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Center your story on the moment a character realizes their (or someone else’s) intentions aren’t so good or noble.

Posted in Short Story on Sep 26, 2025

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✍️ 53 stories

The Rules

Shortlisted for Contest #322 ⭐️

“You know the rules!” Mother shouts, raising her voice above the last two stanzas of the screeching song.Lyla’s narrow shoulders curve in to retreat from the crescendo of voices. “You really didn’t have to.”A meek smile creeps onto full lips. Elegant fingers, the color of Mother’s coffee before milk, brush a curtain of thickly coiled hair behind pierced ears.Mother places a weathered alabaster-white hand on Lyla’s shoulder. “Go on, love.” Mother motions to the modest single-layer Betty Crocker cake, an eighteen the shape of golden balloons s...

26 likes 33 comments 33
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Dinner & Blood

Submitted to Contest #322

Despite Rachel having told me several times that the gathering would be informal, with only a few friends of hers, I couldn’t help myself and looked for something in my wardrobe that made me feel confident, sexy, and Christmas-y. The truth was that I had no idea of which kind of friends would be around, but she had mentioned there would be at least a couple of guys, and I couldn’t stop myself, not because I was desperate to get some, but because I didn’t want anyone to think I had no other options but to spend Christmas with a coworker. I ha...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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The Coiled Snake

Submitted to Contest #322

London was a city of dazzling spotlights. Everyone scrambled for their place, ultimately blending in with a sea of strangers. Despite the loneliness lurking in every corner, Suki came to the city. Hope filled her chest for a spotlight among the glitz of fashion, the very beacon that drew her to the city in the first place. As Suki sat still on the central line, she stared at spreads from magazines and photographs jump to life in the tumbling tube. Women wore brazen leather coats. Standing passengers were submerged in layers of cloth, all cha...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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I Desire That None Shall Sleep

Submitted to Contest #322

Imagine being so turned off by marriage that you'd rather kill anyone who tries to propose to you then to marry him. Sounds like a good plot for a fairy tale? From the beginning of my life, my mother saw me as a miracle. She had lived a hard life full of tragedy. She had a daughter before I was born but she gave that daughter up to the man who left her to return to his wife. They raised that daughter. Not my mom. My mom met my dad when she was a dancer at a go-go bar. Not a stripper... but close. He was likely in the middle of a manic episod...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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The Gentle Giant

Submitted to Contest #322

The Gentle GiantI never thought much about evil. I didn’t even know the word until I heard it once on the shiny box that talks in the living room. I only know smells, tones, and feelings—the air between people. I know when someone loves, and I know when someone doesn’t. My name doesn’t matter too much, but she calls me Bear. It fits. I’m big—one hundred and twenty pounds of fur, heart, and paws that could knock over a chair with one excited jump. But I don’t. I’m careful. I’ve learned her rhythms—when she’s tired, when she laughs, when she’s...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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With My Eyes Wide Open

Submitted to Contest #322

As the needle dropped and the record pirouetted in a formal dance, Ned Starmer felt like dancing himself. Slowly, the cluttered den he stood in came to life with the sound of music. He didn't like any of the new-fangled tunes. The tribal percussions underlying such vile and offensive lyricisms were a sign of the degrading ages to him. No, Ned Starmer much preferred the oldies. Respectful, artistic, gentlemanly—these were all things that he had in common with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Their classy instrumentals and tempered ...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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SpellFixers-All your spell fixing needs

Submitted to Contest #322

“You’re late for work again, Whitney” my manager chirped at me, while perched on the end of my cubicle. His black feathers slightly ruffled. I swear, crows can nail the angry bird look far better than the other shapeshifters around the office.“I know, Blake, I already got a snide look from everyone else on my way over here, so you can save your reprimand for someone else.” It wasn’t just looks I had received on my way to my desk. I even heard Hester mumble something under her breath. I’ve never heard a bird be able to nail a heavy sigh, but ...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Breaking the Charm

Submitted to Contest #322

“Trust your mentor,” the old witch had said. Amara wished she could—but the charm in her hands pulsed with a secret rhythm, as if it had a heartbeat of its own. The study smelled of parchment and molten wax, a scent that once felt comforting but now pressed against her chest. Candlelight flickered across the spines of ancient spellbooks, throwing shadows that seemed to twitch when she wasn’t looking. Amara arranged the final ingredients on Mistress Elowen’s polished oak table, fingers trembling despite careful control. This was her first re...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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Echo Crystal

Submitted to Contest #322

“Your spirit guide will change your life!” I hear this from the attractive young woman on the stage. “Just tap into the wisdom of your spirit guide, and they can help you navigate the pitfalls of life and become a success.” Being a young man deathly afraid of failing, I tend to try it all. In school, failure was nothing. In adult life, failure means poverty and perhaps homelessness. The whole pitch sounds quirky, but it may help me stay motivated to weather the challenges of young adulthood. Around me sit about thirty people. Most are young;...

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First Chair

Submitted to Contest #322

Trigger Warnings: Manipulation, harsh language. Nick shouldn’t have been watching, but Lydia always had that effect on him. She was the type of woman that made people stumble during performances… or made liars of married men.The rims of her eyes were red. Could just be allergies; it didn’t mean anything. The position was hers. No one else played the violin like her. She leaned into each note and teared up every opening night—she had more soul than anyone else in the entire orchestra. Certainly more than he did, anyway.The conductor shook han...

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Dark Matters

Submitted to Contest #322

Zlo was wearing his gray robes as usual as he strode to where Chisty sat, cross-legged, on the snowy mountain peak. He stood beside Chisty for a moment, surveying the clouds around the summit, gnawing on his bottom lip. Chisty tried to ignore him, tried to savor the beauty around them, but then he started grunting. It would be quiet for a moment, then Zlo would grunt and pace behind her, eventually positioning himself opposite the side he had been on before. After a while of this Chisty was fed up and blurted, “What could possibly be wrong, ...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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The Patron Saint of Small Mercies

Submitted to Contest #322

There was a winter where the paints froze on my windowsill. I learned to warm tubes in my palms before the first squeeze. My hands smelled like turpentine and cheap coffee. I painted on cardboard once, because canvas cost a bus fare and a bus fare cost a meal. Those were the weeks when I measured time in strokes and bites. The radiator sighed like a tired dog. My landlord learned how to knock with two fingers and I learned how to make a laugh sound like a promise. That was where she had found me. Evelyn Roche arrived in a coat the color of...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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Why Don't I write a Novel

Submitted to Contest #322

Why Don’t I Write a Novel? My friends and family keep asking me why I have never written a novel, although I claim to be a writer. They wonder why I seem to be perfectly content just writing short stories. Guy, whom I have known for decades now, and I consider to be a good friend asked that question straight out one night when we were in the Toby Jug and under the influence of alcohol. He had just read a short story I had written earlier that day.He said that he had enjoyed it.But I now wonder how much he meant that. A person I...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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Still Less Side Effects than Birth Control

Submitted to Contest #322

The ground is cold under her feet. Concrete.She uses the railing to guide her down the steps in the darkness, the stagnant air making the hair on her thighs stand on end. She is in her Olympics leotard, the green and gold one she would have wowed the audience in, had it not been for her fall. The coach had said she should wear it today, ‘for good luck.’ What scared her was the thought that she would need it.Near what she assumed was the bottom of the stairs, a hand reached out to her. “There we go, the last step’s missing, you can just jump,...

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Viola

Submitted to Contest #322

VIOLA She has been lying in the labour ward for a full day, but still baby refuses to move.‘Wretched child is determined to spite me ‘she mutters under her breath.For the umpteenth time the nurse peeps round the curtain: ‘Doctor is here, he is going to induce you to hurry it up, we need this bed for the next patient’ spoken with a grimace.‘Good evening’ His greeting is abrupt. Grace is holding up his carefully planned schedule. In two tics he sets up the drip and both leave without a word to the reluctant mother.*Footsteps arrive in the pass...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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