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#250 All Ears

Every now and then, you overhear something you really weren’t supposed to. Whether it’s deliberate eavesdropping or an innocent accident, you must now decide what to do with your ill-gotten information.


This week’s prompts are themed around stolen snippets of conversation. Will your characters understand the gravity of what they’ve heard? What will they do next? It's all up to you.

This week's prompts

Write a story in which someone is afraid of being overheard.

– 62 stories

Write a story about a child overhearing something they don’t understand.

– 59 stories

Write a story in which someone can only hear one side of a conversation and must piece together the meaning of what they’ve heard.

– 37 stories

A character overhears something at a black-tie event that puts the night in jeopardy.

– 43 stories

Your teacher tasks you with writing a story based on an eavesdropped conversation. When the story is published, your subject isn’t happy.

– 15 stories

Stories

The Secret in Dragon Bones

Shortlisted for Contest #250 ⭐️

The walls of the event hall are glass. Transparent panes lead to a curved ceiling decorated with painted dragons, the modern walls a recent installment after a fire forced us to repair them. Instead of reconstructing the ancient style, the architects went for simplicity, clarity. Something different. It feels  at odds, though, with the rich warmth of the ceiling and the deep colors of the jewel-toned dragons. The glass lets the night in, and from my spot at the entrance, I watch the guests arrive in glitter and black and finery, paradin...

19 likes 22 comments 22
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Quiet Recognition

Weekly Contest #250

I know you think it isn’t a big deal when you get a phone call from the Secretary. You know, we’ve--I remember coming up at a time when you could hear something unusual, and you would--You would write it off. It was a conspiracy. It sounds crazy. It is crazy. It’s crackpot. You sound like a crackpot. That’s how it was when I first moved here. We used to make fun of people who talked about watching what you say in public. Even people with high clearance. Even people working on--you know--projects that weren’t even verified. If they were in a ...

19 likes 4 comments 4
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Tennis At Mar-a-Lago

Weekly Contest #250

Ayesha was ambitious, good at school, and now had a real job. When her mom asked her to keep an eye on Dad, the pint-sized first-grader took the assignment to heart. Later that afternoon, on hearing noises in her dad’s study, she tiptoed to the door. The wood felt rough as she pressed her ear against it. Her heart raced in anticipation. From TV, she knew parents usually take drugs or kiss other people behind closed doors.Dad was talking, but the words he used were confusing. “The testicular biopsy results show a stage 3 carcinoma…” He w...

18 likes 10 comments 10
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My Words

Weekly Contest #250

Flashing cameras created orbs of lights dancing around the lobby. It was not my first time at the Manhattan Club Gala, but the anticipation washed over me as if it were. My novel’s position as number one on the bestseller list was tenuous and hung on for dear life.Standing at the bar, I listened to the conversations floating through the air. Greetings were exchanged with various levels of sincerity, making it difficult to discern between friend and foe. We were, after all, each other’s competition for the coveted award.As...

18 likes 15 comments 15
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Dear Lord

Weekly Contest #250

Lloyd was not one to pray. That's what made the child's sudden prayer all the more terrifying. It came while Lloyd was working the heavy bag. Fists up, he whirled to face the sound's source, but there was only the voice, a little white girl's by the sound of it: "Dear Lord, please tell Rufus to stay out of my room. He can't be in my room because he's dirty. And please make me pretty like Mom, and if you could, have Beth Marie invite me to her birthday. World peace is good, too. Thank you, I love you." Now, one gloved hand paused in front of ...

17 likes 11 comments 11
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Diamonds, At Least

Weekly Contest #250

Ben pulled Warren aside. He checked to see if anyone could hear. This was important.“I have to tell you something. But you have to promise you won’t tell anyone else. No one.”“Sure. What’s up?”“I found… a treasure.” Warren’s eyes widened. “What kind…?”“You have to see. Come over after school. I’ll show you.”Thrown together in their seventh-grade home room, Warren became Ben’s best friend. He’d never laughed so much in his life. Some of their teachers had reconfigured their seating charts five times in two months. A record.~A classic latchkey...

15 likes 6 comments 6
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The Queer Black Hand Note

Weekly Contest #250

“Psst”.“Vincento?”He was like a cat, from the back alley to the dimly lit sidewalk beside her, he was suddenly there, holding her hand.“How is my Ethel?” said Vincento.They caressed, her curly blonde locks spilling back from her eager face as she succumbed to his embrace and his exploring hands.“Vincento! Not here. Not now. Someone might see us”.Ethel grabbed his wandering hand and clasped it in hers, and they stood grinning at each other in the dim glow of the gas light at the Italian end of the street where the row houses crammed closely t...

15 likes 18 comments 18
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Animated

Weekly Contest #250

After the July sun outside my eyes were winding in their lens to acclimatise to the dim hallway. He motioned with a finger toward the dark semi-circular table next to the front door.“I expect your phone needs charging, you can leave it here, put it on this table.” Tony lifted a finger to his lips and glanced quickly back to the house.“Do you have anything else? Laptop, any other phones? Voice recorder, anything?” he asked in a whisper.I guess he didn’t see my shake of the head and shrug in the gloom. He stood waiting for a response.“No, noth...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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Lynley Strikes Again

Weekly Contest #250

My name is Lynley. I am eleven years old, and I attend middle school. My teacher, Miss Galloway, asked us to write a story about a conversation we shouldn’t have heard, either by accident or because we deliberately eavesdropped. Eavesdropping means standing below a house’s eaves to overhear a conversation you have no business listening to. Nowadays, it means you can be anywhere unseen, hanging out for private and scandalous snippets of news. It is like being a detective.I had fallen over and sprained my left hand. The bad...

15 likes 12 comments 12
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What a Shame...

Weekly Contest #250

“It’s a shame isn’t it?” “What is?” “That the groom is a whore.” “What?” “You didn’t know?” The pair lowered their voices then to a more appropriate volume, but I’d already heard more than enough. More than I should’ve.  More than I was supposed to. It’s none of my business, I reminded myself, gritting my teeth and trying to actually focus on the program that I’d only been pretending to read before. I tried. I really did. But little words kept slipping through. Words like “all the time” and “at their engage...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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Pier 33

Weekly Contest #250

Hannah hated to admit how good she felt in the dress. The fabric, the cut, the draping, it all exuded richness. And the way people looked at her, with some mix of envy or longing. There was an allure to it.However, someone with a keen eye could see the fit was ever so slightly off. It was the littlest bit loose at the shoulder and just a tad long at the hem. A perfectly tailored couture gown, just not for her. For her roommate, Claire.The pochette was even more enviable to some. It was beaded and glistening with garish hardware meant to be r...

13 likes 0 comments 0
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Booming Dunes

Weekly Contest #250

 I knew the sound vibrating from your throat would pour like sand down mine. I knew my stomach would squeeze hunger when you closed the curtains on the day. I knew the walls would shriek when I saw you staring into your palm. I knew Henry would never fix it. The TV was on, and Barney was singing. The moan was back, and you stared deep into it. It was pressed in the middle of your palm, a red dot punched into skin by the tip of the knife you use to carve turkey on Christmas day. You were master of the blade and you stopped before the we...

13 likes 12 comments 12
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Lunchtime at The Justice Cafe

Weekly Contest #250

Roger McAllister glanced at the name tag of the waitress behind the counter, and after taking another look at the patrons seated in the diner he knew he had to ask. His two minutes inside the roadside grease-pit had shown him there was something mighty strange about this place. “So how’d this town ever get a name like ‘Justice,’ Maureen?” he began, knowing that any salesman worth his spit always started with the familiarities and small talk, then built from there. The waitress set his coffee and chili before him without the customary ...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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The Gassing of Hampshire Manor

Weekly Contest #250

A polite nausea rose up in Emmett's abdomen as he plunged back into the swarm of hungry entrepreneurs, investors, and politicians on the main floor of Hampshire Manor. His palms and armpits were swampy. He grimaced eloquently and nodded subtly at people who may have been making eye contact with him as he slipped through the crowd. Soon, he thought, you will all be dead. He tugged at his shirt collar, wishing he could loosen the tight bowtie that was ruthlessly strangling him.Moments earlier, wandering aimlessly through the halls of the mansi...

13 likes 15 comments 15
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Sinking Ship

Weekly Contest #250

He’d learnt to limit his words and in doing so he had become quieter. Now, anyone who encountered him mistook him for a taciturn man, not the prisoner he had become. Imprisoned in his own body. Trapped in a place that he had made his home only to see it taken down brick by brick to reveal impenetrable bars that no one in their right mind would seek to go beyond, for surrounded by the bars of this place was a cloying and eternal darkness which reached out for him, beckoning him forth. Promising oblivion when it was clear that pain was all it ...

13 likes 12 comments 12
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