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Set your story before dawn or after midnight. Your character is awake for a specific reason.

Posted in Short Story on Aug 8, 2025

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✍️ 72 stories

Soft and Slow

Submitted to Contest #315

It was well past Midnight, and the hour had come for the good to fall into a restless slumber. Silence stretched in a thin anticipation, and the room, lit only by a small flickering candle, knew what was to come and could not stop it; for in the coldest hour of the night, the good awake was ready to be devoured by the wicked.Evie sat awake on the edge of her bed, clutching a knife in her trembling hands. Tom stood across the room, observing a painting on the wall, nursing the last remnants of a cigarette. The air smelt of honey and smoke, “A...

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Clear the Clouds

Submitted to Contest #315

“This is an exceptionally stupid idea.” “All I got out of that were the words ‘exceptional’ and ‘idea’. So thank you, I guess, for the compliment.” “Your hearing is exceptionally awful.” “Again, with the compliments! Thank you, Iris. Makin' me blush over here.” Eva's giggle floats down from her place above me, warming me all the way through despite the cooling temperature outside. I roll my eyes up to the heavens and fight to keep the smile from forming on my face. The sky is midnight dark with a smattering of twinkling stars. I've never be...

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Those Apart

Submitted to Contest #315

On the leeward side of the island, my mother launched the boat. She would launch the skiff from the shore and row out to where the waves would saunter in. As a young child, I was frightened of the dark and cried in fear. As the boat began to rock, my voice and concerns became silent. The gentle rocking of the waves would roll and soothe my tears. The stars would shine down to assure me that all the eyes in the sky and all the dark of night had seen and heard my cries.The moon lit a streak in the water, giving my mother’s heart direction. Thi...

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Dead Man Walking: A Story of Stars and Goodbyes

Submitted to Contest #315

The stars were missing tonight.Not gone, exactly, just hidden behind something heavier than the thick coat of featureless clouds.The streets were empty, the silence only broken by the steady slap of his shoes as they collided with the pavement. He glanced upwards, half expecting to catch the familiar glimmer of millions of white lights dancing, but the sky offered nothing. Just a solid sheet of black — no stars, no moon, just absence.He stopped for a moment, hesitating. His finger reached to push his glasses further up the bridge of his nose...

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The Hours Between Birdsong

Submitted to Contest #315

My phone alarm jangles, ‘bird song’ - if the birds were robots blasting synthetic beats, jolting me out of that liminal place between waking and dreaming. I roll over and glance at you, bundled up the way I left you, the way the midwife showed your father and me the day you were born. Moonlight seeps through the blinds like radiation, illuminating your tiny face. This is what they mean when someone ‘sleeps like a baby’ - this peaceful bliss. Not what you’ll be doing in two hours: screaming, face contorted in mammalian rage, so hungry that yo...

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The Tease

Submitted to Contest #315

I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit in this job; somehow never gets easier. First day as a detective I get called into a murder suicide. Man kills wife. Man kills self. It wasn’t the blood that got to me. It was the stench, so sour it was almost sweet. It was the way the bodies had fallen. Looked like a marionette and its puppeteer. Like somehow he'd found a way to control her even in death. All that was missing were the strings. That scene set the tone for my entire career. Case after case of someone needing control. Control over someone else. Co...

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Midnight Bloom of the Cactus

Submitted to Contest #315

Once a year it happened. The cactus, inert and nondescript, produced a progeny—a long, slender stalk with a pod-shaped bud. The green smoothness of the stalk and the potentiality of the bud contrasted the rough exterior of the mother form. If one did not take notice of the rare occurrence, the flower would blossom, close up, fall off, and die within a few days, unseen. Juliana’s attention was always riveted to the cactus as soon as she noticed the bud. Theo’s, too. They were nocturnal by nature, both artists. When the bud opened, always...

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Across the Platform

Submitted to Contest #315

I see her. She sees me. A glint of fearful intrigue ripples across the water, welling up in her eyes. She watches intensely as my gaze hesitantly drifts downwards. I see everything; the blood, the knife, the body it’s sticking out of…and the baby in the pram. She doesn’t move. I’m worried the baby (a half metre to her left) might not be alive. It’s a reasonable concern, given the scene before me, but he looks peaceful and pristine. It appears as though he is fast asleep, or so I hope. We stand eerily still, staring at each other across the ...

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Clementine

Submitted to Contest #315

“What are you doing up so late, Meg?” my sister asked, sitting beside me on the porch and handing me a glass of iced tea. “I can’t sleep,” I answered, taking the glass from her outstretched hand. “Somethin’ weighing on you?” she asked me.“Can I tell you something?” I say softly, looking out into the night.“You know you can tell me anything.”“Will you promise not to judge me?”“Of course I won’t judge you, you’re my sister.” She takes my hands in hers and gives me a reassuring smile.“Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake marrying Jimmy,” I sa...

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A Lost Night

Submitted to Contest #315

It would almost be better if he could make some sort of sound. It’s pitch black outside, making it hard to see him properly, but I can’t turn on any lights at such a late hour. I need some sign that he will be alright. I wish to hear his labored breaths become steady with time. But instead, all I hear is cold, dead silence. It was the original reason I had gotten a rabbit, they were absolutely quiet. Except, they were known to scream when near death. But that is a sound I hope never to hear. I run my hand across Blaze’s back, some of his bla...

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Rider's Block

Submitted to Contest #315

He was sitting in the dark staring at a blinking cursor on a screen. It was far too late, or early, at this point for falling asleep. Then sun would be rising soon though the darkness that prevailed in that moment suggested otherwise. By the light of the screen he could see that which was in reach. The keyboard with which he’d hoped to translate his thoughts to words lay idle in front of him. It’s sidekick the mouse waited at the ready to the right. Next to it, a little further to the right, a coffee mug sat empty for the second time since h...

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Last Call

Submitted to Contest #315

LAST CALL For Dave Stevens it had been a long shift as a 999 Call Handler in Ambulance Red Base.The last one of the run of three always seemed to last forever. It had its usual mix of genuine calls, the old dears not wanting to be a bother even though they were in pain and in genuine need of assistance. They were Dave’s favourite callers; he always stayed on the line with them until the crew arrived. He wasn’t necessarily meant to, but he did.And, the time wasters. “The cat licked my face.” “I’ve broken up with my girlfriend and punched the ...

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La Luna

Submitted to Contest #315

“I can’t sleep,” Andre said, his words drifting through the empty apartment, stagnant and unnerving, like an unwanted phantom.He hadn’t been able to sleep for what felt like an eternity, but to the real world was probably only an hour.He sighed and stretched across the old leather sofa he found on the side of the road, cracked and torn, like so many other things in his apartment. His hands fumbled in the dark for a cigarette.They always had a way of numbing his senses. His fingers closed around one, slightly smushed, in the crack between cus...

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A Haunting On West 13th Street

Submitted to Contest #315

A Haunting On West 13th StreetBy Derek L. CaineMy name is Derek L. Caine. I first became aware of the haunting or rather, the ghost, of our house on West 13th Street after my maternal grandmother told me that she had seen the ghost herself. The house was a large, three-story, Victorian, half a mansion.It had a strange history:It was built in 1866; one year after the town was founded and declared the county seat. It was a huge house, three stories in height, originally containing about thirty rooms, ten rooms on each floor, when it was first ...

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Somewhere New

Submitted to Contest #315

The time on my laptop reads 12:11 AM, which means five hours until he wakes up. I watch Milo’s chest rise and fall under the covers beside me, his mouth hanging slightly open in that way I used to tease him for. Back before teasing started to feel like pressing on a bruise. He’s so peaceful beside me. He’ll be so proud of me when he wakes up, and I’ll have to squash it.The cursor blinks at me like it knows. I’ve been staring at it so long my eyes water. The Submit button won’t work now. If I clicked it, it would only spit back an error.My ph...

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