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“Write about someone who finally finds acceptance, or chooses to let go of something.”

Posted in Dramatic on Feb 6, 2026

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✍️ 85 stories

A Man Is a Slave to his Nature

Weekly Contest #341

Whenever anybody asked what my daddy did, no one ever said anything about the job he had. They said only that he was a pigeon man, because that’s what he was, first and foremost. At home on North Street, he’d built a coop in the backyard where he bred his birds to be prized racers. It looked like a playhouse version of our house, painted the same bright blue with a shingled roof and shutters framing the windows where they flew in and out. He put up a fence, too, along the back and on the School Street side to protect them. Our yard bumped ...

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Last Entry

Weekly Contest #341

Last Entry The once busy streets now stood empty. Papers and trash moved around the streets with each breeze. The sounds of kids laughter, people talking and the occasional dog barking replaced with silence. Tom stood just outside of Ashley's Bakery Shop. The trees that were planted just a few years ago now dead, broken, or gone. All the flowers Ashley planted at the base of the trees, adding a little of her own style, now just a memory. Tom scanned the streets looking for any sign of movement. Any sign of being watched or followed. He had ...

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The River of No Return

Weekly Contest #341

Charlene was anxious. She was a Pisces. Pisces were supposed to love water, but even taking a shower was a struggle for her. She would go for a few too many days until she had to admit to herself that she was beyond the point of needing to be refreshed. Even then it was a long, drawn-out conversation with herself. ‘I’ll take a shower today then I will clean the bathroom while I am at it’ she would say to herself on the first day she should shower. ‘If I shower today then I can tie my hair up and it will have the perfect curls for the par...

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Seoul Music

Weekly Contest #341

Autumn was seeking refuge from her reflection. She struggled to accept those almond eyes carved by the same hands that bruised her. Her shoulders quivered as she traced over her lips, carefully, like a child afraid to color outside the lines.Faint traces of her mother speckled her face, each figurative freckle a reminder of the memories they once shared. A tightness seized her chest as she cursed the woman whose presence she could never erase. This half of her, imbued with the essence of her mother, was forever a stain.It had been only a yea...

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Reflections Of A Ghost and Me

Weekly Contest #341

I ran into a ghost on the river. I set out fishing like my old man taught me. The trees swayed, some mosquitos buzzed near the water, and I saw a small boy like he was straight out of the 60s in the reflection of the water as it rippled. He couldn’t have been older than ten, but he also couldn't be seen with my own eyes plainly. I could tell he never wanted to be here anyway, and frankly neither did I. The only reason I was here was to clear my head.My grandma had the only clue I was ever going to get about why they are the way they are. Not...

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Today is the Day

Weekly Contest #341

Today is the day. The email she read from his boss saying he is leaving early and coming in late well she knows he will get fired in a week or two. The screaming at him, the love she shows, the praise, the money, the material purchases – none of it, copy that, none of it works. It has been years since she started saving him – sending her older son to check on him playing with other kids, spending afternoons at the elementary school yard making sure he was not singled out by those biased smirking teachers, living in New London a half mile fro...

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Birds of a Feather

Weekly Contest #341

Birds of a Feather I think the dirt remembers you once said to me with sly grin. We were here, in our favorite clearing, with our ears pressed against the sticky soil listening for worms. Your hair was knotted and tangled, your cheeks were crimson from racing over the roots and stones, and when you spoke your eyes were glassy and bright and I remember thinking you looked so beautiful and wild. If dirt remembers, can it keep a secret? You laughed and flipped onto your back without wiping away the soil but I stayed listening just a moment lon...

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the mother's daughter

Weekly Contest #341

It is an overwhelming thing to be a teenage girl with curly hair. My curls emerged suddenly when I was thirteen years old, inherited from my mother and my grandmother. It seemed like overnight my head had been deluged in corkscrews of DNA, double-helixes unspooling into snarled frizz. I quickly grew frustrated with my hair and its new disobedience to composure, cracking comb teeth and tangling rubber bands into my roots. What was one supposed to do with hair like this? What had I done to deserve curls like mine?I began seeking answers in my ...

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Water is Thicker than Blood

Weekly Contest #341

*Note: some emotional abuse is hinted at/displayed in this story. Please use your discretion if this is a sensitive topic for you.* Twenty-four-year-old Avery Williams could be described as a lot of things, many of which were positive. She was kind, hardworking, sincere, honest. But Avery’s strongest personality trait didn’t always serve her best interests. Avery was, above all, stubborn. She didn’t - seemingly couldn’t - let things go. Avery liked to call it perseverance as opposed to mere stubbornness. The characteristic was sometimes a go...

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Future Wife

Weekly Contest #341

[Trigger warning: substance abuse, suicide] I had been living with my boyfriend Josiah for nine months (in North Carolina) when his older brother Josh hung himself from a tree in Florida. It was the end of January when Josiah’s brother Josh went missing for two days and finally a jogger found him early one morning and my boyfriend, Josiah and all his brothers and sisters and mother and father and grandmother were devastated, obviously. I had not known Josh, but I was devastated too.Josiah went back to Florida for his brother's funeral and di...

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The Driver

Weekly Contest #341

The limousine was shiny, black, a brand-new 1990 Lincoln Continental, quite grand. It smelled of real leather. “You can call me Mike,” the driver told me, swinging my bags into the trunk. He looked spry, but also old enough to be my grandpa. As we pulled away from the farm, Aunt Erin stood in the drive waving, a high, tight smile on her face as she began to cry. I recognized that wave. It was my mother’s strikingly graceful wave; I’d always laughed at it. Mom was wiping a space in the sky, looking like the Queen of the parade, even if I...

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Salty But Lit

Weekly Contest #341

The engine of the Wagoneer cut out, leaving us in a sudden, ringing silence. Outside, the afternoon sun baked the church parking lot's asphalt, trying to melt the snow, but inside, we lingered in the warmth. We sat there for a few minutes, neither of us ready to move, just clicking our aluminum cans of sparkling water against our teeth. I took a final, sharp swallow, the bubbles stinging my throat, and set the can in the cupholder with a definitive thud.“Shall we?” I asked, my hand already on the door handle.As we stepped out, the cold, cris...

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Playback Ends Here

Weekly Contest #341

Content Warning: This story contains terminal illness, death, grief, references to suicide, substance abuse, emotional distress, and medical themes. “Help him!” The woman’s voice cracked against the walls of the bedroom. “You’re supposed to help my son!” The doctor didn’t blink. Rowan was on the bed between them, half-conscious. His breathing was ragged, every breath a struggle. “Mrs. Hale,” the doctor began cautiously, “we’ve done all we can. The disease isn’t only taking over his body anymore. It’s…” He paused, looking for a gentler word f...

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The Golden Lotus

Weekly Contest #341

Shadow buries the streets, and ash chokes the sky. The tarmac circuitry engraved from Cairo to Tokyo buzzes no longer—only carrying time and the wrinkles that leaves. No feet tread here; cabins are no different from the trees they’re carved from; dams bleed into the surrounding hills; skyscrapers stand as skeletal mountains, or collapse into hills of gravel. Here, the only survivors are those who know no light. Archaea live as they had before—surfing cyclonic magma under torrents of sulfur dust, bashing against the gates of hell without movi...

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And Now We Are One

Weekly Contest #341

They had gone shopping for decorations for her party, just the usual accouterments: balloons, a centerpiece for the cake and gifts table, some streamers. At the last minute they spied a silver and gold banner that read AND NOW WE ARE 40 and she thought how childlike it was, a statement from someone who was embracing a birthday rather than dreading it. She put it in their cart and, for the first time since they started planning the party, she felt hopeful about her impending age. This gathering would be just what she needed. The morning of he...

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