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Write about someone who’s hungry — for what, is up to you.

Posted in Short Story on Dec 12, 2025

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✍️ 58 stories

Dad's Potato Salad

Submitted to Contest #333

Dad's Potato SaladThe recipe is wrong.I know it's wrong because I'm the one who wrote it down, eleven years ago, standing in the kitchen of the house on Maple Street. The one with the cracked linoleum and the window over the sink that stuck in summer. The one before the apartment, before the complex, before the running, before all of it.I was twenty-eight. He was forty-four. He stood at the counter with his back to me, a cigarette burning in the ashtray by the stove, and I asked him to teach me because I thought we had time. I thought I'd wa...

50 likes 18 comments 18
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Pink Slips

Submitted to Contest #333

An alarm clock sounds and my eyes open. The first light of day leaks through the blinds. Too early. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I press my fingers into my eyes, and try to massage the sleep away. There wasn’t much to massage away, I had only been able to cobble together a couple hours. The room is quiet, stagnant. There’s a windowsill overlooking an alley, shedding white latex paint. A couple of curling Tomb Raider and Soul Caliber posters overlook the bed, while soda bottles and notebooks and t-shirts cover the floo...

37 likes 17 comments 17
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Open Late

Submitted to Contest #333

I didn’t plan to spend most of my evenings in a kebab shop, but life has a way of narrowing your options until you end up somewhere fluorescent, greasy, and open far too late.It’s on the corner of a road no one walks down unless something has gone wrong with their evening, or they’ve made a series of confident decisions that have finally caught up with them.It’s open late, which is important. Things that stay open late are hopeful in a very specific, slightly tragic way. They believe someone will need them. They are usually right.The shop sm...

23 likes 18 comments 18
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What Sustains Us

Submitted to Contest #333

The inhale James took fed him before what lay atop the kitchen table. Pot roast tended for hours by Mama’s patient hand; its meat slowly giving way to heat, now soft and supple, the tension pulled from the muscle like a peaceful dream does in fitful sleep. Savory steam exhaled from the iron pot at the center of the table, filling the quiet space between the Bolton family with comfort. Shoulders grazed politely, hands palmed lower backs as they moved past one another in the small kitchen. Silverware clanked softly against plates as Baby Girl ...

20 likes 9 comments 9
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Crumbs and Other Small Things

Submitted to Contest #333

Dan's fingers hovered over the keyboard, feeling the grit of leftover crumbs under his skin. As he brushed them away, using the sleeve of his worn-out jumper, he remembered how his mother chided him because of his messy desk at home. That small gesture carried a personal history, echoing nights spent half-awake, scrawling dreams into a notebook. He was acutely aware of an unease threading through his muscles, a subtle tensing of his shoulders that he ignored in a flash. He didn't care if the crumbs were from the flapjack he ate at noon or th...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Fire That Eats Last

Submitted to Contest #333

Korax and Greybeard had been traveling north of the Ghostwood, following one of the old ridge paths that only rangers and worse things remembered. The land rose unevenly there, stone thrusting through soil like knuckles, forcing pine and spruce to grow crooked. Wind carried the scent of new snow and old resin, and the cold had a bite that didn’t hurt at first, only once it had worked its way beneath skin. It was the sort of place Greybeard favored for instruction.Apollo moved, carrying Korax with steady confidence, the black stallion placing...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Famine

Submitted to Contest #333

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. - Amos 8:11 †Michael walked down the street, the cold country air turning his cheeks pink and making his nose run. His hands were stuffed down into his deep purple overcoat. Despite it being late December, there had been little to no snow. Frost coated the fields and streets, but as for the soft whiteness of the sky, they hadn’t seen much.He walked pas...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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A Hunger Worth Dying For

Submitted to Contest #333

Simon is hungry for his big break. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that getting his dream job as junior-reporter was only half the battle. The other half was being assigned only the fluff pieces no-one else wanted (Honestly, he thought, how many times can one man write about ‘missing’ neighbourhood strays?). That’s why he spends every Saturday night strolling the downtown streets until after midnight. Getting the drop on something like a shoot-out or a bank robbery would give him leverage to show his boss that he’s a serious, respectable...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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The Game They Called Hunger

Submitted to Contest #333

Content Warning: Includes depictions of hunger, food insecurity, class-based violence, and scenes of induced vomiting. The smell reached him before the door fully opened. Roasted meat. Butter browning in copper pans. Something sweet caramelizing in a distant kitchen. Alex’s mouth flooded. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and now his body was making its demands known. His stomach tightened with an ache he struggled to hide.The parlor room unfolded before him in warm amber light, cast by crystal chandeliers. Guests moved through the glow in cl...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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The Vessel

Submitted to Contest #333

The Vessel Lewis stepped out for air into a night without witness. The scent of rain lingered in the stillness. He had spent the day at the print warehouse, running folding machines, cutters, and presses fed by ink. His hands still carried a pale smear of toner. His shoulders ached with the long day, and he paused in the dark to steady himself. The work had worn him sheer and left him wanting something he could not name. He lit a cigarette and leaned against a tree across from the alley. Smoke curled from his fingers in thin threads. A figu...

15 likes 2 comments 2
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The Taste of Waiting

Submitted to Contest #333

The rice cooker clicked, its gentle pop breaking the evening silence. Lila didn’t move. She sat at the kitchen table, elbows pressed against the cool laminate, eyes on the faint glow of the orange indicator light. Steam curled and vanished into the half-dark room. The smell of jasmine rice drifted through the small Queensland house — floral, sweet, familiar enough to hurt. Her mother had always said that smell meant you were home, even if everything else had gone wrong. Now, Lila wasn’t sure if she was home or just somewhere she ended up. --...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Hungry to Feel

Submitted to Contest #333

I’m hungry to feel. It’s been exactly one month since Skye died. Gone as quickly as she came into my life. People talk about time stretching after something like this, but mine has stayed rigid, measured in appointments and thank-you notes and the quiet efficiency of days that continue whether I want them to or not. Skye had jet black hair that never stayed neat, no matter how carefully I brushed it. She smiled with her whole body, as if joy were something physical she had to carry. She was small for her age, quick to laugh, slow to sleep, s...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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With a Whimper...

Submitted to Contest #333

"One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony." -Haruki Murakami Crosby Marling was hungry for Japanese cuisine. Not just anyplace, but Sanraku over on Sutton, one of the best sushi restaurants in San Francisco. She and her fiance, Aiden, had dined there...

14 likes 9 comments 9
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Basic Needs

Submitted to Contest #333

St. Louis was a blur of gold halogen streetlamps, red brake lights, and neon in every color. City lights reflected off the overcast clouds above, turning the sky a mottled orange. It was a dreary night, at odds with the upbeat jazz playing from the radio.Elizabeth stared out the passenger-side window of her maker’s black Mercedes, absently wringing her hands. Her stomach hurt, but not in a way she’d grown accustomed to yet. She hadn’t eaten food in almost a year, not since she’d woken up dead and starving, and dwelling on that for too long s...

13 likes 0 comments 0
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The Storm’s Hunger

Submitted to Contest #333

Wulfric the Swift. So many stories are told of that dragon. Too many, perhaps. And most of them miss the truth. For in the end, Wulfric did not hunger for food, nor gold. He did not crave dominion, nor vengeance. He was not driven by the old draconic sins. He hungered for something far worse. Fame. Or, more accurately, fear. The youngest child of the great draconic prime, Wulfric was born of royal blood, enough to open every sky to him. A storm dragon, at one with wind and thunder. The high peaks were his home, and there he lived with his ki...

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