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“Write a story that has an unresolved or open ending.”

Posted in Dramatic on Jun 12, 2026

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✍️ 106 stories

Golden Hour

Winner of Weekly Contest #359 🏆

One more wedding. That’s what she’d told herself. Her portrait studio was already up and running, and she was done with the traveling and the fourteen-hour days and the family drama. Just one last wedding. Jacqui checked the time on her phone for the umpteenth time and inhaled deeply. Screw it, the mindful breathing wasn’t cutting it. She caught the bartender’s eye. “Whiskey, please. Neat.” She normally never drank at weddings–at least not until she clocked off. But this uncertainty was doing her head in. She shouldn’t have agreed to the jo...

73 likes 70 comments 70
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No-I

Weekly Contest #359

"You are not a mother," said the man in the white coat, and he raised a reprimanding finger—not at me, precisely, but at the swollen belly I had long since ceased to regard as wholly my own. His junior colleague flinched visibly at the word. That is among the first lessons taught within these walls: the word mother is a protected trademark. It belongs to women with flower subscriptions and oak nursery furniture. We are called carriers. Climate-controlled production environments in biological form. My tongue, as ever, moved more swiftly t...

49 likes 74 comments 74
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The Birdman

Shortlisted for Contest #359 ⭐️

Like every weekday for the past thirty-seven years, Anne was sat at her desk at nine o’clock. Unlike every weekday for the past thirty-seven years, she had made no attempt to tackle today’s work. Every weekday morning, before the hour struck nine, her coffee was poured, her computer was active, and that day’s to-do list was beaming with self-importance. Usually. However, if she were asked, she would be unable to recall how she had arrived at her desk this morning at all. One may suppose that after thirty-seven years driving from home to this...

23 likes 10 comments 10
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Tokusatsu

Weekly Contest #359

Note: My kid is a fan of Tokusatsu like Super Sentai, Kamen Rider etc. I thought I would try my hand at it. “Hey Timmy, the green suit said. “Take him on the left. Shelly has him on the right and I got center” “!0-4” said Timmy dressed the black suit. The grizzly monster, that resembled a misshapen pizza with tentacles, jumped up once in the air and vanished before appearing behind the team, splattering bits of pepperoni and anchovies at them. The team caught the projectiles full in the chest and were knocked backwards to the ground, while ...

18 likes 12 comments 12
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Two Homes on Snickleway Street

Weekly Contest #359

Two Homes on Snickleway Street My next-door neighbor is a kindly old spinster. She lives alone, with no family nearby - like me, actually. She’s four feet tall, with well-coiffed gray hair gathered neatly in a bun. Can’t weigh more than eighty pounds. Unfortunately, she's quite forgetful. And I fear she's losing her mind. Or already has. I thought so anyway, until one of my visits last month – the radio incident. That's when I started to doubt my own sanity. I visit her most days after work for a welfare check, a bag of groceries in hand, be...

18 likes 16 comments 16
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TOO LATE

Weekly Contest #359

Their sweet, bubbly voices blend into one high pitched, grating sound that numbs my mind. How could he do this to me? Someone fans my train again, and my knees threaten to buckle. What kind of man hurts the woman he loves? The heavy fabric of the dress feels like quicksand pulling me under. My mother gushes, “You make such a beautiful bride, Anna!” “I need a minute,” I wheeze, but I’m certain no one hears me over their musings. Every tick of the old clock on the wall reminds me of another reason why this is a mistake. This isn’t right. The i...

17 likes 4 comments 4
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The Voicemails

Weekly Contest #359

CW: Grief, death of a boyfriend (off page but mentioned), bereavement, psychological/emotional distress, brief references to a fatal train accident/human remains, brief funeral/burial talk, use of strong language. Seventy-four days after Felix’s death, I find one of his freckles on my bathroom mirror. Not really. It’s just a fleck of brown paint. And seeing it makes me want to break apart all over again. But I can’t. Because the threshold for grieving has passed. People say there’s no limit. Take your time. Sit with your grief. Go slow. ...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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The Weight of What Returns

Weekly Contest #359

I didn't know I wanted Jim Ulrich dead till I shot him in the face. It was a clean wound to the head—about a quarter-sized hole. A short spray of crimson and he went down, kinda like a steer in the slaughterhouse. It was a sudden twitch of my finger on the trigger. Just one of those momentary itches you get after holding something too hard for too long. Then I just stared at him curled up on the dirt. He didn't whimper none. Just gone. I kicked aside the cell phone in his hand. He was fixin’ to film me. I think the word is dox or docs or som...

15 likes 10 comments 10
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Dead Current

Weekly Contest #359

Bill Donahue regretted answering his phone. Normally, the drive from Anchorage to the small town of Whittier would take an hour or so, being only about sixty miles away. The weather was taking a turn for the worse, however; the long, curving Alaskan roadway took the better part of the whole day, what with the strong arctic winds and snow threatening the grip of his vehicle's tires. Visibility had been awful and had only gotten worse in the last hour. Bill shook his head, his eyes focused on the last mile before he would arrive at the Anton A...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Deep Pockets

Weekly Contest #359

The train was packed at rush hour. Trixie stood, sandwiched between a bulging duffel bag smelling of used socks and a slim laptop backpack. The track descended underground, sending her off balance. A strap hung above her, but she refused to remove her hands from her deep pockets. Her yellow cardigan was knitted especially for her purpose. A crowded train offered plenty of opportunities; she just needed to look carefully and read body language. Who wore the tell-tale signs of distraction: shoulders slumped over a phone, foreheads pressed to t...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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Shielding

Weekly Contest #359

“It says they’ve received it.” I hear the plaintive bleat I’ve not manage to muzzle. It’s answered with a grunt from the bedroom, where my lover is undressing. Lover. Can you still call someone that when every interaction they have with you seems drenched in contempt? Another notification brings me away from trying to remember when he last complimented me. Asides from performatively, in the presence of friends and family. The witnesses, gathered there today, gone tomorrow. My stomach drops. “Wait, it says they’ve cancelled it.” A gargling...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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Behind the door

Weekly Contest #359

There are moments when the soul disconnects so thoroughly from the physical world that all matter begins to swirl and blur. When the walls of the universe and the windows of the soul glaze over, leaving only a door to darkness and the echoes of life a million miles away. It is in this moment that I live. I do not know how I came here (does anyone really?), but I know I've been here too long. I don't think anyone belongs here. This room, a twisted reflection of the libraries and studies of my youth. It gorges around itself, like it's a bubble...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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The Weight of the Past

Weekly Contest #359

Content warning: includes graphic language, violence, mental duress, and torture Cedric Carson looked at it as it lay in the thick, tall grass next to a stream; he knew it could bring an end to the life he'd spent a decade building for himself. It was a simple brass tube, capped at both ends; a small thing, not a foot long. As he lifted it, it seemed to pull his hand back toward the ground where it lay. It was weighted with the past, with another life, another version of Carson. He desperately wanted to drop it where he found it, to forget h...

13 likes 6 comments 6
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Slack Tide

Weekly Contest #359

The server asks us if we would like anything for dessert, her hair is in a messy bun, she holds the pen in her teeth. Bree looks at me smiling sweetly. I know what that means, she wants dessert. I decline, and she orders tiramisu which seems over eccentric for this place. We are in a desolate town off the coast of Georgia, two hours south from where we both live, a place where nobody can recognize us. We sneak away on these trips once a month, I tell my wife I am at a writer’s conference. Bree tells her husband she is on a girl’s trip. ...

13 likes 11 comments 11
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In Loving Error

Weekly Contest #359

The Bellweather Ledger Obituaries — Thursday, October 17 HELEN MARIE VOSS, 68 Helen Marie Voss, sixty-eight, of Bellweather, died peacefully at home on Tuesday following a brief illness. Born January 9, 1956, to Walter and Marian Pryce, Helen devoted thirty-two years to the Bellweather Central School District, where she served as a guidance counselor and, to many students, a second mother. She believed no child should be defined by the worst thing that had happened to them, or by the worst thing they had done. Helen was preceded in death by ...

13 likes 3 comments 3
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