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#154 The Right Timing

It has come to our attention that Backstreet Boys (you know, the famous boy band from the 90s) recently announced that they'll be releasing a Christmas album. Naturally, this week's prompts are all about timing. 


In a rapidly changing world, it can be hard to keep up sometimes. The newest TikTok is old almost as soon as it has gone viral, and trends come and go quicker than the seasons. And yet, some things are timeless classics. Taking inspiration from the ebb and flow of time, here are this week’s prompts:

🥇 Winner

Moonlight and Madness

Winner of Weekly Contest #154 🏆

Your eyes pour the moonlight on my path as I turn my back to you. In the dead of the night, I walk with my family, away from my home, my street, my town, and what was till yesterday- my country.There are other families with us. Snaking their way to Lahore railway station. In fear, pain, and certainty that their lives are not theirs anymore. It can be cut, morphed, or smoked out within a matter of seconds. Even if they get on that train to Amritsar and arrive there in one piece, they would just be a wisp of what they once were.I walk. With a ...

246 likes 181 comments 181
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⭐️ Shortlisted

Old Fishermen Never Die

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

Cold salt water laps the beach, baptizing the goose tongue and goldenrod with spray. It stings my hands in places that have met with sharp rock and lobster claws: a good clean sting like ointment. The motorboat I moor onshore sputters to life. I am soaked with sea and fog before I have even reached the Pemaquid, tied further out so as not to run its keel aground. The lobster traps clank as I push past them to the engine. I wince at the high-pitched squeal, a testament to its manufacture date. The orange rubber overalls transform me into a be...

64 likes 66 comments 66
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The Endless Now

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

Lawrence “Nova” Novikov thought the slate-gray skies on Mount Mallett had conspired against him. Raindrops stung like bees. Hailstones threatened to shred his vinyl parka like buckshot. And the wind! Gusts from every direction tossed him on the narrow mountainside trail, threatening to fling him into the deep canyon at his side. But he persisted, planting each footfall with care in the lashing precipitation. Between slaps of thunder, he paused to fumble his GPS wayfinder from the pocket of his soaked trousers. Only a half a kilometer to...

46 likes 44 comments 44
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Blood Red Reticle

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

“We’re running out of time.” Danni looked at her wristwatch to confirm what she suspected. It was two minutes passed nine o’clock at night and their target—known for her excessive punctuality—was late. “Relax,” Sloan said. “If Central said she’ll be in her office tonight, she’ll be there.” Sloan peered into the telescopic sight of her sniper rifle. She laid prone on the rooftop of a fifty-floor building with the bipod of her weapon resting on a raised roof edge. Danni laid next to her, tapping the side of a bi-optics binocular. This wa...

40 likes 20 comments 20
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Blawan

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

The raised bands and gold leaf of the worn spines, stood to attention in rows of mismatched heights and colours, on antique, wooden shelving. Coloured headbands, only visible if you peered over the spines, protected ancient text blocks, bound by dextrous hands generations ago. Delicate pages concealed within, played host to a plethora of type-set prints, pen and ink lettering, and hand painted illuminations. Every wall, floor to ceiling, in the L-shaped shop, displayed its share of literary beauty.Bethan breathed in the beloved leather and d...

34 likes 39 comments 39
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Six Little Words

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

"We are running out of time," Albert said in a soft, quivering voice as he sat in his favorite chair right in front of me. I didn't want to hear that or accept it. My eyes tried their best not to look directly at him and instead fell upon the table where the warm morning breeze made the white lace curtains billow and the sunlight dance. Albert let his arm slowly extend towards me, quietly falling on the table; his hand lay motionless, facing up in surrender. Merely a foot away, it was pointing towards my heart, waiting. I was afraid to t...

31 likes 16 comments 16
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In Absentia

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

It’s Jasey’s turn to host book club. The sangria in the pitcher grows warm as the curated landscape of candles thickens the air with the scents of spearmint and watered roses. Her friends sit in the living room and chat around the coffee table. There are eight of them and it’s likely none of them read the book. Sandra chose it and she always picks books featuring infidelity to make herself feel better about being a divorcée.Jasey hesitates to call them her friends, really. She had friends in college and even made some at her first job, at a ...

23 likes 13 comments 13
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My Grandmother’s Apron

T W

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

     I hate my grandmother’s apron. I know that’s an odd thought to have on the day of my mother's funeral, but I do. I hate it. Eventually I force my gaze away from it and find myself in the back hallway. Hundreds of photos crammed into dollar store frames, hung clumsily on the wall. This array of photos represents her life from start to finish. I find myself staring particularly long at one of myself. I was nineteen, long brown hair and fire behind my eyes. I thought I was going to be a singer. The photo was taken ...

14 likes 5 comments 5
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This week's prompts

Start your story with someone saying, “We’re running out of time.”

– 76 stories

Write a story about someone who feels increasingly irrelevant.

– 57 stories

Write a story — romantic or not — about two characters who can’t find the right timing.

– 31 stories

Write a story about an object that has been around for centuries or passed down generations.

– 46 stories

Write a story featuring an element of time-travel or anachronism.

– 66 stories

Stories

Moonlight and Madness

Winner of Weekly Contest #154 🏆

Your eyes pour the moonlight on my path as I turn my back to you. In the dead of the night, I walk with my family, away from my home, my street, my town, and what was till yesterday- my country.There are other families with us. Snaking their way to Lahore railway station. In fear, pain, and certainty that their lives are not theirs anymore. It can be cut, morphed, or smoked out within a matter of seconds. Even if they get on that train to Amritsar and arrive there in one piece, they would just be a wisp of what they once were.I walk. With a ...

246 likes 181 comments 181
Read story

Safe Space

Weekly Contest #154

“I just feel like nobody cares anymore,” Gavin sighed, leaning his fist under his chin as he sat cross-legged on the sofa. The room was silent except for the gentle hum of the A.C. and the sound of the man’s therapist, Anna, scribbling notes onto her pad. The walls were speckled with paintings of sunflowers and oceans, contrasted only by the abundance of shiny certification papers Anna had proudly amassed. The carpet was plain, the wallpaper was plain, the sofa was plain. The muted color palette was both calming and a bit frustrating. Even A...

81 likes 62 comments 62
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The Gift of Time

Weekly Contest #154

“Dude, are you sure you don’t want to sleep in my room? You’re pretty wasted,” I asked Jai over the loud metal music blasting from the speakers in my hostel room. Three of my other friends were seated in my room — two on the single bed and one on the floor with glasses of whiskey and cigarettes in their hands — now tired of headbanging to the music and watching porn on mute for the past two hours. On the corner stove, instant noodles were simmering in a steel pan, the delicious aroma of Maggi displacing some of the cigarette fog. Jai scoffed...

73 likes 32 comments 32
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Old Fishermen Never Die

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

Cold salt water laps the beach, baptizing the goose tongue and goldenrod with spray. It stings my hands in places that have met with sharp rock and lobster claws: a good clean sting like ointment. The motorboat I moor onshore sputters to life. I am soaked with sea and fog before I have even reached the Pemaquid, tied further out so as not to run its keel aground. The lobster traps clank as I push past them to the engine. I wince at the high-pitched squeal, a testament to its manufacture date. The orange rubber overalls transform me into a be...

64 likes 66 comments 66
Read story

The Endless Now

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

Lawrence “Nova” Novikov thought the slate-gray skies on Mount Mallett had conspired against him. Raindrops stung like bees. Hailstones threatened to shred his vinyl parka like buckshot. And the wind! Gusts from every direction tossed him on the narrow mountainside trail, threatening to fling him into the deep canyon at his side. But he persisted, planting each footfall with care in the lashing precipitation. Between slaps of thunder, he paused to fumble his GPS wayfinder from the pocket of his soaked trousers. Only a half a kilometer to...

46 likes 44 comments 44
Read story

A Dance to Remember

Weekly Contest #154

A word of advice, darling: don’t ever love anything or anyone. They’ll only end up shattering your heart, and then they’ll grind the broken bits up into dust, and make bricks out of it, and then they’ll brick you up where they no longer have to look at you.Oh, hush, darling. I know you’re not like them. No, you’re special. You’re my special little guy. You’re the only one I can trust.And it’s not like I was ever unreasonable, you know? All I ever wanted to do was dance, to have a full belly. To have someone that appreciated me, someone that ...

41 likes 56 comments 56
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Blood Red Reticle

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

“We’re running out of time.” Danni looked at her wristwatch to confirm what she suspected. It was two minutes passed nine o’clock at night and their target—known for her excessive punctuality—was late. “Relax,” Sloan said. “If Central said she’ll be in her office tonight, she’ll be there.” Sloan peered into the telescopic sight of her sniper rifle. She laid prone on the rooftop of a fifty-floor building with the bipod of her weapon resting on a raised roof edge. Danni laid next to her, tapping the side of a bi-optics binocular. This wa...

40 likes 20 comments 20
Read story

Motherhood: A Timeline

Weekly Contest #154

PrenatalThe first time someone asks when your baby is due, during the middle of your second trimester, is the first time you truly feel motherhood begin. Not when your gums become so tender that a piece of floss can draw a river of blood. Not when your back burns from the burden of your newfound weight. Not even when you wake one night and catch your husband tracing your nascent network of varicose veins with his finger.It isn’t until you’re waiting for your ultrasound in the Radiology department, distracting yourself with the Home and Garde...

38 likes 22 comments 22
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The Last Flamingo Portrait of Philip J. Turlington

Weekly Contest #154

Philip J. Turlington was not aware that he had painted his last flamingo.While not exactly a young man, Philip was still a spry sixty-seven. He had no reason to believe that death would arrive at his studio one day and inform him that the final touches he had made to the portrait of a Chilean flamingo would be his last act of creativity on this earth.“But Death,” Philip exclaimed, “You cannot let this be my final flamingo portrait. Why, look at this! It’s trivial! It’s putrid! It’s garbage!”Death had to admit that, yes, the previous flamingo...

36 likes 22 comments 22
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Mistaken Names and Mistaken Faces

Weekly Contest #154

This story is set in India. We are running out of time, yelled out Ajmal as he peered up at the balcony of his friend's apartment. If Kamal’s tardiness was one headache, the more painful matter was his contemplation on whether to turn the engine off or not. Chances are Kamal will walk down the stairs as soon as he turns the engine off, but if he doesn’t shut it down now it might just give up for good. The poor thing was thirty years old and it was very common for someone to mistake the old engine for someone coughing intensely. “You a...

34 likes 2 comments 2
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Blawan

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

The raised bands and gold leaf of the worn spines, stood to attention in rows of mismatched heights and colours, on antique, wooden shelving. Coloured headbands, only visible if you peered over the spines, protected ancient text blocks, bound by dextrous hands generations ago. Delicate pages concealed within, played host to a plethora of type-set prints, pen and ink lettering, and hand painted illuminations. Every wall, floor to ceiling, in the L-shaped shop, displayed its share of literary beauty.Bethan breathed in the beloved leather and d...

34 likes 39 comments 39
Read story

The Chosen One

Weekly Contest #154

“We’re running out of time.  You gotta help me, Hallie.” Gary has me cornered in my kitchen, his eyes wild.  For the first time since I can remember, Gary isn’t drunk.  This concerns me more than anything else at the moment. “Help you how?” I step backwards so I’m closer to my knife rack.  Just in case he gets closer.  I don’t like to be touched. “Everyone expects me to fix the world.”  He sits heavily in one of my kitchen chairs, his stupid starred jacket catching on the rattan.  “I don’t know what t...

31 likes 30 comments 30
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Six Little Words

Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️

"We are running out of time," Albert said in a soft, quivering voice as he sat in his favorite chair right in front of me. I didn't want to hear that or accept it. My eyes tried their best not to look directly at him and instead fell upon the table where the warm morning breeze made the white lace curtains billow and the sunlight dance. Albert let his arm slowly extend towards me, quietly falling on the table; his hand lay motionless, facing up in surrender. Merely a foot away, it was pointing towards my heart, waiting. I was afraid to t...

31 likes 16 comments 16
Read story

Out Of Time

Weekly Contest #154

“We’re running out of time. Are you sure you want to do this?”Was I sure? No. I mean, what is certainty when you have no idea what is actually going to happen once you say yes to something? The idea always sounds good at the time. All pumped up with frills and thrills and testimonials from random people, who may or may not be actors, claiming it was the best thing ever!One thing I did know, having someone remind me every five freaking minutes time was running out followed up with are you sure didn’t help. I was already anxious once I said ye...

29 likes 14 comments 14
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The Value Of Time / El Valor Del Tiempo

Weekly Contest #154

Later on it was the whole family shouting, “We’re running out of time!” but at the beginning it was simply Uncle Julian not coming home one night. The next morning at 10am, the phone rang. “We have your Uncle. If you want him alive, don’t contact the police. We will call again in a few days.” And then just like in the TV shows they hung up. The caller had an accent from the Amazon provinces south of the capital, where the FARC has their strongholds.Many sleepless nights later, the phone rang again.“Your Uncle misses his wife, and Martic...

28 likes 28 comments 28
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