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#375 Signs and Omens

October’s finally here, and with it comes all things creepy and ominous. With the days getting colder and grayer, it’s the perfect time to write a spooky tale or two. Grab your favorite hot beverage and a cozy blanket, and let’s write some stories centered around superstitions, premonitions, and things that shouldn’t ever be ignored...

🥇 Winner

Messages to the Living

Winner of Weekly Contest #375 🏆

Mom had always been superstitious. Whenever there was talk of upcoming plans, particularly something we were excited about, she would rap her knuckles on the nearest wooden surface. Tap, tap, tap. Like when I was eight and Adam was five, and she broke the news we were going to Disneyland. “The tickets are booked!” she’d beamed, smiling wide at us. “Oh, we’re all going to have such a good time.” And then quickly, before the universe could mistake her enthusiasm for overconfidence: “Knock on wood.” Tap, tap, tap on the coffee table. Then, ...

57 likes 27 comments 27
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⭐️ Shortlisted

Orchids

Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #375 ⭐️

CW: Contains symbolic references to suicide The sun was a spotlight, dangling above the set dressing of swings and seesaws. There was laughter from the children. Those women tended to their kids with easeful synchrony, scooping them in their arms, a seamless interplay I had to calculate and measure every time I tried with my daughter. She was full of surprises. From the bench, I watched her dart from place to place around the playground. And it was like I was tracing a spinning atlas; each time I tried to halt the spinning, it slipped from ...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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Perkeo, the Racecar Driver

Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #375 ⭐️

‘Third time’s the charm’ is humanity’s greatest scam of all time. Sixteen…I’m at sixteen! And those devious administrators said this simulation would take three trials to reach the ‘final destination.’ I lean back from the workstation and the taunting computer monitor, hands interlocked atop my greasy head, absorbing the fluorescent light hum from overhead. GAME OVER! Game Score: 978 Highest Score: 1208 New Game? There must be a secret combination. Every selection. Three options. Besides the main character and the beverage, the choices keep ...

6 likes 6 comments 6
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This week's prompts

Set your story on a day when everything feels slightly wrong.

– 26 stories

Include a bad omen (e.g., a broken mirror, a dead bird, a black cat) in your story.

– 59 stories

Write about a character who ignores every warning — or follows one too far.

– 39 stories

Include the line “It’s a sign” or “Something’s not right” in your story.

– 49 stories

Your protagonist notices a strange coincidence...

– 13 stories

Stories

Messages to the Living

Winner of Weekly Contest #375 🏆

Mom had always been superstitious. Whenever there was talk of upcoming plans, particularly something we were excited about, she would rap her knuckles on the nearest wooden surface. Tap, tap, tap. Like when I was eight and Adam was five, and she broke the news we were going to Disneyland. “The tickets are booked!” she’d beamed, smiling wide at us. “Oh, we’re all going to have such a good time.” And then quickly, before the universe could mistake her enthusiasm for overconfidence: “Knock on wood.” Tap, tap, tap on the coffee table. Then, ...

57 likes 27 comments 27
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Signs & Omens

Weekly Contest #375

The first video wasn’t much to look at. Wes had filmed it on his phone with a tripod his wife Rachel bought for twenty dollars. He spent most of the video talking about where the superstition came from, or at least where people thought it came from. There were several explanations, which Wes would eventually learn was true of most superstitions. One involved the triangle formed by a ladder leaning against a wall and the idea that walking through it profaned something sacred. Another claimed the association came from ladders used at execution...

51 likes 30 comments 30
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Sacriledge

Weekly Contest #375

“Hey! Cuz. I don’t have much time. Pay attention!” “Um, I…Isamu! Where are you? Something is seriously not right here!” “Listen to me. I am being taken to you now. Lock the door and block it good." "Find another way out. Do not let me or anything else through. You hear me?" "... I am not myself… Hurry!” “Wh...What? I don’t understand… How do…” “…I'm already up to the third floor and coming towards you…" "... You’re running out of time...” Befuddled, I frantically slapped my face to get grounded. Ripping out the I.V. needle from my vein, I w...

30 likes 11 comments 11
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With Hindsight

Weekly Contest #375

The Launch, Pacific Ocean, April 28, 1789. My darling Betsy, Only with you can I be truly open and admit the truth. Much as I long for you now, I would not wish you to suffer my travails for a single second. If you were here, you would know exactly what to say to soothe my troubled thoughts. All these years at sea should have sharpened my instinct for danger, yet to recognise the storm gathering around me proved impossible until it was too late. I carry these pages in my coat pocket now, written in the gloom of the open launch while aro...

24 likes 17 comments 17
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The Faithful

Weekly Contest #375

For most of his life, Everett Boone had believed God wanted something from him. The problem was figuring out what. As a boy in northeastern Tennessee, Everett attended church because everybody attended church. His mother sang alto in the choir. His father parked cars on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve. His grandmother kept a Bible beside her recliner with so many highlighted passages the pages looked diseased. Everett was baptized at 12. He stopped believing at 23. There had been no tragedy behind it. No dead child. No cancer diagnosis. No u...

23 likes 11 comments 11
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The Receiving Room

Weekly Contest #375

The first autumn leaves clicked along the asphalt like skittering beetles. Wind howled through the oaks and up the hill on Moods Road. It almost seemed to be saying something. My mother stood on the porch of the old house, waving me forward with a ring of keys. She’d told me to bring my tools. “What’s broken?” “The front door at the Moods Road house.” “Why are you going there?” “We rented it.” “Ma. Ghosts aren’t real.” “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.” In Bellwether, renting the old Haunted House on Moods Road was the small-town equi...

20 likes 13 comments 13
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The Gathering Storm

Weekly Contest #375

It was an inopportune day for a job interview. Friday 13th, I really needed the job. I’d been out of work for three months now, and Christmas would be here soon. No one hires new employees over the holiday season. I had thought I was well set up for unforeseen changes. But I didn’t foresee Trent and Clark (Newspapers) Inc. suddenly going out of business. They hadn’t even paid me my final month’s salary. I had heard that most Americans would last about five months if they lost their jobs. That seemed to be pretty accurate for my situation. T...

19 likes 6 comments 6
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Hymn of Keeping

Weekly Contest #375

Each afternoon, I wake and count what's left of me. Ash beneath my nails. Wax hardened across my palms. The smell of smoke clinging to my flesh like a second skin. No amount of lye or prayer can remove it. I am stained, tainted, cursed. I scrub anyway, trying to brush the ash onto my apron; the soot leaves dark streaks across the fabric, then I wash my hands until my skin burns. I eat. I sleep, and at sunset, I begin. The old church sits at the edge of the cliffs, half swallowed by fog. Its ancient wood has been soaked with sea salt for s...

19 likes 11 comments 11
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The Last Eighty Dollars

Weekly Contest #375

Scott Hanley had forgotten about the impact driver. He had listed it on Facebook Marketplace in June after buying a DeWalt combo kit on sale. He needed nearly everything in it: The circular saw, reciprocating saw, and batteries. The only duplicate was the impact driver. Scott already owned the exact same model, and the old one worked perfectly. He listed the extra for $120. Open box. Never used. Battery not included. Then he waited. Three people asked if it was available and disappeared after he answered. One offered $50. Another wanted Scot...

17 likes 14 comments 14
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Whistling on the Deck

Weekly Contest #375

Sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes, the earth shifts beneath your feet. Bernard Rourke had spent most of his adult life explaining why other people saw things that weren't there. To Professor Rourke, signs and wonders were false advertising. He believed in numbers, in instruments, in the stubborn integrity of a fact that remained a fact regardless of who was looking at it. What he did not believe in—or had trained himself not to believe in—were the little private arrangements people made between themselves and the universe, the conviction...

16 likes 8 comments 8
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Tommy and the Dead Guy

Weekly Contest #375

Tommy and the Dead Guy Tommy Martin looked like a normal ten-year-old. He wasn’t. “Tommy! Get moving! You’re going to be late for school!” “I can’t go to school today, Mom. It’s too dangerous.” “What are you talking about? What’s too dangerous?” “I saw a dead bird, and that’s a bad omen. I’ll have to stay home today.” “I don’t think so, Tommy. And where did you see a dead bird?” “He’s in our refrigerator.” “What? In our refridg… Tommy, that’s the chicken we’re having for dinner tonight.” “He’s dead, isn’t he?” “Sorry, Tommy, that doesn’t cou...

16 likes 1 comment 1
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A letter from three cadets

Weekly Contest #375

Below is a translated excerpt taken from the files of Lundernius Scouting Academy, an alien school on a planet estimated 40,000 light years away: Disciplinary Report regarding an Earth escapade: Educator’s note: This report regards the disgraceful behavior of three cadets as well as an instructor from Lundernius Scouting Academy. We take full accountability for endangering the safety of Lundernius and are deeply apologetic. We also plead with the District to understand that these children are an outlier from our standard environment. As fo...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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12 Nights

Weekly Contest #375

“They’re just excited, Bee." Nick slides his hand across the console to cup my knee. He gives it a gentle squeeze, like the reassuring pet you give a rescue dog before you take it to a crowded park. “My mom made the sugar cookies you like. Just… give them a chance. If it gets too loud, we can sneak to the basement. Okay?” I can’t look at him. My attention is locked on the roofline of the wrap-around porch. “They’re blue.” I interrupt his pep talk. Nick blinks, his hand stalling. “What?” “The lights. On the gutters.” I point toward the ho...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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Bugs in the Machine

Weekly Contest #375

I Hes wakes to darkness. Not pre-dawn darkness—mechanical darkness. The kind that exists because something has stopped working. His optics adjust slowly. A narrow corridor comes into view around him: pipes running along the ceiling, dust-coated panels, exposed wiring hanging from an open junction box. Somewhere behind the walls, machinery produces a low, continuous hum. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. He doesn’t know if he has been anywhere else. He searches for something before this place and finds nothing. He only knows his name....

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Overnight Visitation

Weekly Contest #375

At 2:07 a.m. the shoulder of Kamehameha Highway was gravel and old windshield glass, and Kimo was running on it barefoot toward a flashlight that kept jabbing at the oncoming lane. Sonny Akana, from two houses down, was at the hydrant in boxers and one rubber slipper, holding her by the wrist. “She was on the line, brah. Right on it.” Pua was three. Honu pajamas, one sleeve shoved up. She stood with her back to the houses and her face to the water, which at that hour was a sound past the road and nothing else. The Kāne moon was still below t...

15 likes 12 comments 12
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