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#366 Not What It Seems

From the Dunnes in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl to Samantha Heather Mackey in Mona Awad's Bunny, the unreliable narrator has long been a literary device I’ve enjoyed immensely. The best ones make you trust them completely, only to pull the rug out when you least expect it or reveal a truth you should’ve known all along. When written well, this kind of narrator can leave a lasting impact on your reader, making them think about your stories weeks, months, even years down the line.

This week’s prompts are inspired by the idea that there’s more than meets the eye. Can you make your reader do a double-take, or reconsider everything they know about your characters?

🥇 Winner

Born in Space: Tales of a Former Galactic Ranger

Winner of Weekly Contest #366 🏆

Life feels different when you grow up on a station. The low gravity grants a unique freedom. It felt like even the laws of physics couldn't hold me down. You never have to worry about falling. One good leap and you're touching the ceiling. One strong push and you're flying into a bookshelf. My mother didn't consider that last one a positive. She considered it the opposite, actually. That's a mother for you. More worried about scraped elbows than the ability to soar. I didn't have time to worry about that. There was an expanse of stars behin...

54 likes 23 comments 23
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⭐️ Shortlisted

A Statement Concerning Certain Misunderstandings

Shortlisted for Contest #366 ⭐️

I plead guilty to two of the presented counts: excitement (near to the point of hysteria, I grant) and excessive volume (which is, at my age, imperceptible). But I am not mad, nor demented, nor uncivilized, or any other atrocious epithet my jailers have assigned to me. Perhaps you’ve never been so blatantly vilified and simply can’t understand it. I give you, my dear audience, the most gracious benefit of the doubt, and trust that this jury of my peers will judge fairly and declare, as is the only logical conclusion when presented with the e...

23 likes 11 comments 11
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Hildegard

Shortlisted for Contest #366 ⭐️

Old Hildegard was getting on in her years.Some of the barmaids in town whispered that she was a witch, because she lived alone in the forest. A few of the schoolboys thought her a hermit, secluded by her own fear of the world. Most knew her for what she really was: a little old lady, isolated by time. A stubborn woman, unfortunate enough to have made her home at the edge of the woods.It was difficult, some days, the villagers knew. The cobbler’s wife would send her daughter out—little Annemarie—to visit her mother; make sure she was get...

19 likes 11 comments 11
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This week's prompts

Write a story with an unreliable narrator or character.

– 105 stories

Your character makes a life-changing decision. What happens next?

– 34 stories

Write a story with more than one POV.

– 34 stories

Start or end your story with the line “I should have known better.”

– 61 stories

Write a story with the aim of making your reader laugh or cry.

– 56 stories

Stories

Born in Space: Tales of a Former Galactic Ranger

Winner of Weekly Contest #366 🏆

Life feels different when you grow up on a station. The low gravity grants a unique freedom. It felt like even the laws of physics couldn't hold me down. You never have to worry about falling. One good leap and you're touching the ceiling. One strong push and you're flying into a bookshelf. My mother didn't consider that last one a positive. She considered it the opposite, actually. That's a mother for you. More worried about scraped elbows than the ability to soar. I didn't have time to worry about that. There was an expanse of stars behin...

54 likes 23 comments 23
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Algorithm

Weekly Contest #366

Algorithm My parents made one major mistake the day I was born. It wasn't the kind that ends up in newspapers or requires an apology tour. Nobody lost a fortune or hired a lawyer. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable. They named me Al. Not Alan. Not Albert. Not Alvin. Just Al. Two letters. An A and an L. They wanted something simple, easy to remember, a name nobody would mispronounce or turn into a ridiculous nickname. They succeeded. Unfortunately, they did not account for humanity someday inventing artificial intelligence and collec...

54 likes 55 comments 55
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The First Meal

Weekly Contest #366

The first thing they taught me was how to swallow. Not because I had forgotten. Because nobody could prove I remembered. Apparently there was a difference. The woman across the table smiled with professional optimism — the kind that had survived too many disappointed people to belong to her anymore. "Take your time." Between us sat a porcelain bowl filled with clear broth. Steam drifted toward the ceiling. No garnish. No color. No ambition. The first meal, I would later learn, was always forgettable. I reached for the spoon. Three ...

46 likes 47 comments 47
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The Last Stand

Weekly Contest #366

Across the street, Jenna had been mean-mugging me for the better part of an hour.Ten minutes. That’s all it took. Ten minutes from the moment I hammered my sign into the lawn until her dad was dragging a folding table to the end of their driveway like he was building a forward operating base. Three minutes later, her mom dropped off a pitcher. Pink lemonade. No pulp. The good stuff. Of course it was pink. Jenna wouldn’t have it any other way.This was the third Saturday of summer holidays, and the third Saturday she tried to steal my thunder....

45 likes 25 comments 25
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Ghosted

Weekly Contest #366

Do you believe this bitch? Roxy Reign’s new video dropped this morning. There she is with her so-called main squeeze, twerking in the dude’s face, then role-playing a shopping spree like they’ve been together for years. This punk calls himself Jett Luxx. After that, they cozy up in a bubble bath built for two, drinking champagne and wearing chain jewelry—and not much else. A montage of rap clichés. Total garbage.It’s been like, what, five weeks since she ghosted me? Bitch sure moves fast.In my head, “Love Is a Battlefield” opens my “Fuck You...

42 likes 13 comments 13
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The Volunteer

Weekly Contest #366

Milton Renner stood in the parking lot of the North Haven Courier building and stared at the flyer taped to the window. VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS NEEDED. NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED. He read it three times.Six weeks earlier, Milton had burned down a toolshed. He hadn't meant to. He had been trying to get rid of a wasp nest with a can of hairspray and a lighter, a method he found on a forum, and the wasp nest was fine but the shed was not. Detective Smitty and Detective Daryl had come out to look at it, mostly because the shed belonged to Bill Hallor...

27 likes 14 comments 14
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By Feel

Weekly Contest #366

The box came wrapped in a plastic shopping bag inside a courier bag inside a cardboard box.Meera set it on the kitchen table and did not open it for four days.On the fifth day she cut the tape with a knife and the box exhaled: turmeric, old paper, the mustiness of an old steel cabinet. She had expected a recipe book. Something with a spine. Instead the box tipped sideways and papers spilled out across the table. A school notebook with a fat cartoon cow on the cover, spiral bent out of shape. A stack of paper napkins, translucent with old oil...

24 likes 7 comments 7
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THE BINDING OF ISAAC

Weekly Contest #366

The path to Moriah wound upward through dry hills where only stubborn shrubs and scattered olive trees found enough life to survive. Abraham had walked those roads before, but never with feet so heavy. Beside him came Isaac, no longer a small child but old enough to carry the wood for the offering and old enough to notice that his father, ordinarily a man whose confidence calmed everyone around him, had become strangely silent. For nearly two days they spoke little. The servants remained respectfully behind, sensing that something solemn hun...

23 likes 5 comments 5
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A Statement Concerning Certain Misunderstandings

Shortlisted for Contest #366 ⭐️

I plead guilty to two of the presented counts: excitement (near to the point of hysteria, I grant) and excessive volume (which is, at my age, imperceptible). But I am not mad, nor demented, nor uncivilized, or any other atrocious epithet my jailers have assigned to me. Perhaps you’ve never been so blatantly vilified and simply can’t understand it. I give you, my dear audience, the most gracious benefit of the doubt, and trust that this jury of my peers will judge fairly and declare, as is the only logical conclusion when presented with the e...

23 likes 11 comments 11
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Crane

Weekly Contest #366

Normally, he’d have gone to meet her.That was partly because he loved her, though he wasn’t aware of that yet, but also because he was a creature of habit. The same walk into town, the same spot in his favourite padded booth at the restaurant, the same bench shaded by a canopy of trees that reflected patterns of ambers and greens along the moving river. Even better if these things were shared with her. The reason he didn’t go was that he was a little stoned. It made the computer game he was playing more interesting, the colours more vivid, t...

22 likes 13 comments 13
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A Visit to Yangshan

Weekly Contest #366

Part I: Serena’s POVMy first mistake is hitting snooze at seven. My second is lying awake, listening to my mother's treadmill whir while she sings along to Leslie Cheung's "Monica," the lyrics leaking from her earphones.I open my bedroom door and Theresa appears. "Good morning, Ma'am. Coffee or tea?""Not now, Theresa.""Yes, Ma'am."Theresa vanishes and I head to the kitchen to inspect the refrigerator myself.At twenty-nine, why am I still living at home? Technically, my parents can't stop me from leaving, but then who would take care of them?...

22 likes 13 comments 13
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Building the Future

Weekly Contest #366

Soleil closed her eyes against the glare of overhead LEDs and tried to relax. A man in white coveralls prodded at her face with the arcane instruments of progress. Trust him, she urged herself. CacheCov is an innovative company. They’re saving humanity. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he said. This was the first lie. Forty minutes later, the technician elevated the exam chair and presented her with a mirror. Soleil held her fingers to her face. Her cheeks were tender and her throat burned like she’d swallowed rocket fuel. “Subdermal implants,” the ...

21 likes 19 comments 19
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Purgatory

Weekly Contest #366

IAnthony McKenzie returned from the past expecting the world to fracture. He had changed something enormous—something history should have screamed about. Instead, the present greeted him with the same traffic and the same indifferent sky. It was as if time had watched him interfere, considered the alteration, and quietly declined to acknowledge it.Anthony sat in his parked car long after the engine died, staring at the intersection — gray asphalt, cracked crosswalk, the bakery on the corner with its red awning — like it was a riddle he’d fai...

20 likes 8 comments 8
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The Price of a Friend

Weekly Contest #366

Ritchie isn’t sure what to do now. He is a grown man, but he has lived in Rick’s sheltering shadow ever since Rick saved his salami sandwich from the bullies in elementary school. Yet the casing is there, the bullet is not. Rick had checked the guns and signed the sheet before leaving for the trailer to get some rest. Ritchie only has to make sure no one touches those guns before today’s scene. But what if the bullet is still inside one of the barrels? Ritchie shakes his head as if he could shake away the screams, the pool of blood, the head...

20 likes 15 comments 15
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Diana the Huntress

Weekly Contest #366

I spend my nights in the big wild. Last night, the air was cool, moon-bright, and calm. I found a corner, took a pee, and walked the bounds of my land before settling in the high lookout ahead of the far pines. I waited, eyes wide, nostrils flared. Petrichor, leaf mulch, cooked meat, hot fruit. The buzz of traffic, the metallic zizz of a moped, the clink of empty bottles. Four cats, three of them female, a vixen and a dog tainted the air, faint enough to ignore. Far above me, a cluster of leaves shifted. My heartbeat accelerated and my ears...

20 likes 7 comments 7
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