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Center your story around two (or more) characters who strike up an unlikely friendship.

Posted in Short Story on Apr 11, 2025

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✍️ 72 stories

Theria's Lace

Winner of Contest #298 🏆

Reagan Theriault stepped back from her easel, paintbrush tucked between her lips, studying the swirl of blacks and greens on the canvas. To others, it was just another ode to mold—but to her, it was beauty. She leaned in, adding a hint of iridescence with a fine brush dipped in cobalt teal and titanium white. Her studio smelled of oil paint and damp earth, kept at 78% humidity for what she called “atmospheric authenticity”—awful for electronics, perfect for art.Reagan had always gravitated toward the overlooked. As a child, she collected dea...

170 likes 133 comments 133
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Peonies and Fireflies

Shortlisted for Contest #298 ⭐️

To say that the chicken coop was in turmoil would be an understatement. It was in cacophony, at war, filled with the casualties of trauma. Feathers filled the air as if a down pillow had been hit with a shotgun. The terrified squawking of hens sounded like a siren’s choir. Shadows scattered every which way as the hanging lights swayed violently in the whirlwind of flapping wings. On the outside of the coop, a single fox observed the chaos, a dead chicken clamped in its jaws. The porch lights flicked on at the farm house, and the fox turned a...

42 likes 38 comments 38
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Saved by Whales - World Voyages of the Ship Destiny's Dreams

Submitted to Contest #298

The ocean closed over Estrella's head. Under the water large shapes heard the splash. Their voices sang long "OOOooos" and made rapid clicks.A 49 foot long whale glided under the waves. Her baby whale calf floated next to her. More whales gathered in the undersea world.Then water bubbled around the teen-age girl. Something nudged her back up into the air. Then she could breathe.The thing moved against her legs. It felt slippery. She was not alone."Was it alive?"“What could it be?”"Would it hurt her?"Estrella choked on sea water, with her hea...

33 likes 26 comments 26
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My Constant, Unwavering Friend

Submitted to Contest #298

When I look back through my life, I realize there was only one person who remained constant. My parents died when I was young. It’s not a heartbreaking thing, since I don’t really remember them. I suppose I felt a longing for a life I never lived, a childhood where I wasn’t looked at with pity. Still, I learned to live my life regardless. Most of my friends came and went with the seasons, stopping to create memories and share experiences but never staying long enough to reminisce on them. Partners only stayed long enough to break my heart, p...

25 likes 9 comments 9
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Bamboo

Submitted to Contest #298

I didn’t consider spring when I planted my garden. In September it is glorious, but in the early months it is nothing but lawn, daisies and dandelions. I liken the latter to teenage spots: their arrival announcing a growth spurt.My neighbour has a magnolia tree, which drapes into mine and drops its petals like lavish confetti. His name is Terence. Can you believe it? Terence! And he insists on its full form and won’t answer to Terry. God knows, he’s made it clear enough that he won’t. I never gave him a sidewards glance when my husband was h...

25 likes 20 comments 20
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Seeking Omar Nassim: A Tale of the Arts Department

Submitted to Contest #298

CAUTION: Socially sensitive themes“What time is it?” Professor Urquardt muttered. The ICE guy failed to respond, sucked at his McCafe. His boss had recently vented to FOX about Taco Bell posting its five-star menu in “Mexican” instead of the (presumptive) King’s English, so she figured the Starbuck’s grid was beyond the agent’s pay grade/PSAT. The Campus Coffee Commune had a socialist/lesbian/global optic the fed likely didn’t want immortalized the second Melissa hollered “La Migra!” The one Spanish phrase most of these Gen-Plussers knew asi...

23 likes 14 comments 14
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The Good That Happens To Others

Submitted to Contest #298

Sam had always felt invisible. He wasn’t the smartest in class nor the most athletic. He wasn’t the life of the party, nor the quiet, mysterious type people admired. He was just… there. Every day, he walked the same route to school, passing by the same bakery where the old woman, Mrs. Reyes, struggled to carry flour sacks inside. He walked by and stopped to help, lifting the heavy bags over his shoulder as she patted his arms in thanks. “Such a kind boy,” she always said, her warm eyes crinkling with gratitude.At school, he was neither pop...

21 likes 7 comments 7
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Silly and Lily

Submitted to Contest #298

Chapter one The sun slowly rises on the horizon above a lush forest. Colorful birds begin singing as they hop from tree to tree in search of food. One of them lands on a green leaf high above. It is Lily, the most beautiful leaf in all the forest. She stands tall and wide, glistening with dew left by the morning fog. The bird sticks its tongue into one of Lily’s veins and quenches its thirst. It then dives down, causing her to sway gracefully, a swaying that resembles the regal wave of a queen.The giggling sun peeks at Lily from behind a clo...

16 likes 9 comments 9
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The south facing window

Submitted to Contest #298

*some sexual content*Daisy looks out across the grey concrete landscape below. Her coffee’s gone cold and the sparrow that’s been flitting about on the window ledge all morning, has gone. Daisy can just about make out cherry blossom on the trees below, the only bit of nature deemed appropriate for the residents of Elizabeth Towers. Spring is beginning to bloom in all its glory, and Daisy, a systems analyst, is working from home in a cold, east facing flat that the sun only touches with its weak rays in the earliest hours of the day.It’s midd...

16 likes 21 comments 21
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Evergreen Something

Submitted to Contest #298

The mall is busiest on Thursdays. People bustle in and out in all different directions, creating a blur of color and shopping bags as they walk through. The entrances to various stores are blocked off and tourists rub their heads in confusion as to how they are expected to push through the madness.I smile gently at the frazzled expressions, grateful for the muscle memory I possess within my feet that know the precise short cuts to journey to Dillard’s retailer. The tiled floor clicks beneath my boots, and I sigh at the sound. The sound comes...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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Too Late To Say Goodbye

Submitted to Contest #298

I’ve lived a long life—one filled with goodbyes, unexpected turns, and silent wounds. But nothing shaped me more than the summer I met Zara.I was born in 1945. My mother raised me by herself. She had a lover once, but when he learned she was pregnant, he vanished, or at least mom told me that. She never saw him again. I never had a chance to meet him. And, over time, that became okay.It was 1959. I was thirteen when Mom and I left our quiet town behind and moved to New York City. To say I felt lost would be an understatement. I ate alone, ro...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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Someone to Talk To

Submitted to Contest #298

The cemetery sat on the edge of town, behind a cracked wrought-iron gate that never quite latched. Gerald liked it that way. If the gate squeaked open late at night, it wasn’t his business. The living came during the day. The others never gave him any trouble.He came in early each morning with a thermos of coffee and a slow limp, settling into the caretaker’s shed for a minute before starting his rounds. The grass always needed trimming. Leaves always needed raking. Headstones leaned more each year, like tired old men. Gerald found comfort i...

15 likes 4 comments 4
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The Collector and the Caretaker

Submitted to Contest #298

My name is Theo Finch. I am twelve years old, and I keep dead things in glass jars on my windowsill. The jars line up like soldiers. My prized finds are—five beetle shells arranged by size, one field mouse skeleton I put together with tweezers and glue, three bird skulls with different shaped beaks.I dislike the smell of cafeteria meat, the sound of my mother's phone calls with the school counselor, and the way other kids watch me when I examine things on the playground. I like the weight of my specimen box in my backpack, the silence of my ...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Up from the Avalanche

Submitted to Contest #298

Six strangers queued up in the ski line at the top of Bluegrass Mountain, each waiting anxiously to take their turns conquering the challenging, steep slope and carving their names into alpine history. Carl Jensen led off. He had graduated at the top of his MIT engineering class but found himself unable to climb beyondthe first rung of the executive ladder. Waiting behind him, Jan Smithson, an internationally-renowned artist whose work populated the mansions and museums the world over, but who had suffered through three violent and uns...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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They Met in a Strange Way

Submitted to Contest #298

The two men met on Saturday in a strange way. They had been walking down a sidewalk on the same side but going in opposite directions. It was mid-April, but the sidewalks were still not completely clear of ice and snow. The ice was nearly invisible. When each of them suddenly saw the other coming, they both shifted quickly to the road side of the sidewalk. This caused both of them to crash into each other and fall onto the sidewalk. Both of them felt that he was mainly responsible for the accident, not feeling that it was right to blame...

13 likes 8 comments 8
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