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Start or end your story with a house going up in flames.

Posted in Dark on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 54 stories

Through the Jungle and Other Ways to Escape

Shortlisted for Contest #108 ⭐️

TW: mental illness, substance abuseMom’s guy ran out of benzos, so I figured it was better for me to bring Paul anywhere but home after school. When her pills wore off, at best she’d leave soap bars in the sink with the water running to expose the listening devices she was convinced were hidden inside; at worst, she’d believe that Paul and I were minions of Satan sent to spy on her. Better for us to stay out of her hair, in case it went the second way.Before school, she emerged from her bedroom in a discolored robe. She watched me zip the ha...

43 likes 12 comments 12
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The Art of Fire

Submitted to Contest #108

Fury seared deep in Brooklynn’s veins, building with every second that passed. The fleeting minutes burned her anger higher, much like the engulfing flames over her beloved house in front of her.For the briefest millisecond she felt a pang of guilt, but squashed it immediately. This was not her fault; she had done everything right for years. Ten years of what she thought was bliss, broken and wasted in the blink of an eye.How did it come to this?She clutched her squirming Pekingese, Khali, closer to her chest as the little dog snorted and li...

35 likes 8 comments 8
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Inevitability

Submitted to Contest #108

Travis and Ethan watched the house burn, with a brazen enthusiasm undignified for middle-aged men. Josh stared at the ground, scouting for potential hazards, lest he suffer a similar fate to the house.A glowing ember drifted through the night sky and nestled on Matt’s shirt. He smothered it and glanced at his friends.Just four friends, standing on the side of the road, watching a stranger’s house burn.Matt lifted his hand. A charred hole peeked from under his fingers. He closed his eyes and let out a slow, steady breath.Travis clapped his ha...

28 likes 10 comments 10
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Playing with fire

Submitted to Contest #108

As I watched helplessly while flames engulfed the house in front of me, I couldn't help but wonder if this kind of thing went on your permanent record.Frankly, I had no idea what that meant in terms of implications for my own life. Perhaps the next time I applied for a job, there would be a menacingly red "DO NOT HIRE" stamp embossed on my background check. "Set her date's house on fire after they went out…twice." As if it would have been a more reasonable offense had it happened later in the relationship. He could have at least had the cour...

25 likes 4 comments 4
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Burn it all down

Submitted to Contest #108

Ash drifted down, dusting their lives and lungs grey while hell’s fingers scuttled across meadows, sprang over rivers, and sprinted between trees. Mother Nature thwarted every effort to contain the flames, scoffing at prayers for rain and instead delivering dizzy winds and dry lightning. The billowing smoke plumed so large that it developed its own weather system—creating more lightning, igniting more fire, and belching more smoke. Sari leapt as high as her little legs could muster, dancing on their driveway face flung upward, tongu...

23 likes 0 comments 0
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Brief Encounters

Submitted to Contest #108

Tryst 1 - Vivification07.07.2456“Don’t worry, Shinji,” you said when we stepped out of Dr. Lau’s office at the Bradbury Lunar Medical Center. “They're going to find a cure, eventually. We’ll just keep skipping ahead until we get to that time.”Keep skipping ahead.You always made it sound as though it were the simplest thing in the world, Harry. Like horseback riders stopping at stations and switching out their out-of-breath steeds for fresh ones and charging onward, never looking back at the dusty trail traversed.It struck me how out of place...

22 likes 17 comments 17
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Mr Jingle

Submitted to Contest #108

When the nice policeman comes, I just won’t speak to him. My mummy always calls them “the nice policeman.” She told me, if I ever get lost, all I have to do is find the nice policeman and he will keep me safe and look after me. I hope he'll be nice. ********* Obviously, the police have to get involved in a case like this. Apparently, she will be interviewed on her own. I’m not happy about that. They told me she’ll be accompanied by a child welfare officer, so she won’t technically be on her own. And she’ll have that damn teddy with her, as u...

21 likes 2 comments 2
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The Mind Stone

Submitted to Contest #108

It wasn’t the acrid smell of the smoke drifting into my bed corner which woke me, nor was it the heat of the flames or the cries of the villagers fleeing for their lives. It was Otis, my faithful weasel who saved my life that night. He had snuck into my pocket as usual to share my warmth as I lay curled up on the straw mattress, and it was the sharp nip of his teeth on my finger which alerted me to the danger which I was in. I awoke with a start, disorientated. The small hut was already full of smoke, and ghostly red flames were licking thei...

20 likes 16 comments 16
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Flickers of an Unfullfilling Life

Submitted to Contest #108

The couch was comfortable. It was one of those expensive ones that they advertise on TV during reruns of Grey’s Anatomy on ABC. The ones they want you to think you can afford when actually it costs about a month’s rent and isn’t even that cozy. This one is, though. And knowing her sister, she probably got it on sale or won it in some kind of home furnishing Instagram contest. Nina hated the couch. She hated the rest of the room, too. The exquisitely polished, wood-stained coffee table at her knees was a “fluke find at a garage sale” which i...

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The Family House that was not a Home

Submitted to Contest #108

           “Does your vision slow down when you get older?”  George wondered with spoken words on that fateful day. Objects in his old house were appearing to move when he looked at them in passing. They would stop that seeming motion when he put his full focus on that apparent movement. It was happening more and more often these days. George asked himself whether his aging brain was processing images more slowly than his eyes were passing messages to it.  H...

18 likes 0 comments 0
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The Damn Box

Submitted to Contest #108

"God damn ..." Christopher Pitt groaned this well-worn expression as he picked up his 107th box of the morning and placed it into his delivery truck.  It wasn't a very heavy box, but Chris didn't have a very good back.  Or a very good knee, or very good shoulder.  It seems that when Chris hit the big 3-0 five years ago he started to play the real life version of the children's game Operation.  So many unexpected movements would bring about the annoyingly loud buzz and red light in the form of pain.  And right now, hi...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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The House That Dad Built

Submitted to Contest #108

           It was going to be a fresh start for our family. My parents had been scrimping and saving every penny for the last five years just so they could buy a piece of land in the country.            For as far back as I can remember, which is only the fifteen years of my life, we moved every few months from one dingy apartment to the next. It was the only life I knew. So, when my parents took my little sister, Jackie, and I on a ...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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The Lamp

Submitted to Contest #108

The Lamp Prologue A massive apartment block burst into flames. “Now,” hissed the voice inside my head,”Do it now!” The building was now collapsing. I had to do it now, I had to do it fast. All those innocent lives. All that destruction! I can’t bear it! “Ok, I'm going to do it, I’m going to do it!” I did it... Chapter 1: Strike Legend has it that a rich, but surprisingly ordinary family holds a very unique key. The key is used to open a very mysterious and powerful chest; a chest of which nobody but the ordinary family knows the cont...

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The Inheritance

Submitted to Contest #108

My brother inherited a classic car and management of ‘Seascape’; the grand residence on the Esplanade with it seafront views and imposing gardens. I inherited approximately a thousand old postcards in a sturdy green cardboard box. Yes, you read that correctly. I am younger than my brother James by nineteen months, but I was always my Aunt Doreen’s favorite. Doreen had been my mother’s younger sister. She had never married and was described by most as eccentric. These days she would probably have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, o...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Angie Robinson

Submitted to Contest #108

Content warning: pregnancy and toxic relationships “You got a fast car/ I want a ticket to anywhere”-Tracy Chapman Outside, crickets sing soft love songs for the end of summer. The moon is full bellied and glowing, just like me. Her bright beams stroke my distressed face, brow furrowed out of anger. I pace in a cotton nightgown, my toes curling into the threadbare brown carpet. My fists, slick with sweat and anxiety, curl stiff fingers...and uncurl them. I hiccup. It jolts you awake. Soft, little kicks, like butterfly kisses. We’re sud...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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