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Write about the start or end of a relationship (familial, romantic, platonic, professional, etc.).

Posted in Dramatic on Nov 21, 2025

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✍️ 105 stories

TAG

Winner of Contest #330 🏆

TAG The jungle never slept. The air buzzed, especially at night. Danny got used to distant gunfire, but in his dark bunk, the most paralyzing was the unknown. An invisible dread that wrapped around a man’s throat and whispered, Morning will never come for you. The guys only knew each other for a few months. Yet, since their tour of duty began, together they’d survived oppressive heat, monsoons and mudslides, mortar fire, and the soft murmurs of uncertain prayers and stifled sobs while hiding in foxholes. They just wanted to go home but when ...

108 likes 130 comments 130
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Friends Don't Stick Friends In Prison

Submitted to Contest #330

What happens when a Talmarian ship gets caught with its ladder down? Fifteen years of hiding inside a chameleon shield, and a whole lot of game nights. Not to mention a few unwanted sacrifices. "And this is where we keep the sacrifices." Captain Cleeber pointed to a large reality room. "They believe they're in heaven, well, what they believe to be heaven. We based the program on local lore and sacred texts." I have to hand it to Captain Cleeber. He's done the best he could under the circumstances. His mission to study the pre-industrial cult...

48 likes 31 comments 31
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The Third Love

Submitted to Contest #330

It’s already 8:30 in the evening. Her flight is at 9:45. Too much to say, and barely any time left to say it. My speedometer climbs—122… 125… 130. I’m not slowing down. I twist the throttle harder. The bike wobbles beneath me, but it feels like it understands; it’s pushing with me. I cut between trucks, the wind slicing my tears across my cheeks. I’m crying—loud, messy, unstoppable. I can’t see the road clearly anymore; my eyes are just pools of regret. And honestly, I’m not even looking at the road. Most of my mind is drowning in regret and...

32 likes 4 comments 4
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Happily Ever After

Submitted to Contest #330

Happily Ever After“Where haven't I looked, yet? Gotta think like weaselly little 'Lucky Leo' and figure where he would hide his gold in this God-forsaken shabby cabin in the mountains. There has to be more than what was under the floorboards in the bedroom. Not so 'Lucky' now, are you? You fool! Thinkin' you could stand up to me and refuse to hand over your stash. A bullet between your eyes fixed your way of stinkin' thinkin'. Didn't it? Why'd poor Rachel imagine she could save you? Never had a lick of sense, that girl. Gave up a good life t...

27 likes 29 comments 29
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THE GIRL ON THE STOOL

Submitted to Contest #330

Melinda waited under the bus shelter, watching the rain fall in straight silver strings. It was the kind of rain that made everything look as if it were erased and rewritten at the same time. She didn’t really care about getting wet; she just needed a minute before walking into another day where she felt like the least important person in every room.She wasn’t lonely, exactly. She’d just gotten good at making herself small. Invisible sometimes. Easier that way. Less risk of disappointment. Less chance of being the one people forgot to includ...

22 likes 15 comments 15
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Clark's Son's Farm

Submitted to Contest #330

My father started forgetting the harvest before he forgot my name.When the tumor bloomed on the scan, he stared at it like a weather map, like maybe he could still outwait the storm. By the time I came home, the corn was stunted, the gutters sagged, and the man who’d once baled hay with his bare hands was struggling to find the bathroom in his own house.I found him standing in the kitchen that first morning, holding his coffee mug upside down. Brown liquid pooled on the linoleum.“Frank?” He squinted at me through the dawn light filtering thr...

18 likes 7 comments 7
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First Crush

Submitted to Contest #330

It was a typical Friday night. I’d finished dinner and was now sitting in front of my laptop, contemplating—yet again—what to watch. As always, I wasted nearly half an hour scrolling, scrolling, scrolling… until suddenly it was 11 p.m. That’s when nature called. A quick bathroom detour turned into late-night hunger, so I made popcorn, warmed some milk, and crawled back into bed—my unofficial weekend partner being my laptop. Not much of a party girl, I guess. To be honest, not much of anything. If I had to summarize myself: a bore… but a hope...

17 likes 14 comments 14
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Something Rotten, Something Buried

Submitted to Contest #330

Mike knows where to find me: out back behind my cabin, in the garden he helped me build. After I mentioned wanting to upgrade from in-ground gardening and showed him the galvanized tubs I picked out, he insisted on constructing above-ground wooden planters. He made one before abandoning the project.The squash’s palmate leaves swallow my ankles as I stand in the berms—sneakers sinking into the loamy soil, machete in hand, sweat running into my eyes. I can only take my gaze off this for a moment. Behind the garden gnomes, he stands at a safe d...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Rigid

Submitted to Contest #330

The first symptoms appeared after I started volunteering at the Madson Public Library, but I didn’t immediately make the connection. And by the time I did…well, now I’m getting ahead of myself, and I have a strict policy against spoilers, both giving and receiving. They’re untidy, rude, and indicate a lack of discipline. It’s better if you earn it. The library is on Main Street, right in the beating heart of town, in a one-story red brick building with a three-bar bike rack and a black, powder-coated steel and cedar bench erected in loving m...

15 likes 24 comments 24
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Closure

Submitted to Contest #330

She opened the front door, and he was on his knees. Why did it excite her to see him begging? She knew there was absolutely nothing he could say or do that would make her take him back. Her lips, which had been curved into a faint smile a moment ago, somewhat flattened now into a satisfying, surreptitious smirk. But there she was, giving the appearance of a peacemaker. Providing some semblance of hope to the hopeless. Truth be told, she'd cut him off, moved on, sung all the sad songs, and memorized the lyrics. She'd deglazed her house of hi...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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The Thing Beneath

Submitted to Contest #330

Part I - The Thing Beneath I never really believed in monsters. I mean, who does?As a kid, sure - I had my moments. I’d swear I heard something breathing under the bed, or I'd run past the closet after dark like it might reach out and grab my ankle. But I grew out of it. My mom told me monsters weren’t real, and my dad shined a flashlight under the bed like that was the end of the story.By twenty-three, my fears had names like “rent,” “overdraft fees,” and “Emily, who kept Venmo’ing me passive-aggressive emojis.” I was living alone in a base...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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The Parade

Submitted to Contest #330

Maddie Rivers opened her purse to pay the taxicab driver. She grabbed her glasses from the oversized bag in an effort to read the meter. It was no use; the numbers were too small. She sighed, fumbling with her arthritic hands to retrieve her wallet. “That’ll be nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents,” said the driver. Watching the elderly woman struggle in the rearview mirror, he added, “Lady - sure you gonna be okay? The parade don’t start for another two hours.” “Yes, I’ll be fine. It’s such a nice day and I have my morning snack. To be ho...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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Icarus Was Warm

Submitted to Contest #330

The thing about stories—real stories—is that they give you something to believe in when nothing else will. Maybe that's why the Greeks turned heartbreak into myths. They knew what falling meant. Lately, I dream in fragments—bits of love, bright and blinding, always slipping out of reach. I am Icarus, and the ground is far. The ache is a living thing, coming alive at night, painting salt tracks down my cheeks at two in the morning.On restless nights, my phone is a lifeline. I cradle it, thumbs stamping out old numbers that pulse like a wound,...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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Where the dawn breaks

Submitted to Contest #330

Mara arrived at Willowridge Lake long before sunrise, her breath fogging in the cold as if her lungs were trying to speak the words she couldn’t. Today marked one year since the accident. One year since everything familiar had splintered into something unrecognizable. She clutched her grandmother’s old sketchbook to her chest—its weathered pages smelled of graphite, lavender, and safety.The world was still dark, the kind of darkness that felt like a held breath.She set up her easel at the lake’s edge, hands trembling not from the cold but fr...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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A Good Life Except for the Boring Parts

Submitted to Contest #330

The first time my son called me “Daddy” was also the last time he ever did.It happened today — a single word that felt like the end of all hopes.I’d dreamed of this moment for so long.Yet now all I feel is a bitter, heavy regret. Let me tell you the truth. It all began years ago.At the time we had a good family. I had a stable job.Tommy was almost three, and we — like any anxious parents — worried that he still hadn’t spoken a single word.In our family, the past was always up for debate.My wife’s stepmother insisted that children had develop...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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