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Write a story in which someone is afraid of being overheard.

Posted in Dialogue on May 10, 2024

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✍️ 62 stories

High-Heeled Princess

Submitted to Contest #250

A soft, red petal gently kissed Mesa’s front door and floated in through his mother’s kitchen window like a love bird searching the lands for a new suitor. The warm breeze delivered the delicate parcel to the table just before Mesa could take a bite of his Frosted O’s.“Mama, look what the wind blew in!” Mesa said with a dash of exhilaration. “What is it?”Lola removed the scrambled eggs from the hot stove and brushed them on an empty plate. She turned her attention to Mesa, who was wearing his Ninja Turtles pajamas, and smiled. His black hair...

39 likes 43 comments 43
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Be Like the Purple Flowers

Shortlisted for Contest #250 ⭐️

Trish put her head back and closed her eyes enjoying the sun’s warmth on her face despite the growing hunger pains. She would give it half an hour and then go back inside for lunch. She tried not to think of that western omelet she had been looking forward to. ~ Suddenly, her husband was right behind her startling her and she dropped the carton of eggs she was holding. Crap. Please don’t find too many broken eggs inside. “What’s your problem?” He yelled at her. “You startled me!” “You’re so jumpy. Why? Are ...

36 likes 41 comments 41
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The Weight-to-Oar Ratio

Submitted to Contest #250

Jorton, the only town allowed in Trungen Forest and home of Lady Nimmo, is having its first secret meeting. Of course, since it's a secret, everyone knows about it. The Stumper Guard deployed to Lady Nimmo's house to prevent eavesdropping. They chased off teenagers from one side of Lady Nimmo's house to find their parents on the other side. When they escorted them away, dwarfs snuck to the back. Everyone pressed to know what the hush-hush was all about.Inside Lady Nimmo's house, the messenger from Selwyn addressed the room containing Lady Ni...

34 likes 26 comments 26
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Little Ant

Shortlisted for Contest #250 ⭐️

Eavesdropping on human mothers had robbed me of the life I once had. The bustling sense of duty I once felt toward the colony has been reduced to a dull ache of longing for something more; motherhood. Not the kind of motherhood that stems from simply the birth of another, but the kind that means my life is no longer just about me or the colony.I overheard one mother describe her love for her daughter as unconditional, something our Queen doesn’t know the meaning of. Her interest in her thousands of daughters begins and ends with what we prov...

29 likes 18 comments 18
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Cryptic Sister

Submitted to Contest #250

Sensitive subject matter. Indications of abduction and human trafficking. Before she could force her eyes to focus, Hallie sensed she was in a hospital, or at the very least, some type of medical facility. There was a strong scent of disinfectant and oddly enough faint notes of jasmine and vanilla. Perfume maybe, but who’s? Darkness was right in front of her, yet a bright light lived and breathed just a few feet away, providing Hallie with a strange sense of hope. Her arms and legs were weak, and a distinct pinching sensation in her left...

24 likes 24 comments 24
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Didn’t you have that conversation?

Submitted to Contest #250

I can’t believe it’s been twenty years since we lived here.I’m standing outside our first home together. The wisteria cascading down the elegant Georgian block of flats on Sandwich house, Sandwich Street in Bloomsbury. Funny even saying it again now and I want to refer to it as Sesame Street as we used to. Looking up towards the third floor, I can see the wall at the back of our bedroom in our old flat, number 83. I remember the first night we slept there:'What was that?''It was the underground bun.'I shouldn't have been surprised that I cou...

23 likes 12 comments 12
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Moratorium

Shortlisted for Contest #250 ⭐️

“And so I told him, he’d have to earn back my trust!” Mort rasped between fits of laughter. “Get it? Urn? Because he’s always harping on about that big stupid urn his sister bought him!” He slapped his thigh with one bony hand and relapsed into cackles, reliving his moment. I shook my head fondly, grinning the stiff, rigor-mortis grin of a wife who’d long since learned to see the punchline coming, and instead mostly focused on admiring the strong cheekbones of the comedian who lay by my side. It was not a bad pastime. For any softness i...

20 likes 12 comments 12
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Quiet Recognition

Submitted to Contest #250

I know you think it isn’t a big deal when you get a phone call from the Secretary. You know, we’ve--I remember coming up at a time when you could hear something unusual, and you would--You would write it off. It was a conspiracy. It sounds crazy. It is crazy. It’s crackpot. You sound like a crackpot. That’s how it was when I first moved here. We used to make fun of people who talked about watching what you say in public. Even people with high clearance. Even people working on--you know--projects that weren’t even verified. If they were in a ...

19 likes 4 comments 4
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A Last Note from Andrew Layton

Submitted to Contest #250

I should write that this confession comes from nobler motivations than what it is: fear. But I cannot – I am afraid, and my fear grows by the hour. I am sorry for the course I am about to take, and I regret the weakness which dictates my actions, but in hard confessions the truth should not be subordinated to pretense. I will adhere to that dictum now. I write this because I am about to take my life, a trespass which may very well consign my soul to Hell’s damnation. I fear for myself. But I have traded for this sin one greater, whose transg...

19 likes 10 comments 10
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Diamonds, At Least

Submitted to Contest #250

Ben pulled Warren aside. He checked to see if anyone could hear. This was important.“I have to tell you something. But you have to promise you won’t tell anyone else. No one.”“Sure. What’s up?”“I found… a treasure.” Warren’s eyes widened. “What kind…?”“You have to see. Come over after school. I’ll show you.”Thrown together in their seventh-grade home room, Warren became Ben’s best friend. He’d never laughed so much in his life. Some of their teachers had reconfigured their seating charts five times in two months. A record.~A classic latchkey...

15 likes 6 comments 6
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The Queer Black Hand Note

Submitted to Contest #250

“Psst”.“Vincento?”He was like a cat, from the back alley to the dimly lit sidewalk beside her, he was suddenly there, holding her hand.“How is my Ethel?” said Vincento.They caressed, her curly blonde locks spilling back from her eager face as she succumbed to his embrace and his exploring hands.“Vincento! Not here. Not now. Someone might see us”.Ethel grabbed his wandering hand and clasped it in hers, and they stood grinning at each other in the dim glow of the gas light at the Italian end of the street where the row houses crammed closely t...

15 likes 18 comments 18
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Animated

Submitted to Contest #250

After the July sun outside my eyes were winding in their lens to acclimatise to the dim hallway. He motioned with a finger toward the dark semi-circular table next to the front door.“I expect your phone needs charging, you can leave it here, put it on this table.” Tony lifted a finger to his lips and glanced quickly back to the house.“Do you have anything else? Laptop, any other phones? Voice recorder, anything?” he asked in a whisper.I guess he didn’t see my shake of the head and shrug in the gloom. He stood waiting for a response.“No, noth...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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Sinking Ship

Submitted to Contest #250

He’d learnt to limit his words and in doing so he had become quieter. Now, anyone who encountered him mistook him for a taciturn man, not the prisoner he had become. Imprisoned in his own body. Trapped in a place that he had made his home only to see it taken down brick by brick to reveal impenetrable bars that no one in their right mind would seek to go beyond, for surrounded by the bars of this place was a cloying and eternal darkness which reached out for him, beckoning him forth. Promising oblivion when it was clear that pain was all it ...

13 likes 12 comments 12
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Lunchtime at The Justice Cafe

Submitted to Contest #250

Roger McAllister glanced at the name tag of the waitress behind the counter, and after taking another look at the patrons seated in the diner he knew he had to ask. His two minutes inside the roadside grease-pit had shown him there was something mighty strange about this place. “So how’d this town ever get a name like ‘Justice,’ Maureen?” he began, knowing that any salesman worth his spit always started with the familiarities and small talk, then built from there. The waitress set his coffee and chili before him without the customary ...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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Business As Usual

Submitted to Contest #250

“Come on in. Shut the door behind you, man. Thanks for coming by.”A bright and sunny day, the first one in a while, the glass and steel skyscrapers of downtown Chicago gleaming outside the windows of the corner office.“You see him yet?”Short pause.“Not today. If that’s what you’re asking.”Brow furrows.“You talk to him yet?”Longer pause.“What are you asking me, Ryan? I’m pretty busy just now. Last night I got home from the office around 1:30 in the morning. I’d like to make it home by midnight tonight.”Dead stare. People walking down on the s...

12 likes 10 comments 10
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