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Write a story about someone who has been tasked to keep a flame burning, surrounded by total darkness.

Posted in Character on Jan 5, 2024

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✍️ 83 stories

The Light and Flame

Submitted to Contest #232

The Light and Flame By Zachariah Chamberlin Pain. Blood. Cold. Gravity. I don’t remember feeling any of these before. I look around, but I can’t see anything. It’s so dark here. I feel something like sand under my feet, maybe mud. I also feel cold air whip across my skin. “Wait, what are those?” I pick up a stone. Breathe in the cool air. I can’t think straight. I have never been anywhere except… Except. “Where am I from?” I think to myself. “Not from here. I know this somehow. I’m new here.” Wherever this place is, or what ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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The Keeper

Submitted to Contest #232

It was a dark and stormy night. Really stormy. Amos had never seen a storm like it in all his years. Thunderous waves crashed against the rocks as he fought to secure the boat against the pier. With every wave and gust of wind she tore against the ropes, wrenching to be free. He did his best, the wind whipping the constant rain into his face and blinding him. It would do. It would have to do. He could do no better. He looked up at the light beaming from the top of the lighthouse, followed its steady arc across the water. The dark of the sto...

11 likes 1 comment 1
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Bloody Are The Hands That Hold On

Submitted to Contest #232

Warning: This story contains verbal abuse and themes of mental health. Young, quiet, and innocent, just like the flame resting in her palms. It seemed as harmless as her. The bearer of the flame crouched to look further into the center of the fire. It burned a cold blue, and it smelt of sulfur. They told the girl she could not peel her eyes away from the light, or she and the world would disappear. Her mousy brown eyes pierced the flame hour after hour. Her eyes grew weary, but one moment of rest meant the end. "GO." A voice similar to...

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The Flight of Prometheus

Submitted to Contest #232

At the base of a grand mountain hid a humble home of mud brick and thatch doors, of wooden floor and the fitful form who tread a rut into its surface. He was not made of flesh so much as he was comprised entirely of worry; mere moments prior he came to realize that his dear brother was in the middle of doing something very, very foolish. Worry, and revelations that came far too late - this was the meat and bone of the titan Epimetheus. Epimetheus's gaze soared skyward towards the roof of the world, pierced by that towering peak, a jagged t...

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guardian

Submitted to Contest #232

The darkness is pierced by the flame below us. Every time it sputters, my heart sputters with it. The hopelessness rests on our shoulders and is squeezing in like the loops of an anaconda around us. I hold Ori’s left hand on my right side and Aleena’s on my left. We circle the turret hand in hand. I know every person in this circle who is defending the light. We all know what is at stake if The Flame goes out. It is a circle of trust. If any one of us break it now, there is no way we could keep the fire burning. We are shoulder to shoulder a...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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The Story of Prometheus and the Humans

Submitted to Contest #232

Everything was dark. There were no words to describe the feeling. The utmost horror realizing that part of your life had been stolen from you. The once lively world plunged into an abyss of nothingness. This morning's events played through his head on a loop, Prometheus doubted he would ever forget them. Even now he could feel the slithering cold along his spine as he clutched the letter demanding his presence at Olympus.  ‘Masking his fear with a confident stride Prometheus entered the Olympus courtyard, the gods' usual meeting plac...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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Carrying My Family Out of Hell

Submitted to Contest #232

Trigger Warning: References to malnourishment and slight mentions of burns.It's a lose-lose situation, really. I knew that the moment I was tasked with the impossible challenge of keeping alive the family flame in place of my sister.But what was I to do? Say, "Sure, let the six-year-old kid take on the task of traveling the depths of hell with nothing but a measly fire"? Of course not -- it really never was a choice to begin with, now that I think about it."Stupid tradition, stupid choice, stupid--" I cut off with a yelp, my foot catching on...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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A Year of Light

Submitted to Contest #232

Warm, rough hands reached out to Freyja’s, slipping a brass candle holder into her palm. Atop it sat a cream colored candle adorned with etchings of suns, moons and stars on its fresh surface.  “Prove us wrong.” The voice mulled away into the depth of darkness before Freyja could find the words within herself to respond, or the courage in her limbs to reject the offering. She found her body frozen as still as the trees; the soft candle’s fire could not even thaw her. The dusk that had hugged her body moments before snapped into a deep...

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Fueling the Void

Submitted to Contest #232

“Come on you piece of shit.” I cup my hands around the golf ball-sized flame as it flickers like a flashlight on the final juices of its battery. The tip of my nose loses sensation, and I envision all the blood in my face rushing to create harsh, crimson circles on my cheeks. If Vivi were here, she’d remind me of the time she put makeup on my face when I got blackout drunk on our first wedding anniversary. God, what I’ld give to see her dimpled smile right now… Pop! The flame crackles in response, threatening to succumb to the icy winds a...

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He Promised His Grandfather

Submitted to Contest #232

He Promised his Grandfather Eighteen-year old Fred promised his grandfather that he would do this. The promise he made was to keep the fire going all night, from roughly eight o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning.   Now part of his mind was wishing that he had not done so. The sky was totally dark, and he had seen enough scary movies that he worried that his often active imagination might run a little wild on him, with vampires, trolls and the like appearing out of nowhere. And it was a cold winter’s night.&nb...

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Whispers of Love and Flame

Submitted to Contest #232

Whispers of Love and Flame By: Nathaniel Stiles Mom said she would be right back. She said that grownups were unaffected by the darkness. Kids, she would say, were eaten alive.  Mashew sat by a dwindling fire, his body cold in the back and warm in the front. How much longer would she take, he wondered, huddling nearer the flame. The darkness was closing in as the fire died. It was his only protection.  He scooted closer, practically touching the charred coals. Off to the side of him, a small stack of wood marked the only life r...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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Divinity in Darkness

Submitted to Contest #232

I awoke with complete clarity for the task at hand. I was not told what I needed to do, no one forced this job upon me. I somehow knew. This was my purpose and I accepted it. The coals in front of me were surrounded by smooth stones so meticulously placed into a ring about the width of my knees as I sat cross legged. They were still hot and the fire very much alive inside, begging to be released from it’s sedimentary prison. A small gift from my lungs drew the flames outward and they wildly danced once again. The heat kissed my face as I re...

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Candle Flame

Submitted to Contest #232

Warning Swearing and Violence.Mention of death and stillborn.The sky was an electrical mishmash. I felt satisfied as I veiwed, from the patio, at the freshly mowed yard, "Just in time," I thought. Hot clouds behaved like a low, hoovering helicopter. The atmosphere stuck to my arms; It felt- sinister! My thoughts hurried, "I better go inside! A flash of lightning, immediately followed by a BANG, affirmed my observation. I exclaimed, "Hell, that was close!" My hair floated out and up from airborne static. The Australian Mother Nature's li...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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Protectors of the Light

Submitted to Contest #232

As she sat on the rock looking out to the water’s edge, she was not sure if she was able to complete her task. She, like many before her, was sent on this quest, a quest to decide if she carried the magic which would make her worthy of the light. She was born on the island of Niue, a tiny island, miles off the coast of New Zealand. Her clan was a subset of the Māori, the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand. She was iwi, one of the oldest hapu groups from the islands. Many moons ago her people were given the responsibility for the lig...

9 likes 4 comments 4
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Beyond the Flame

Submitted to Contest #232

It had been this way for as long as Azuse could remember. Fuel the fire, collect resources, survive. This was all that he knew how to do. The flame was held within a great stone basin, in the middle of what Azuse called, ‘The Known’. The basin was around one and half feet high, one foot wide, and made of a dark grey granite. It was extraordinarily heavy, more so than it should have been given its dimensions - only once had Azuse tried to lift it in a moment of frustration, to no avail. ‘Flame is life, darkness is death’, read the inscrip...

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