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Write a story about a secret group or society.

Posted in Short Story on Jun 13, 2025

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✍️ 87 stories

The Painted Ones

Submitted to Contest #307

The land of Granby is seared. Scars of blood and ash paint its skin with the pain of forgotten offenses. Burn marks carve the landscape into a demented chessboard of oblong red and black rectangles so misshapen and haphazard that in one place they dissect a river on a jagged diagonal, like a ripped sheet of paper. And those old battle scars have ripped Yudi’s life apart too, disconnecting her from her old reality, just as suddenly, and just as violently.All Yudi had wanted was to win the science fair for the sprouting orchid she’d developed ...

43 likes 7 comments 7
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The Velvet Guillotine

Shortlisted for Contest #307 ⭐️

The quick, hot sting of the burn on her fingers snapped Cassie out of her daze. She'd been burning the cigarette for too long. She watched the smoke curl toward the ceiling in lazy spirals. One of the windows was cracked just enough to let the cold in, but not enough to let her tension out. On the table in front of her sat two envelopes. The black one was thick and expensive-feeling, with a faint musky floral scent, leather, and a hint of ambition. Inside was an opportunity. The white one was thinner and simpler. Inside, an exit. They didn...

31 likes 29 comments 29
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Twenty Eighty-Four

Submitted to Contest #307

The university had long since spread its tentacles. In every borough of the city, there was a faculty. A faculty for Historical Misinformation, a faculty for pre-2060 Art, (in which it was decided who was in and who was out), a faculty for the Scrutiny of Printed Matter, (in which only their tropes were permitted), and a host of other faculties which expounded, praised, extolled, applauded and worshiped all the nations of the earth except the one it called home. The administrative hub is an imposing Victorian building built by two brothers w...

28 likes 27 comments 27
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Graffiti Cave

Submitted to Contest #307

“Are you coming to Graffiti Cave tonight for Anderson’s send-off?” Davis almost whispered, bumping my shoulder as he leaned in. We were walking across campus together. My feet kept moving, but my mind stuttered after what he just said. He wasn’t serious? But Davis never spoke in a quiet voice like that. System overload. “Wait what? You can’t… you mean you’re actually going?” Couldn’t bring myself to whisper it back. Graffiti Cave. Davis’s dissertation was on euphemizing violence, working title: “It’s only Horseplay: Rape and Sexual Assault...

26 likes 12 comments 12
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Of Cats and Cosmic Horror

Submitted to Contest #307

The air in her London flat tasted of ash and stale dreams, and Alice awoke feeling as dead as the paint on her peeling walls, yearning for anything to prove she was truly alive. She wasn’t looking for a secret society, or forgotten gods, or anything remotely sinister. She was just looking for a painting. More than that, she was looking for a spark, a flicker of inspiration to reignite the dwindling flame of her artistic spirit. Her tiny Southwark flat, perpetually shadowed by the gleaming Shard, felt smaller and tighter each day, squeezing t...

24 likes 6 comments 6
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Crushed Mirror Powder

Submitted to Contest #307

I should quit the stupid Potion Masters Institute, with its godawful elixir recipes and that ornate, bloated legacy of snobby alumni who think they're Siam’s gift to the brewing world. Liira’s thoughts shattered through her as she crossed the threshold out of Noctidia, emerging into her favourite hidden world. She adored this realm with all its soft pink tapestries and cotton-candy kittens. A ridiculous realm by most standards, but here, logic bent just enough to let her breathe. Here, no one corrected her elixir ratios or scoffed when she s...

24 likes 16 comments 16
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The Omelas Accord

Submitted to Contest #307

Content warning: mention of birth injury Iris my darling, If you are reading this, then the rule of law hasn’t come for me - but death has. As your grandma, I have given you many things that may burden or empower you, whatever your opinion on them: thin hair, myopia, a preference for savoury over sweet. What this letter means to you, my love, is yours alone to trial. Don’t read this letter in company. I loved you with intention, patiently and methodologically, as only a professor of science could (and I have to speak in the past tense becaus...

24 likes 12 comments 12
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The Silver Knot

Submitted to Contest #307

Someone held my hand, and suddenly, I felt the prick in my finger. I never liked the way the cold metal found its way inside my skin. I'd fainted, vomited, and cried way too many times in my life during blood tests to know what was about to happen next, and it wasn't pretty. I stumbled and grabbed someone on my way down while the needle kept dangling during my fall. I heard the cries of a couple of people around me, someone yelling, "Grab her!" and then, there was nothing. I was out for a couple of minutes — that's what someone told me later...

22 likes 8 comments 8
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Something Is Rotten in the State of California

Submitted to Contest #307

The contest was born out of a group of ideologically disconnected English professors who could agree on one thing and one thing only: their students were incapable of writing a decent paragraph. They were engaged in a philosophical war, fueled by the recently enacted directive from the Chancellor’s Office to eliminate all remedial English courses. This resulted in two distinct camps at Midline Community College: those who fervently believed students should be denied access until they could draft a basic essay, and those who felt it their div...

17 likes 2 comments 2
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The Sable Canticle

Submitted to Contest #307

They came for her at dusk, when the Veilwood was breathing mist and the lanterns along the stairs that ran down to the water had begun to burn blue. Renna knew what the blue flame meant.She closed the ledger, wiped the ink from her fingers, and didn’t look up when the first knock came. Not a knock, really. More like the hush of a fingertip against the door. Three touches. Pause. Two more.They never said her name aloud. That, too, was part of the vow.The old man on her porch wore bark-colored robes, damp at the hem, and carried no light. He n...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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The Whispering Wall

Submitted to Contest #307

Arindam nearly missed it. His inbox, impersonating a government office, brimmed with forms, convoluted requests, unread minutes, and memos on punctuality as moral virtue. But tucked in the clutter was an email from Dr. V.P. Rao, who, as Acting Head of Department, never wrote without purpose — or plausible deniability. The subject: Internal Consultation — 4 PM, Faculty Room B. Bland as curd rice without salt. No context. No attachments. Just a single line beneath Rao’s name, dressed in the garb of civility: We trust you’ll bring your usual di...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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Secret Society for Journalistic Terrorists

Submitted to Contest #307

Louis typed like ticker tape. Click click click. His ginger hair jittered like fire and his fingers worked in a fury of resentment. Beside him, drafts, abandoned, scribbled in red pen, scrunched into balls, folded into origami, paper planes and cranes. A pile I’d have to burn later. Somewhere a telephone rang. He looked up, cigarette dangled, grey ash curling backwards towards his lips. ‘Don’t answer that,’ he said. ‘What if it’s Jules,’ I said. A pause. Louis nodded, keys pressed down again like automatic fire. I squeezed between two le...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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The Hollow Order

Submitted to Contest #307

In Merrowlin, the sun never set, and the clocks never ticked. Bells marked the passage of time—seven in all—each one tolling from the Ivory Spire that crowned the heart of the city like a sword plunged into the earth. Every citizen was moved by them. Rose with them. Slept by them. Worshipped by them.At the Seventh Bell, the Ceremony of Clarity began.Kael stood near the edge of the plaza, where the shadows of the Spire didn’t reach. The air smelled of limestone and strange flowers—ones that only bloomed after the Sixth Bell, fed by unseen roo...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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Going to Salem

Submitted to Contest #307

Walking down the empty hallway, I wondered if I had the right information. Slipping the flyer out of my pocket, I read for the millionth time “Salem meeting in Mahogany Hall”. I looked at the dark heavy door in front of me, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. I felt some trepidation but mostly excitement about pulling the trigger on my trip to Salem, my long-awaited graduation gift to myself. Having been to Boston a few years back, I wished I had taken the extra time to travel to Salem to pay my respects. The townsfolk who had been vicio...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Willow Creek Park

Submitted to Contest #307

"Dennis, what are we doing? Let's go home. Now," Charlie hissed in my ear. He trembled beside me, fearful as we walked through the woods. The clear night wind was glacial. I, too, shuddered from the cold, but continued to walk. Truth be told, we should've grabbed larger jackets, since we'd be out here for a while. Hopefully, this chilly air cleared up as the night went on.We'd been walking for some time, Charlie trying to convince me to turn back, but never leaving himself. The forest along the edge of my backyard was lush and overgrown with...

13 likes 0 comments 0
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