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#192 Something Borrowed

As the very existence of thrift stores proves, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. A cultural push for sustainability has made thrifting a popular option for the fashion forward, and encouraged us all to look for the potential in yesterday’s cast offs.



This week, let’s take those forgotten items out of their corners, dust them off, and give them a new lease on life. Among all the strange tchotchkes and ugly sweaters, you might just find a diamond in the rough — or an actual diamond!

🥇 Winner

Strawberry Jam Under the Sea

Winner of Weekly Contest #192 🏆

I am swimming, thrusting my arms through golden water—golden like oil. The water grows thick and syrupy, then it pulls me under. I’m in a bottle, glass sloping above me. Someone tilts and pours, and I slide onto a pan, palms burning from the heat. I slip and roll in the slick spill. Steam rises off my wet hair. Then I am smothered under the sticky weight of raw meat. “Mommy, can I sleep with you?”The voice startles me, a breathy whisper in the dark. Then it comes again.“Please? I had a bad dream.” Jack’s lisped dweem melts my heart, and I ca...

223 likes 157 comments 157
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⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write about someone finding a treasure in an unexpected place.

– 50 stories

Set your story at an antique roadshow.

– 26 stories

Write a story about someone trying to reinvent themselves after spending a long time in a rut.

– 38 stories

Write about someone stuck in an endless cycle who finally manages to break free.

– 67 stories

Write about someone rediscovering something old they thought they’d lost.

– 67 stories

Stories

DEATH WITHOUT END

Weekly Contest #192

**WARNING** Contains themes of violence; disturbing images.Amen. That’s how it always begins. I say a silent prayer, then lean over to kiss Brad, my husband, good night. Before I can turn around to turn off the light, Brad takes my face in his hands, looks deeply into my eyes, and then kisses me, fully and deliberately.  We haven’t made love since the baby.Something grips me in that moment. I hadn’t known how it would be, had become timid and slightly removed, anxious around my husband. Now, recognizing the urge...

29 likes 31 comments 31
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Heirlooms

Weekly Contest #192

The TimepieceJim Coyfield clutched his battered pocket watch as his worn out body wracked itself, his diaphragm heaving, his trachea spasming, his lips forced open in a ragged “O.”  Three hundred years the watch had passed from Coyfield to Coyfield. And now, there was no one left, no one he could give it to, no one he could tell the secrets.Old man Coyfield coughed again and bloody phlegm splattered the moldy carpet of his desolated trailer.He was the last and the worst of the proud Coyfields. Last because his progeny had been too ...

28 likes 19 comments 19
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Words by Fives

Shortlisted for Contest #192 ⭐️

I liked to learn words by fives: Jerry, Perry, scary, betterment, elephant. 'An elephant! Look, look!' I shouted in excitement. A elephant, a child of twilight, slowly plodded between bare trees across the road. Its tusks were not white as I saw in movies about animals but more like unhealthy grey. One tusk's end was broken. Elephant's eyes didn't look bright. They were dull as the tires of cars that passed beneath my window. I looked back toward the bathroom. There were no familiar sounds. I climbed from the stool and walked to th...

28 likes 35 comments 35
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Grandfather Clock

Weekly Contest #192

I cleaned the grandfather clock today, just as she asked. I polished the frame and wiped the glass door. I dusted the pendulum and the weights,and used the step ladder to dust the top, too, making sure to check every square inch of its surfaces for potential filth. But it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough for her. “Now the pendulum’s crooked, what did you do?” “How did you miss that smudge right there?” “I asked you to do one simple task…” I swear if it weren’t for the oxygen tank and the cancer engulfing her insides, she’d stand right ...

28 likes 12 comments 12
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The Divine Intervention of the Molly Maguires

Weekly Contest #192

For three months out of the year, antiques and art lovers all over the United States gather to share their beloved treasures at designated roadshow locations. The hunters and gathers, the collectors, and even the hoarders come together in one place to seek out the advice of experts and estimators to see if the stuff they have is worth any money. Sometimes they earn a history lesson while also learning they’ve got an unexpected fortune on their hands. Most times, those lessons fall on deaf ears because they’ve learned what many already suspec...

27 likes 12 comments 12
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The Rescue

Weekly Contest #192

‘Oh look, here she comes. Look at the way she waves to ‘mummy’. Do you think she’s quite normal?’ The girls stood at the street corner in their school uniforms hitched, pulled, and twisted to try and make them look appealing, sexy and fashionable. They stood around looking at her as she ran past them in her little girl’s dress, too neat, too clean, with her beautiful, youthful skin and short shiny hair. The girls, treading on their cigarette butts, with their spotty complexions and long dull-looking hair, uncombed and...

27 likes 16 comments 16
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Myrtle's Return

Weekly Contest #192

The family dachshund sat on Rory’s lap hoping for a bite of hamburger.  They always grilled on the deck once the weather got nice. It was a hot May evening and the boy’s limbs were tired from swimming in the pond and playing in the mud with Myrtle, who was the greatest dog that he had ever laid eyes on. That weekend he would put her in the basket of his bike and they would go to the town park. She would sit and watch as he played baseball with his friends. Sometimes she would run after a foul ball and come back proudly with it. Scotty t...

27 likes 11 comments 11
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Treasure of the Wraithwood Grove

Weekly Contest #192

The Guardian. Manifestations. Mercy. Treasures. Raked across his chest, Bartram Humblefoot was thrown to the boundary of the grove to land amongst the twisted roots of rotting, dead trees clawing their way out of the soil. The siabrae issued a triumphant shriek from its fleshless, deer-skulled head. Its seven-foot-tall solid oak form lumbered on its hind limbs, and its branch-like arms bore grasping hands of wicked wooden talons. A tattered gray cloak, layered over a ruined tunic and green tartan, was all that remained of its former self. In...

26 likes 24 comments 24
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Standing Up for Himself

Weekly Contest #192

Contains: swearing and shelf stacking.Sceptical drunks watched him trip his way up to the stage, sniggering long before he grabbed the microphone.“Anyone else here done with being nice to people?” He cleared his throat, getting dead stares from the audience. “I worked in a bakery. A customer asked me if I could recommend anything. I recommend talking to someone else.” Somewhere in the gloom a noise of mild amusement declared itself the best encouragement he’d get for that snippet.Feeling the perspiration in his armpits spilling outward he th...

26 likes 37 comments 37
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Ghost Writer

Shortlisted for Contest #192 ⭐️

Bridget was clearing the table when his phone chimed.  She did her best not to react and busied herself brushing non-existent crumbs from the placemat.  Matthew didn’t notice.  He never noticed anymore. He sheepishly palmed his phone and made an exaggerated yawning motion, acting as if he wasn’t struggling with every second he couldn’t look at the phone.  She knew it was killing him not to jump from the table.  She savored that time, moving slowly, brushing every last invisible, non-existent crumb. As Bridget walke...

26 likes 17 comments 17
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He Said, She Said

Weekly Contest #192

"Is this where we line up?”“Wee line up? Are you referring to people experiencing short stature?”“No, no. I want to know if this is where we line up. As in us. As in people.”“Yes. Individuals are lining up here for appraisals.”“I can’t wait to see if my old stuff is worth anything.”“You mean your mature stuff.”“No, I didn’t bring anything naughty. Why would I do that?”“I don’t mean mature as in alternative morality. Mature is how people today refer to things that are no longer new.”“Right. Old. No longer new means old.”“We don’t say old anym...

24 likes 2 comments 2
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Afloat

Shortlisted for Contest #192 ⭐️

As the brakes squeal and the truck comes to a stop, the hot summer air creeps its way through the open window. Despite the early hour, the sun still beats down on us, forcing me to squint and turn my head towards the inside of the truck. My mother sits behind the wheel rummaging through her bag, looking for the key to the padlock she insists on adding to the back of the truck. Between us sits the family photos we’d taken out of their frames, since “every penny counts,” and on top of the pile sits a picture of my father, smiling with the same...

24 likes 8 comments 8
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Sorbet for the Feelings

Weekly Contest #192

Bane stood sniffing at the bottom corner of the door searching for the last bit of the Davis’ scent. The family left for school and work and he wouldn’t see them again until the afternoon. As he heard the car start up and drive off, he knew they were gone.He wandered over to the sofa and was confronted by Luna, somehow occupying the entire space with her 9 pound body. “Don’t you even think about it, Bane. This sofa is mine and you know I’ll go to blows for it,” Luna snapped, her hackles up. Luna was completely oblivious to the fact that Bane...

24 likes 8 comments 8
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The Copper-Haired Girl

Weekly Contest #192

My sea-green eyes marvel at the azure sky, as the sun bronzes my freckled skin. Hot and translucent blue; it is like I am standing at the core of a flame. Seagulls waft and squawk above, jousting for the product of last night’s rain; wiggling pink worms—I must remember to collect some on my way back for bait. “Do you smell that?” Burgess is leaning on the weathered signpost at the top of the steps. He tilts up his bulbous nose and takes two audible sniffs. “Fish, brine, and despair—the copper-haired girl must be here...” His scrawny-limbed ...

24 likes 4 comments 4
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The Hidden Treasure

Weekly Contest #192

           The family gathered to hear the reading of George’s Last Will and Testament. You could feel the tension in the air amongst those who were present. The family had disbanded many years prior, and this was the first time they had all been in the same room with one another in nearly a decade.            The eldest sibling was Reginald Forester, the CEO of his father’s thriving company, GeoTech, a communications empire that had...

23 likes 8 comments 8
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