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#342 Love is in the Air

It’s the day before Valentine’s Day, and what better way to celebrate this special time than by writing a love story?

Will you take a classic like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and put your own spin on it, or will you come up with a unique tale that’s bound to make someone smile (or cry)? This week, think about what love means to you (whether that be romantic, familial, platonic… even love for oneself!) and pour your heart onto the page!

🥇 Winner

By any other name

Winner of Weekly Contest #342 🏆

First of all, it's the loan of a pen.The kid is a transfer in, a scrawny bag of knees and elbows deposited into 10PT by the hands of fate. Jacob gave him a friendly smile on the first day, aware of how easy it is to get lost in the unforgiving sea of humanity that is East Rothman Comp, but all he got back was a thousand yard stare. Fear, perhaps, rather than unfriendliness, but he hasn't been motivated to try again. Not until now.It's something about the kid's reaction that draws him in. It's not unknown to stick a hand in a rucksack and fai...

77 likes 42 comments 42
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⭐️ Shortlisted

Armistice

Shortlisted for Contest #342 ⭐️

Jennie pulled into the driveway of her childhood home and quickly put the van in park before the half of her that wanted to drive far away and never look back could protest. Every small outing was a speed relay for her to return, the goal being to limit the time that her dad was alone in the house unsupervised and that she was alone outside of it with thoughts of leaving for good. “I’m home from the store!” Jennie yelled through the door as she nearly fumbled the case of Coke Zeros amidst a jumble of overstuffed plastic bags. It was a nove...

24 likes 18 comments 18
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The Egyptologist's Dream

Shortlisted for Contest #342 ⭐️

The Egyptologist’s Dream-P. C. Bland- Ernest listened to the sleet plinking against the glass of the upper half of the library’s front door. He was trying to decide whether to catch the bus or take the chance the storm would diminish by the time the library closed and then walk home as usual. From the hollow sound of the wind and its direction, it seemed as though the storm wasn’t likely to let up anytime soon. He had his hand on the door when someone walked up behind him.“Are you waiting for a ride, Mr. Alwin?” The voice was that of Constan...

21 likes 9 comments 9
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This week's prompts

Write a story about love without using the word “love.”

– 109 stories

Include a first or last kiss in your story.

– 77 stories

Write about two characters who have a love/hate relationship.

– 30 stories

End your story with someone saying “I love you” or “I do.”

– 67 stories

Write about someone getting a second chance.

– 67 stories

Stories

By any other name

Winner of Weekly Contest #342 🏆

First of all, it's the loan of a pen.The kid is a transfer in, a scrawny bag of knees and elbows deposited into 10PT by the hands of fate. Jacob gave him a friendly smile on the first day, aware of how easy it is to get lost in the unforgiving sea of humanity that is East Rothman Comp, but all he got back was a thousand yard stare. Fear, perhaps, rather than unfriendliness, but he hasn't been motivated to try again. Not until now.It's something about the kid's reaction that draws him in. It's not unknown to stick a hand in a rucksack and fai...

77 likes 42 comments 42
Read story

The Crystal Ship

Weekly Contest #342

The words echo in my head from a song I can’t escape. Jim Morrison’s voice is belting out the lyrics. Sweetly singing in his demonically angelic voice.“Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss, another flashing chance at bliss, another Kiss…..”Over and over the song has been playing, but now I think I understand the desire being suggested in the repeating song. I’m hugging her and we’re both soaking wet from the cold water of the swimming pool, yet her body is so warm. So yielding, lean, and strong. She’s leaning i...

32 likes 16 comments 16
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Looooong wait for a helicopter ride

Weekly Contest #342

Part One Did you ever hurt someone’s feelings but it took a REALLY long time before you made amends? Sure, there are some time-tested sayings to assuage one’s regret and guilt. “Better late than never.” “All’s well that ends well.” “It actually wasn’t my fault, so cut me a break.” Ooops…scratch that last one. Anyway, I did hurt someone’s feelings a very long time ago, but I finally made restitution over sixty years later. Better late than never…but it actually WASN’T my fault, so cut me a break. Here’s the story. My sister Molly and I were k...

31 likes 21 comments 21
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The Anatomy of Shadow

Weekly Contest #342

The kitchen smelled of rosemary and old resentment.Kathleen stood at the butcher block, her knife moving with a rhythmic, lethal precision. She didn’t need to look up to know that her mother, Delores, was standing in the doorway, judging the way she diced the onions. Delores didn’t just enter rooms; she occupied them, trailing the scent of Chanel No. 5 and the suffocating air of a woman who had never been told "no" and survived."You’re cutting those like a laborer, Kathleen," Delores said, her voice a silk ribbon with a razor edge. "No fines...

30 likes 24 comments 24
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Shape Shifter

Weekly Contest #342

Shape ShifterSomebody runs into the road. I slam the brakes. The anti-locks vibrate as I skid twenty feet through snow. There's no thump of impact, so I rest my forehead on the wheel, heart hammering.A tall figure, edged in the snow-reflected headlights, looms outside the passenger door. Big guy, looks like, standing motionless. I open my door, fight to get free of something entangling me. I’ve forgotten my seat belt, that’s how out of it, how scared shitless I am. My hands tremble while I unbuckle, climb out, hurry around the back. My boot ...

24 likes 6 comments 6
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Enveloped with Hope

Weekly Contest #342

As soon as I saw those tiny daisies dotting each loopy I and smelled that cinnamon fragrance of autumn afternoons in a park with her hand in mine, my racing to the laptop to book a flight across the English Channel was as certain as a king’s wax-sealed ordinance. Even after ten long, agonising years of waiting by an ever-empty post box, of tears flowing into each other like spilt ink, the blush pink letter in my hand was enough for me to expedite each step just to see her again. Margaux Petit, the effervescent pixie who filled my twenties wi...

24 likes 34 comments 34
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Armistice

Shortlisted for Contest #342 ⭐️

Jennie pulled into the driveway of her childhood home and quickly put the van in park before the half of her that wanted to drive far away and never look back could protest. Every small outing was a speed relay for her to return, the goal being to limit the time that her dad was alone in the house unsupervised and that she was alone outside of it with thoughts of leaving for good. “I’m home from the store!” Jennie yelled through the door as she nearly fumbled the case of Coke Zeros amidst a jumble of overstuffed plastic bags. It was a nove...

24 likes 18 comments 18
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The House Remembers

Weekly Contest #342

Two people live in a house that's too quiet.Watch them move through it in the morning. See how they both step over the third stair. The one that creaks.One goes first. Steps over.The other follows. Steps over the same place.They don't discuss this. They never have.There's no one asleep upstairs.There hasn't been anyone asleep upstairs in years.But they both step over it anyway. Careful. Automatic.Their bodies remember when noise mattered.When 6 AM meant stealth. When every sound could wake someone who'd just fallen back asleep after the 4 AM...

24 likes 4 comments 4
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The Builder's Daughter

Weekly Contest #342

She was the size of his hand, and his hands had never felt more useless.Mario Chiara sat in the plastic chair beside Incubator 7, his steel-toed boots still gray with drywall dust. The NICU hummed around him. Ventilators wheezed. Monitors clicked their steady count. The air tasted like alcohol and something sharper, something chemical that caught in the back of his throat when he breathed.Eleven forty-seven at night. He had been sitting for seven hours.His daughter lay under blue lights that made her skin look purple. Wires snaked from patch...

23 likes 11 comments 11
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7 Years Bad Luck/7 Years Good Luck

Weekly Contest #342

I hear the sound of it falling right as I am finally drifting back to sleep. Like a foley sound in a corny old movie, the glass explodes with force. “Why would anyone put a mirror right here?” he questions from the bathroom. Some of the pieces have shattered into such tiny parts it looks like glitter is covering the floor. It would be almost magical in another context. Like you could step on them and be transported to a new world. The reality is, there are shards of glass covering the bathroom floor. The hand mirror has broken. He’s the ...

22 likes 4 comments 4
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Confession

Weekly Contest #342

My son is an only child. My husband is an only child. My mother-in-law is an only child. I am not. I grew up as one of three girls, and our house was busy and loud. If you needed something upstairs and the person who could help you was downstairs, you just yelled for them until they answered back. We were a family of yellers. My husband didn't come from a family of yellers. In fact, his family was the opposite. They didn't talk much at all. At first, I was puzzled. How could anyone get anything done with any expedience if there wasn't the im...

22 likes 7 comments 7
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The Egyptologist's Dream

Shortlisted for Contest #342 ⭐️

The Egyptologist’s Dream-P. C. Bland- Ernest listened to the sleet plinking against the glass of the upper half of the library’s front door. He was trying to decide whether to catch the bus or take the chance the storm would diminish by the time the library closed and then walk home as usual. From the hollow sound of the wind and its direction, it seemed as though the storm wasn’t likely to let up anytime soon. He had his hand on the door when someone walked up behind him.“Are you waiting for a ride, Mr. Alwin?” The voice was that of Constan...

21 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

The Landlord's Tale

Weekly Contest #342

If you were to pick a month of the year to celebrate love, it would not be February would it? In fifth century Rome it was perhaps warmer. Perhaps the rosebuds were bursting and the goats were getting frisky and those Lupercalian romps on the Palatine Hill, flogging women into compliant desire, all made sense at the time.I love my wife. I love her so profoundly that I hardly think of it as anything unusual. But on this one day of the year, beneath this unvisited mantle of sky when the tourists and the pilgrims are few, I have more time to ob...

21 likes 16 comments 16
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Dandelions

Weekly Contest #342

Nobody stands in the rain on purpose. Nobody stands outside on the wettest night of the year in no raincoat, the pelting drops making their glasses unusable, the damp growing and spreading. You have to be really ucked-up to ignore the sternly delivered weather report, to forgo the battered, second-hand raincoat hanging by the door or even the umbrella left by a friend, to go outside and stand in the storm for no reason at all. Raymond was that ucked-up. He had been through the mill, the gist, the this and the that. He had lost the things and...

20 likes 4 comments 4
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The ████████ of Julian Green

Weekly Contest #342

During the night, a storm had possessed Gallowglass Moors. Wind clawed at the stone face of the old manor as if trying to exhume every secret from within its walls. Inside the drawing room, the fire crackled and spat, throwing a swirl of sparks up the chimney. The hearth’s amber glow filled the room and elongated shadows danced like ghosts along the velvet drapes and ruby wallpaper. Elara stood by the window, her sharp silhouette forming a dark line against the lightning-stroked glass. She watched her own reflection flicker with each flash–a...

20 likes 19 comments 19
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