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#346 Final Destination

Here in the UK, the weather's slowly starting to get better (read: sunnier and somewhat warmer), which means I've already started dreaming about my next holiday. While I'm not ready to hop on a plane just yet, the good news is that I can travel anywhere I'd like... in the realm of fiction, that is!

This week, let’s explore themes of departure, arrival, and distance. Maybe your characters are hopping between cities, crossing galaxies, or trying to bridge the gap through messages — I’m curious to find out where they end up (and if things come full circle… or not!). Grab your bags and let's see where your writing takes us!

🥇 Winner

The Road That Has No End – Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

Winner of Weekly Contest #346 🏆

The Road That Has No End - Mariah Lightening’s Last InterviewAs the curtains close on a life and career, the 54 year old rockstar gives her final statements to her beloved fans and staunch critics. She’s hardly recognizable. The once powerfully strong build that performed olympic level dives off arena stages is now an amalgamation of flimsy bones on a hospital bed. Her iconic glittery unitard has been replaced by a gown. The only music in Mariah Lightening’s presence these days is the beeping and groaning of her dialysis machine. She’s bee...

62 likes 42 comments 42
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⭐️ Shortlisted

Auto Delete

Shortlisted for Contest #346 ⭐️

Got a sec? No Not really… Urgent?KindaYesDefinitely In mtg Email?Feels safer on signal Jeez FineOr phone? Cant Mtg???LEAVEWut mtg Can’t Steve is here Pickering all staffScene of the crime Not funnyKinda is Fine hat up *whatHrd Kelly giving evidence ...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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Time Matters

Shortlisted for Contest #346 ⭐️

TIME MATTERS Anita closed her eyes and read the screen. Good, no messages. Her secretary would still be asleep in Hong Kong so she had two hours before the mail started. She could dictate a couple of legal notices if necessary, while walking but she didn’t want to. She shivered with anticipation. She was going for a walk, in the open, for the first time! Standing on a promontory and stretched to her full height, she could see the glittering sapphire blue of the Atlantic in the distance. In between, falling gently away down to the coastal p...

17 likes 15 comments 15
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This week's prompts

Write about someone who has (or is given) the ability to teleport or time-travel.

– 49 stories

Your character is traveling a road that has no end.

– 62 stories

Write about someone arriving somewhere for the first or last time.

– 74 stories

Tell a story with a series of calls, emails, and/or text messages.

– 26 stories

Write a story whose first and last words are the same.

– 73 stories

Stories

The Road That Has No End – Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

Winner of Weekly Contest #346 🏆

The Road That Has No End - Mariah Lightening’s Last InterviewAs the curtains close on a life and career, the 54 year old rockstar gives her final statements to her beloved fans and staunch critics. She’s hardly recognizable. The once powerfully strong build that performed olympic level dives off arena stages is now an amalgamation of flimsy bones on a hospital bed. Her iconic glittery unitard has been replaced by a gown. The only music in Mariah Lightening’s presence these days is the beeping and groaning of her dialysis machine. She’s bee...

62 likes 42 comments 42
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Where the Veil is Thin

Weekly Contest #346

The liminal spaces are haunting. They follow. Each footfall leads closer to that line, the one where ghosts tread. It is dusk. Jackson Square awakening to all its infinite possibilities. Tarot card tables are strewn along the cobbled path. Candles flicker below the rising smell of sweet incense. Accosted by a putrid scent of human refuse. Debauchery with a mix of sainthood. I like to think I lean toward goodness, but I know the sins I am capable of indulging. This is my New Orleans. The sun slanting to the west is a foregone conclusion. The ...

35 likes 33 comments 33
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Boiled Sweets

Weekly Contest #346

The old woman hobbled down the train station platform and into the shelter. Agnes Mayfair forgot about the bruises on her body for a moment and got up to help her onto the bench. She winced in pain as she took the old woman's weight and lowered her into the seat. The old woman hung on the crook handle of her rosewood walking stick with plump, pink hands, eventually catching her breath. "Thank you, duck," she said. "My back isn't what it used to be. Sixty years ago, I was a pole vaulter, if you can believe that." Agnes offered a stiff smile, ...

32 likes 9 comments 9
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Thirty Years of Tuesdays

Weekly Contest #346

The first thing I see is the hospital bracelet still on his wrist. White plastic. Black letters. A barcode. The kind of thing you can’t argue with. You can argue with a person. You can argue with a text message. You can argue with silence. You can’t argue with proof.He stands in our hallway with a paper bag that has PHARMACY printed on it in loud red. His coat hangs off him. His eyes are dry. That scares me more than tears.I don’t say welcome home. I don’t say how are you. Those are the words people use to make themselves feel useful.I say, ...

31 likes 42 comments 42
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Hard Shoulder

Weekly Contest #346

There is a breed of workaholic whose fuel is ambition. Zack knew it; he saw them every day—youngsters, mostly, flitting about the building like immaculately dressed hummingbirds. He wasn't like them. Whatever goals he'd had—if any—were long forgotten. He was a different breed. "What?" he snarled into his hands-free. "What do you mean they only just got the Burke memo? No, not tomorrow—now. I don't care if it's 11:30 at night! I said now, damn it!" He stabbed the end-call button on the console. "Fuck! Incompetent cretins!" At least the traffi...

26 likes 6 comments 6
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A JOURNEY TO INFINITY

Weekly Contest #346

On the telemetry console aboard Orbital Station Asteria, a valve indicator flickered for just a second. On Earth, a monitoring computer in Houston logged a transient pressure irregularity in the maneuvering system of the attached exploration craft Aurora. The computer flagged it as a curiosity. No alarm sounded. Up on the station, Commander Elena Markovic floated beside the hatch, checking the tethers on a supply pod. “Ready to detach?” asked Flight Engineer Daniel Cho. Elena glanced out the viewport. Earth hung below them like a luminous ma...

25 likes 12 comments 12
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The Woman in the Park

Weekly Contest #346

She smiled at me like she would at any unfamiliar face. A warmth lay within it that defied explanation. The kind of warmth many people search for in vain, even in their own mothers. Fortunately, that wasn't the case for me."May I sit down?" I asked. The woman on the park bench looked at me briefly, as though searching for something in my face. An answer to a question she didn't know herself. Then a blissful smile spread across her features. "Of course, my dear. Of course." She shifted to one side before offering me the space beside her with ...

23 likes 11 comments 11
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The Road That Painted the Sky

Weekly Contest #346

The Road That Painted the SkyA story about a painter, a choice and a road with no end "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."~ Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken Part the First: The Two RoadsEveryone in the small river town of Salmara agreed that Mira was a perfectly sensible woman, except for the paint jars. She had seventeen of them; small, fat-bellied glass jars lined along her kitchen windowsill where most people kept salt cellars or photographs of relatives who never ...

20 likes 10 comments 10
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Melt

Weekly Contest #346

Falling. That was the sensation. The girl’s head sank and jolted back into her car seat. It hurt, like something squeezed it, and she felt a pang in her stomach as she looked down at the seatbelt still strapped tight over her puffy purple jacket. Then she looked up, around—fog covered the windows of the sedan on all sides, but she could see the uneven sticking of fresh snow on all of them.In the front seat, her parents were asleep on pillows over the dashboard. Beside her, her little brother’s head sank too, down to his chest, a little drool...

20 likes 0 comments 0
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Henry The Navigator

Weekly Contest #346

LondonSeptember, 1939. The morning skies filled with the wailing cries of the lost, and Henry knew he would never find home again. Henry hated not knowing where he was. In his neighborhood he knew every street and every alley, but here he could barely tell up from down. He scrunched closer to the only navigation point he had, gripping his Ma’s elbow tight. He tried to focus on the map spread over her best dress. Ma’s shaking finger pointed where the station was, and where he was going, but the squiggly lines on the paper were no match for th...

19 likes 8 comments 8
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Auto Delete

Shortlisted for Contest #346 ⭐️

Got a sec? No Not really… Urgent?KindaYesDefinitely In mtg Email?Feels safer on signal Jeez FineOr phone? Cant Mtg???LEAVEWut mtg Can’t Steve is here Pickering all staffScene of the crime Not funnyKinda is Fine hat up *whatHrd Kelly giving evidence ...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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The Never Born

Weekly Contest #346

Year 2130 CEYear 2130 CE The high-rises in Abu Dhabi rose into the gray sky and lost themselves. Were they real? Amir Rabah cocked his head at the shimmer on the building's edge. This was the giveaway he decided. What is real and what isn't? It was exhausting to live in a world where truth no longer mattered. He stared up and when he did he stumbled on the marble steps he was climbing. The steps were real. The World Supreme Court was real. Above him were the words carved into the Romanesque architecture. They didn’t shimmer. It was just he ...

18 likes 15 comments 15
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The Courage of Mothers

Weekly Contest #346

Warning: mention of child illness, childbirth, and blood My valiant escape seemed like a much better idea five steps ago. I’d been quite confident the nurses had been exaggerating the whole thing about me being a ‘fall risk’. I’d had the baby while standing up just half an hour prior. If I could do that on two feet, then I could definitely make it to the end of the hall and through the doors by myself.My Ann. My baby who had only ever known the warmth and safety of my womb was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the adjoining ward. The e...

18 likes 3 comments 3
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An Adventure with Bob, Fred, and Doctor Dill Pickle

Weekly Contest #346

Once upon a time in the land of Snackville, Bob the Cheeseburger, with his cheese self and Fred the Taco with his spicy salsa, and their wise friend Doctor Dill Pickle decided to take a bus trip. They wanted to visit the Great Picnic Park, where the grass is always green, and the lemonade is always fresh.They packed their bags (Bob made sure to bring extra ketchup) and hopped on the Snackville Express Bus. But as the wheels rolled along, something strange happened: the road kept going and going! It twisted, turned, and stretched on forever. ...

18 likes 16 comments 16
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Actions Speak Louder

Weekly Contest #346

"I'm sorry, Mom." His words echoed, glitching in my head like static. How many times can a person utter the same words before they lose their meaning? I tried to muster a tear, some kind of outrage, anything to keep the numbness at bay. I slammed a cupboard door and scared the dog. "It's ok," I whispered, rubbing between his ears. He blinked and gave me the cute puppy eyes. Darkness peered from the windows, so I forced myself into my morning routine. The sun would be up soon, and the girls would be hungry for breakfast. I was happy to keep m...

18 likes 5 comments 5
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