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Start or end your story with a character standing in the rain.

Posted in Dramatic on Dec 5, 2025

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✍️ 73 stories

It Needs to be Awesome Sounding

Submitted to Contest #332

An average person has fifteen points where a Knock-Wok can poke, pinch, or karate chop to put that person to sleep. If successful, the person gets a good night's sleep or a nap, depending on the time of day. But if the Knock-Wok botches, the person could easily turn on him. And if that person is an Elite Guard, the results could be really bad, like the kind you don’t wake up from. Knock woking can be very dangerous. But knock woking is what we have to do to rescue Alora. “Why knock woking? Why not something awesome sounding, like taking out,...

42 likes 33 comments 33
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The Thirteenth Door

Submitted to Contest #332

I touched the frostbitten cheek of the corpse in the alley, ignoring the rain sliding down my neck. She shouldn't be this warm.The sleet had turned the ground into a gray mirror, and the security light above the restaurant's back door flickered with the desperate rhythm of a dying heart. The air reeked of fish sauce and copper, rotting vegetables and blood. My breath fogged in front of me, visible proof that I was still among the living. Hers didn't. Yet her skin held warmth that had no business being there, hours after death in weather cold...

34 likes 6 comments 6
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Covenant

Submitted to Contest #332

The drought had worn the world down to thirst and dust. The house drew the heat of summer into its bones until the boards gave off a faint sour warmth like old breath. Even her sleep carried its barren weight. Her dreams were dry and colorless and broke apart like the soil outside. Hands clawed upward in slow, brittle motions, fingers white, uncurling like hungry roots before they crumbled. The cracks widened. Gaunt faces pressed through, gasping for water that never came. When she tried to turn away, the faces followed, their hollow eyes fi...

25 likes 3 comments 3
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To Those We Never Meet

Shortlisted for Contest #332 ⭐️

Standing outside in the rain, I looked at the building before me. Its walls hollow and solid at the same time. The door closed against the weather and the coming storm. I wanted to turn away. To say this is not mine. I knew better. Inside, the long hall to the chamber stretched out like miles of empty highway. A highway with no exits. Slowly. Deliberately I entered the hall. He was already waiting for me. Nothing was said between us as he watched me approach the consol in front of the chamber. How do I do this?I send him back to die in a war...

24 likes 19 comments 19
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Always End In Rain

Submitted to Contest #332

“Why…Why does it always end in the rain?”The words slipped out of her before she even knew she was thinking them. The city around her blurred into streaks of silvers and neons. The rain fell like a curtain, closing over the final act, but there was no applause. Just the sound of water as it pattered off her coat, soaked through her gloves, slipped down the back of her neck. It never bothered her. She’d done all her work in weather like this.Rain blurred vision.’Rain blurred guilt.Rain washed away blood.Rain made it easier to not see her own ...

21 likes 4 comments 4
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A Day With All My Selves (I hate of all of them)

Submitted to Contest #332

A final, deep breath fills his lungs, steady and deliberate. He turns the doorknob slowly, feeling the cool metal against his palm, and steps out into the hallway. It's peak January in the city, that brutal time when winter digs its claws deepest, and even his new branded coat, a costly one at that, offers no real shield from the cold seeping through the cracks. The fabric is sleek, imported, the kind that screams status in muffled tones, but right now it feels as thin as paper against the chill. At least he looks cool in it. That's somethin...

21 likes 4 comments 4
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Storming Into The Good Night

Submitted to Contest #332

In downtown Beijing, the chilly draught marched alongside the rain, which battered the pavement ferociously. The chill seeped through Ling’s coat and into her skin, making her tremble. She stood by the curb, trying to hail a taxi, but failed again and again. Without an umbrella, her coat was soon soaked. Each occupied taxi sped past, windshield wipers working relentlessly, splashing water high into the air. The six o’clock traffic jam became a nightmare for every commuter longing to return home. Ling had just fled the dreary, pointless team ...

19 likes 4 comments 4
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Dissolution

Submitted to Contest #332

Sensitive Note: Story contains mentions of death and starvation. “Water signifies Spirit and cleansing,” her father said, pouring warm, clary sage-infused water over her hand from a silver pitcher. The extra liquid trickled like a soothing fountain into a silver basin below. The room was thick and heavy with the aroma of white sage, and Jewel’s album, “Spirit,” hummed against the cozy pale yellow studio walls.Wren’s 30-year-old legs hung over the side of the massage table, gently swinging back and forth. Her father had just finished cleansin...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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Blinker

Submitted to Contest #332

“I…”The rain dropped endlessly—the world in a state of mourning along with me.I struggled to see the officer in front of me, let alone hear what he was trying to say.“Sir,” he repeated, a stream of rainwater pooling and spilling over the edge of his wide-brimmed hat. “Do you understand what I’ve just told you?”I nodded, my eyes fixed on the stream waterfalling from his hat.He placed a hand on my shoulder, and my jacket squished beneath the gentle pressure of his hand. He pulled it away, and the sensation was departure. Like the lift-off of a...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Regret

Submitted to Contest #332

Rain falls. What if a single yellow rose—plucked on impulse, thorns and all—could crack open a stranger’s guarded heart, spilling secrets that rewrite your own forgotten story? On this cold, rainy, windy November day, I stare out the window, watching autumn leaves swirl like dying embers, my tea steaming up like a quiet exhale. Autumn’s got this way of wrapping around you, reminding us how letting go can spark something real—those stubborn embers fighting the freeze. Your old playlist just hit shuffle—“Lovers in Paris,” that song you texted...

14 likes 0 comments 0
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Treasure

Submitted to Contest #332

The rain had cleared the beach. Falling water pitted the shifting terrain, scattered litter and abandoned flip-flops slowly plastered with sandy spatter. There was one lone fisherman headed for the pier, too stoic or stoned to notice the weather.A seagull, what is technically a herring gull, was dragging a wing through the miry sand. After dueling over a boardwalk fry, the unlucky loser was abandoned by its fowl fellows when the clouds rolled in. The injured limb grew heavier and heavier as the gull staggered through the saturated grit, shak...

14 likes 13 comments 13
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Raindrop Memories

Submitted to Contest #332

Raindrops have a way of making the world feel quieter even when it rains sheets that drum on the rooftops and drenches everything in its path.Tonight it felt relentless in the slanted lines that blurred the streetlights into glowing halos turning the whole city into a bright water color painting. Lila stood in the middle of it. Her thin blue and gold jacket was plastered to her arms. Her hood covered her from the rain and the cold. The water ran down her cheeks which made her look like she had been crying although her eyes were dry, at leas...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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Lust Will Rain On Us All.

Submitted to Contest #332

The rain came without warning and turned the world into a watercolor smear. Joseph stood in the front yard, barefoot on the grass, feeling the cold water soak his shirt and plaster hair to forehead. The streetlights, amber through the downpour, painted halos in the dark. He couldn't remember walking outside. One moment he'd been in the living room, Elizabeth's voice echoing in his ears, and next he was here, trembling.Run from lust. Pastor Greene's words, spoken twenty years ago to a room full of teenage boys. Run like Joseph fled Potiphar's...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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Blind Spot

Submitted to Contest #332

Ari noticed everything, except that he was standing in the rain. On a typical day, he could spot a stain on your t-shirt and know what you had for dinner. Hairstyles, glances, gestures, these were all datapoints that Ari logged away for future use. So, it was very peculiar that he didn’t realize it was raining until some clever passerby cracked a joke as he passed. “You know, there’s better ways to wash your clothes.” This broke Ari out of his 10 minute stupor long enough to realize that he was drenched, and that it was—in fact—raining. Hard...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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The aftermath

Submitted to Contest #332

I returned to my room as quickly as I could. Although I was supposed to stay there that night, the thought of meeting any of those people during breakfast made me throw up. I put all my stuff in my little weekend bag—the same one I took to the hospital when my daughter was born—and rushed to the reception to check out.“Won’t you stay the night with us?” said the woman before me, who should not be more than twenty-five years old. “Wasn’t everything as expected?”I was mortified. How could I explain why I need to leave? How could I tell her tha...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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