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“Set your story during the packing up of a home, office, or life.”

Posted in Character on Aug 21, 2026

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✍️ 42 stories

Last Call

Weekly Contest #369

On an overcast chilly Saturday in October, Contessa Eleonora moved into the apartment across from mine in Manhattan. At the time, I didn’t know she was a Contessa, just that she arrived with an absurd quantity of belongings and a regal confidence in the way she ordered about the half-dozen people carrying her things into the apartment. I watched through my peephole after being woken by the commotion.After a few minutes, I returned to bed. Working as an options salesman on Wall Street, I woke at 6:30 a.m. and returned home most nights after 9...

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Picking up the Pieces

Weekly Contest #369

***Trigger Warning*** Discusses mental health with a mention of suicide. She stopped at the door to her office focusing her attention on the poster that she had crafted. One corner had peeled away from the door. The cut out letters were skewed. Like Jo, some of them were coming unglued.  “It’s alright. You did your best.” She whispered to the letters, or maybe to herself.     The loyal soldiers were ready to jump off the page to follow her out in protest.She slowly traced them with her fin...

21 likes 8 comments 8
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Goodbye to All That

Weekly Contest #369

The packing tape squealed as Professor Augie Sorenson ran the roll over the flaps of the last box containing the odds and ends from his office. His promising career teaching materials science at the university was teetering on the edge. A man’s voice outside the door said, “Found it, thank you.” A stern-looking young man entered, displeasure writ large across his face, the look quickly wiped away and replaced with a toothy smile. Augie used this tactic himself: initial dissatisfaction made one appear discerning, and the smile charmed the vie...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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The Uncle Nobody Liked

Weekly Contest #369

When someone you love dies, it sucks, but at least there’s a protocol. A memorial service, a funeral, friends and loved ones swaddling you with condolences and clichés.So sorry for your loss.He lived a great life.He would hate to see us all crying here! And yet, we all just sit there and cry—because we’re sad and that’s what you do.But what about when you’re not sad? What do you do when a person dies, and there’s not a tear to be cried for them? There’s not a nice word to be said, not a friend to be found.Terrible as it sounds, those were my...

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Get Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Huddled Masses Out of Here

Weekly Contest #369

Get Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Huddled Masses Out of Here“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”-Mark Twain My grandmother had a simple guiding principle in life- be kind. That’s good advice for how people should treat one another. Perhaps it would be a better world if it also applied to our institutions.I’m an old guy, but I’m still trying to learn. Frequent weeks-long visits to my daughter in Colorado have taught me quite a bit. I compare the experience to watching a football game...

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Antonio

Weekly Contest #369

Shifting the weight of the folded empty boxes to his left arm, David knocked for a third time. Antonio wasn’t one to get upset, much less so at David. The two had grown rather close in the last few years, finding a certain comfort in the other after the passing of David’s grandmother. Still, the scotch tape over the doorbell and Antonio’s repeated frustration with the mailman was enough to make knocking the clear preference. Though he was not one to go against his grandfather’s wishes, David was certain this was a farce. A clever one, D...

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The Frame and the Dome

Weekly Contest #369

I don’t belong here. Not anymore.It started a week ago. When… you know what happened. The Government gave it names, but deep inside we know, we feel, we admit. Surprising, really, how we keep finding nicer names for ugly things. Well… Who am I kidding? We do exactly the same thing ourselves. Masks, nicknames, excuses. It is in our nature, of course.But the story isn’t about the Government. It would be too boring.It is about me. More boring, you think? Yeah, ’cause you don’t know me. Yet.Or, perhaps you are right. Yesterday my resignation let...

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John, the Father

Weekly Contest #369

This piece follows Mishka, the Twenty-Year-Old Maltese Mix, and the Blessing of the Animals, submitted for Contest #339 (Grief Carried): https://reedsy.com/short-story/st0tuf/ and Rose, the Mother, and the Leaf That Fell at the Blessing of the Animals, submitted for Contest #340 (Grief Witnessed): https://reedsy.com/short-story/njrb59/ *** “…If you would be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost pal…” I sang along with Paul Simon, louder on the chorus than the verses, tapping two fingers against the leather steering wheel....

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Time Will Tell

Weekly Contest #369

Eleven days ago, I moved Mom into memory care, and I finally tossed all of the plastic takeout utensils she had been hoarding in her kitchen junk drawer.  I say kitchen junk drawer because it is one of at least twenty junk drawers scattered through her house. Today the house feels heavier than usual. The boxes labeled “KEEP” and “TAKE TO MOM” are overflowing with random oddities. Meanwhile, the “DONATE” and “TOSS” boxes are looking bare.  This should be easy. Get the house cleaned out and put it on the market. In a seller's market ...

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Slapton Sands

Weekly Contest #369

The house had been too much for Carl’s grandad; Carl’s father had said that many times in the last nine months. That’s what losing a spouse does to one, grandad told Carl while moving to assisted living. Turns your children into fusspots.Carl didn’t know about that. He did know his HS baseball team was playing in a spring break tournament while Carl sat in the old house’s attic, sorting though boxes of generational memories as his parents spoke with a realtor. He believed he and his grandad were equally miserable.“Look at this - what a ridic...

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THE THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND

Weekly Contest #369

THE THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND At 6:17 on a Tuesday morning, Hallie Bennett decided to leave her entire life behind. Not metaphorically. Not in the dramatic, I-need-a-vacation sort of way her mother used whenever Hallie complained about work or loneliness or the fact that every Sunday dinner somehow ended with an argument about Hallie’s unmarried status. She meant everything. The house. The town. Her job at the library. The blue bicycle leaning against the garage. The friendship she carried since kindergarten. The coffee shop where the owner kne...

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Clockwork

Weekly Contest #369

It’s probably time to pack this away now. I won’t get it finished, which saddens me more than I expected. I had hoped we would be further along by now, given what we know. I look at the intricate tools I have laid out here on my bench and can but lament. My old eyes move from the lamplight, look past my lens and stare out into the night. Beneath the indifferent, timeless stars stands the aged forest, now marked. The dark hides the stakes, the tape, but I know what it means. I hear the owl, the bird of nighttime, beginning its hunt. There’s a...

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Staying Home

Weekly Contest #369

“We’re done here, Mr. Goodrich!” It was the guy in charge of the movers, Joey V, standing in the driveway. Goodrich knew something like this was coming: a yell or a voice from downstairs, saying it was all over. He took slow steps over to the bedroom window and struggled to lift it. The weather had been damp, and these old wooden windows stuck. He banged the upper rail with the palm of his hand, and it stubbornly moved. He banged some more, allowing for an opening, and leaned towards it. “Thanks, Joey! We’ll see you in two days.” “Tw...

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The Last of the Light

Weekly Contest #369

September held onto the summer, hugging a little piece of August tight against its chest even after August’s welcome was thoroughly worn out already. All the windows in Brooke's house were open. Through them, as she moved up the stairs, Edith heard someone mowing the lawn two doors down, and a handful of small children shouting in the sprinkler across the street. Brooke met her sister on the second floor, already apologizing. "You really don't have to do it all," she said hastily, her voice half-swallowed with embarrassment. She held her key...

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I Can't Carry It With Me

Weekly Contest #369

They don't tell you how much crap you end up accumulating in college. My apartment used to be filled with tapestries and second-hand furniture, littered with Starbucks straw wrappers from late-night study binges at a too-small table. My computer barely sputtered out enough battery life to allow me the final kindness of submitting my bachelor's capstone. Now, that table groaned under my box of hardcover novels as I wrote its contents on the cardboard lid. The blankets provide no comfort now. They dried my tears last night after I said farewel...

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