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Weekly Contest #351
“—I think so,” Niam said, staring at the thing between us. Everyone said you could tell how strong a love was by how beautiful its creature looked. Some were delicate things—translucent birds that perched quietly between clasped hands, their wings flickering like candlelight. Others resembled small foxes made of smoke and warmth, curling neatly at their owners’ feet, breathing in sync with them. There were stories of rarer ones, too—creatures that glowed gold, or sang, or never needed to be seen to be felt. I believed all of it. Until ours a...
Weekly Contest #347
The first time my mother forgot my name, I decided it was nothing. The kitchen smelled like ripe mango and mustard oil, sweet and sharp at once. Juice clung to my fingers as I cut along the seed the way she’d taught me years ago—slow, precise, as if the fruit might punish you for rushing it. The fan above us clicked with every rotation, a soft, uneven rhythm that had been there so long I only noticed it when I tried not to. “Rima, pass me the salt.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. Just reached out, expectant, like the name belonged t...
Weekly Contest #345
The dining room glittered with candlelight. Silver reflected the warm glow of the chandeliers, and the crystal glasses on the long mahogany table caught the light like small stars. Outside the tall windows, rain slid slowly down the glass, softening the distant lanterns in the garden. Lady Eliza Harrow sat perfectly straight in her chair. Across from her, Lord Adrian Harrow poured the wine. The bottle tilted elegantly in his hand, dark red liquid filling the two crystal glasses with slow precision. He had always been careful about presentati...
Weekly Contest #344
The dashboard clock reads 11:17 PM. Mateo notices because Zoya does. “It’s stuck,” she says quietly from the back seat. “It’s not stuck,” Camila replies, leaning forward between the seats, her voice still bright from the party. “It’s just taking its sweet time” Aaliyah checks her phone again. Three texts from her mother. No words. Just punctuation.??? Eight minutes from home.They weren’t supposed to stay out this late. The party had been harmless—a backyard, fairy lights strung across a fence, someone’s older cousin pretending to DJ. They ha...
Weekly Contest #341
Prologue There are no summoning rituals for dragons. No chants. No circles of salt. No virgin sacrifices. Those are stories told by men who misunderstand power. Dragons answer letters. Only letters. Once a petition is delivered and accepted, the dragon is bound to the wording of the request. It will not consider what you meant. It will not soften what you feared. It will not spare what you failed to name. The first kingdom learned this when it wrote:Burn our enemies.And the dragon burned the capital, because the capital had been rotting long...
Weekly Contest #339
She learned early that the safest homes were the ones that looked ordinary.Not clean in a way that asked to be admired, not messy in a way that invited worry. Just ordinary. A pair of shoes by the door, a dish in the sink, the fan turning on low like someone had left it running without thinking. Ordinary meant no one stopped to listen.Rima kept the apartment ordinary.She did it the way her mother had shown her, in small pieces picked up over time. Things said while the kettle heated. Rules spoken lightly, as if they weren’t meant to be frigh...
Weekly Contest #337
I learn I can stop time on a Tuesday, which feels unfairly ordinary for a revelation. Tuesdays are for laundry and grocery lists and forgetting what day it is because the days have started to blur together. Tuesdays are not supposed to hold miracles or curses. It happens when my hand begins to shake. I am standing at the kitchen counter, counting pills into the little plastic cup: white, blue, white, yellow. He needs them spaced out, taken with food, not too fast, not too slow. My fingers know this by now. They have memorized the routine bet...
Weekly Contest #334
I was never meant to be sharp.I was made smooth, turned from pale wood by a patient hand, balanced so that the thread would trust me. I knew weight before I knew blame. I knew how to spin wool into something useful, something warm. I knew the sound of breath and the rhythm of fingers working without thinking.In the beginning, I lived among others like me—spindles of different ages, bobbins, looms leaning like tired animals against the wall. We were not dangerous. We were necessary.Then the story changed.I remember the day the room went quiet...
Weekly Contest #333
The plate is empty when it starts to burn.Not the food—the thing I left too close to the flame. A corner of paper, curled and blackening, the smell thin and sharp like a warning. I watch it catch, then pull it away too late. The edge crumbles between my fingers, ash dusting the counter.I don’t clean it up yet.The kitchen smells like smoke and mustard oil and something old I can’t name.I stand barefoot on cold tile, staring at the single eggplant on the counter. Purple, smooth, heavier than it looks. Begun. The kind my mother used to tap with...
Weekly Contest #332
The first time I noticed it, I told myself it was a coincidence. I stepped off the bus and the sky, which had been pale and empty all morning, darkened as if remembering something it had forgotten. Rain came down in a thin, indecisive sheet—not enough to soak, just enough to register. I stood there, backpack slipping on my shoulder, watching the pavement freckle. A woman beside me sighed. “Of course.”By the time I reached my apartment, the rain had stopped. The clouds thinned. Sunlight returned, embarrassed. I forgot about it.— The second ti...
Weekly Contest #331
The parcel shouldn’t have been there.That was the first thought.It was a Thursday, and winter had finally taken the city by the throat. Snow drifted sideways past my fifth-floor window, catching in frantic spirals before sticking to the glass. I came home from the late shift at the bookstore, kicked the front door shut with my heel, and dropped my bag with a thud that echoed down the narrow hallway.I was halfway to the kitchen when I saw it: a small dark shape sitting on the outside of my living-room window ledge.My building doesn’t have bal...
Weekly Contest #319
The villagers said the creature’s breath stank of rot, that its claws could gut a man before he finished a prayer, and that it had never once seen the sun without longing to extinguish it. They said many things, as villagers do, but none of them had walked far enough into the pine-choked hollow to see the beast with their own eyes. Only children wandered close. They were braver—or stupider—than their parents, and they loved to test their courage. They’d leave pebbles at the mouth of the hollow, or dead birds, or the waxy stubs of candles sto...
Weekly Contest #306
Text Message Thread – October 14, 2023 – 9:14 PM Alice: Did you get the keys? Nate: Yeah. Front desk guy looked at me weird though. Alice: He always looks at everyone like that. Just ignore him. Nate: The place looks… untouched. Alice: Don’t go in the attic. Seriously. Nate: You’re joking? Alice: I’m not. Just don’t. Voicemail – October 14, 2023 – 11:58 PM From: Nate EverlyHey, um… I know you said not to go in the attic but—okay, I went in.There’s this old trunk. It’s not locked. There’s a recorder in it. Like, a tape recorder?And photos. ...
Weekly Contest #304
During the day, Clara Gray was a husk. She’d sit at her desk in the cramped apartment she called her studio, the blinds half-drawn against the assault of sunlight, sipping stale coffee and staring at a blinking cursor. Her laptop, an old silver model with a dented corner and one stubborn key, hummed with an eager desperation she couldn’t match. The world outside pulsed with life—laughter in the alley, dogs barking, car horns and bicycles—but inside, everything was static.Her agent called once a week, always chirping with forced optimism.“How...
Weekly Contest #303
Let them call me the villain. I’ll wear it like a title.They will sing about her, not me.She was the golden one. Born under a comet, kissed by prophecy, she had the people’s love before she could speak. I came three years earlier, during a storm. No songs. No prophecy. Just silence, and a nursemaid who flinched at my cry.There are no ballads for shadows.The court adored her. Elira. Even her name sounded delicate. She giggled, they clapped. She wept, they trembled. She made promises she didn’t know how to keep. I watched from the edge, where ...
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