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The Road That Has No End – Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

Winner of Weekly Contest #346 🏆

The Road That Has No End - Mariah Lightening’s Last InterviewAs the curtains close on a life and career, the 54 year old rockstar gives her final statements to her beloved fans and staunch critics. She’s hardly recognizable. The once powerfully strong build that performed olympic level dives off arena stages is now an amalgamation of flimsy bones on a hospital bed. Her iconic glittery unitard has been replaced by a gown. The only music in Mariah Lightening’s presence these days is the beeping and groaning of her dialysis machine. She’s bee...

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Windows to the Soul

Helen Tynan

Winner of Weekly Contest #345 🏆

I ring the doorbell, my suitcase hunkered beside me on the footpath, a black, sullen thing. After a few moments, the door swings open. Jane, my eldest, looks surprised to see me. “Mam,” she says. “What are you doing here?” No how lovely to see you or I’ve missed you. She hasn’t come to see me once since she left, years ago. She eyes my suitcase on the pavement. “I’ve come to stay,” I say simply. “Stay?” she says, not understanding. “With me?” I nod. “For the weekend?” she says. I shake my head. “For as long as you’ll have me.” We look at ...

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An Ode to the Archduke

Riley Furey

Winner of Weekly Contest #344 🏆

June 27th, 1914: Today started out like any other day. I was a bit hungover from grabbing a drink and going to the cinema the night before, and it still never ceases to amaze me how well the real world can be captured in a black and white film. The headache that has already begun to plague me was expected, and most certainly worth it. After rolling out of the bed, I dipped my head below the faucet and drank what felt like at least two liters of water. My morning routine as of late has consisted of eating eggs with a dash of salt and paprika,...

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Forgiveness

Harry Stuart

Winner of Weekly Contest #343 🏆

Wasted moments are sins. I am cursed by each one that I have slung with casual indifference. Her smile broken by my temperament. My thoughtless disregard. Instead of being hollowed out by regret, the fear stirs and sinks its claws into what is left of me that feels.I can’t see.Backing out of the driveway, the light refracts. It is stunted by the heaviness of drifting clouds. I grip the steering wheel tighter, knowing I have no choice but the road ahead. The weakness of my brother-in-law. Summoning me to the hospital to be the one to render t...

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By any other name

Katy H

Winner of Weekly Contest #342 🏆

First of all, it's the loan of a pen.The kid is a transfer in, a scrawny bag of knees and elbows deposited into 10PT by the hands of fate. Jacob gave him a friendly smile on the first day, aware of how easy it is to get lost in the unforgiving sea of humanity that is East Rothman Comp, but all he got back was a thousand yard stare. Fear, perhaps, rather than unfriendliness, but he hasn't been motivated to try again. Not until now.It's something about the kid's reaction that draws him in. It's not unknown to stick a hand in a rucksack and fai...

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The Fish

SJ Lamo

Winner of Weekly Contest #341 🏆

The water was clear and bright. After days in the shade, sunlight now cut through the rough surface, sending shimmering rays dancing across the rocky bed of the river, and illuminating the patches of bright green algae that carpeted the rocks of deeper, slower pools. The fish gained speed, then hurled herself above the water line, over the rocks that created a minor fall in the river. Above the water line, the fish did not notice that the land here held only a remnant of the forest. The riverbank was open, aside from a still-developing layer...

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Six Home Runs

Rick Jones

Winner of Weekly Contest #340 🏆

VIDEO: Most Valuable S3E7 “Six Home Runs” air: 6 October 2016 dir. Henry Yang CAROLYN GENNARO: Welcome to “Most Valuable” on Showtime, interviewing the athletes at the heart of the greatest moments in sports. This week, we discuss one of the most remarkable performances in Major League Baseball’s long history of postseason heroics; Ryan Mercier’s unprecedented display of power in the 1994 World Series. We’re here in Ryan’s home in Glendale, California. Ryan, thanks so much for having us. (Ryan Mercier nods at the camera and shifts in his ch...

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Negative Capability

Grace Giddings

Winner of Weekly Contest #339 🏆

[Online Order #32249 LARGE Iced Americano. EXTRA Mint syrup]Ronny sighed, staring at the mobile ticket printer spewing sticker after sticker with the obscene confidence of something that would never need to stretch its wrists or call out sick. The tickets came out as warm, adhesive-backed little decrees, other people’s desires rendered legible, monetizable, and, for the most part, stupid.It wasn’t that she didn’t like being a barista. She was grateful, in the way a person is grateful for oxygen: not sentimental, just aware of what it costs t...

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The Super Pals

Michael Gattis

Winner of Weekly Contest #338 🏆

Have you ever slept through your alarm and had to skip breakfast? Have you ever wished for more protein in the morning than what bland oatmeal could provide? Have you ever been stranded in the woods, starving, with nothing but a raw egg? If you answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, Lenny Livingston could have helped. You see, Lenny had a superpower. …Well, it was less a superpower, and more a “specific issue resolver.” Lenny Livingston could [insert drumroll here] fry an egg under any circumstances, provided he had a frying pan ...

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The Bends

Nina Chyll

Winner of Weekly Contest #337 🏆

_October 10, 1045 Earth EST, 1920.2 Europa LST_Dear Bob, this is going be so bizarre for you to read, but I am 35 now, have rewritten this LSM at least a hundred times, and you have a 6-year-old daughter. I am so sorry you are finding out this way. People here have recommended I help you acclimatise with what you may experience. Confusion, anger, bittersweetness (apparently this is a legitimate feeling), regret, or maybe disappointment (this will depend on whether you feel like you have done something wrong — regret, or whether you will feel...

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The Fifth Treatise of a Scurvy Cur, 1747

Avery Sparks

Winner of Weekly Contest #336 🏆

An introduction to the collection as presented by The British Library, 3 January, 2026. Captain Judah Lind’s diary entries have been an object of some historical interest since their composition in 1747. They tell the story of a minor yet highly consequential moment of discord in British naval history, and the enduring mystery which followed thereafter. For over two-hundred and fifty years, the same question has occupied the imagination and official enquiry: what was the fate of Fabian Calloway? Following this voyage of HMS Rival, this myste...

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Wax/Off

Christopher C

Winner of Weekly Contest #335 🏆

“I’m going to start this confession as plainly as I can: if you can think of a better way to rob a wax museum, I am ALL ears.” The arresting officer cocked his head back in the front seat of the police cruiser, glancing at the man behind him in a full Elvis Presley outfit. There was no way it was going to be THAT easy. “So that’s it? That’s a confession then?” he asked the suspect in the back seat. The man in the back of the cruiser raised his arms, the bedazzled sequins jangling off his jacket with every movement. “Buddy, take one look at m...

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The Bear Necessities of Contract Law

Troy Phillips

Winner of Weekly Contest #334 🏆

Goldilocks Lockwood v. Bear FamilySmall Claims Court, Woodland DistrictCase No. 2024-SC-0847Transcript of the Plaintiff's Opening Statement THE COURT: Ms. Lockwood, you may proceed with your statement.MS. LOCKWOOD: Thank you, Your Honor.[Sound of papers shuffling]My name is Goldilocks Lockwood. I am a licensed house-sitting professional, bonded and insured, operating in the Forest District for the past five years. I hold certification number 4721-GL from the Forest District Professional Standards Board, and I am a dues-paying member in good ...

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Peel and Core

Keba Ghardt

Winner of Weekly Contest #333 🏆

I always knew it was you.You don’t know how beautiful you are. You think no one would look at you without the kohl on your face, the gold in your hair, the corset cinched around your vanishing center. You thought coming here with a cloak on bent shoulders would make me see a crone, as if your unpainted skin held one single wrinkle. If you walked through the village instead of the wood, men would fight for the right to propose to you. Without any of the trappings and rituals you feel forced to maintain, you would still be the most beautiful t...

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Slippery Nonsense and Other Atmospheric Crimes

Michelle James

Winner of Weekly Contest #332 🏆

They say the British complain about the weather at least three times a day.Personally, I consider that an underestimation bordering on slander.I complain about the weather the way other people hydrate: constantly, instinctively, and with a faint sense of moral duty.It’s one of my most finely honed talents, practically a calling.Too hot. Too cold. Too windy. Not windy enough.The drizzle is rude. The cloud cover is smug. The frost feels judgmental.Some people complain recreationally. I complain as if the climate owes me money.Until last Tuesda...

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First Snow

Mark Kodak

Winner of Weekly Contest #331 🏆

The first snow began in the small hours, noiseless, without ceremony. By the time Ruth woke, the world at the window had turned to winter. The sky pressed low over the mountain bowl, a porcelain hush of blue shadows. She took her time to sit up. Her joints felt the weather before she did. A dull ache in her knees and an old pain in her collarbone reminded her of a fall on ice.The window fogged with her breath as she leaned close. Below the cabin, the slope dropped away into fir and aspen, their trunks lifting out of the new snow. The creek i...

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TAG

Elizabeth Hoban

Winner of Weekly Contest #330 🏆

TAG The jungle never slept. The air buzzed, especially at night. Danny got used to distant gunfire, but in his dark bunk, the most paralyzing was the unknown. An invisible dread that wrapped around a man’s throat and whispered, Morning will never come for you. The guys only knew each other for a few months. Yet, since their tour of duty began, together they’d survived oppressive heat, monsoons and mudslides, mortar fire, and the soft murmurs of uncertain prayers and stifled sobs while hiding in foxholes. They just wanted to go home but when ...

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The Protracted, Peculiar, and Probably Quite Pointless Trial of Bertie Masturbine

W B

Winner of Weekly Contest #329 🏆

Rather than enjoying the miracle of life, humankind has generally chosen the opposite – they have tried to understand it. More specifically, since the first caveman scribbled on the walls of his home, humankind has questioned what comes afterwards. Broadly, there are three schools of thought. Some think there’s nothing. Logical, if a bit dull. Some ‘don’t believe in, like, heaven and hell and all that stuff but feel, y’know, like there must be something out there, like, death can’t be the end, right?’ This is the most insufferable school of ...

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A Matter of Time

Avery Sparks

Winner of Weekly Contest #328 🏆

Hey. My Mum’s dying. Wanna date me? Yeah, it’s not one I’d start with either. So I haven’t. Mum told me, anyway, not to put my life on hold just because she’s ill. She said Tam, the ravens of memory fly around the universe, they don’t roost in the tower. She’s always coming out with stuff like that. Mama looked at her, said she hoped the ravens of memory would still be interested in Sunday dinner. Mama carried me, gave birth to me, and neither of us deal in myths. Although, after sixteen years of Mum’s bedtime chats, daily affirmations and h...

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The Fidget Hypothesis

Matt Wallace

Winner of Weekly Contest #327 🏆

The first time Fidget found the mistress dead, he got so scared that he lost one of his lives. It wouldn’t be the last time she did this, but some warning would have been polite. Maybe he had four left — cats were never really good with math. She had obviously been working on some mystical experiment that backfired, badly. Fidget’s bushy tail twitched and he cocked his head, staring into her open mouth. A furry paw gently bapped at her cheek once, twice, and a third time for good measure.Fidget leapt with a quick spring to the top of the wor...

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People Person

Joan Crow

Winner of Weekly Contest #326 🏆

“Wait – Tony, Tony can you hear me?”I turn the volume on my phone all the way up, disconnecting the call from the Mercedes. No service out here in BFE (bum-fucking-Egpyt). And quite literally, too.Well, as long as Egypt – the remote Appalachian village of 250 residents – in eastern Kentucky counts.“Tony, just repeat the address one more time for me, will you? My service keeps going in and out.”“6...66… Chayne …. Saugh Lane,” came the jagged sounds of Tony’s voice through the phone’s speaker.“Tony,” I chuckle, “you’re kidding me, right? 666 C...

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Dust

Firyal Quraishi

Winner of Weekly Contest #325 🏆

I shot my third rabbit today.I think there’s a litter nearby, because they all look the same. White with grey spots, and they all had one solid brown ear. It was something out of a grubby Alice in Wonderland, or a Playboy bunny at the end of her shift. I saw both of those in a shop in New York, once, back when we had money to travel.My baby sister likes to think that the critters all have feelings, and that they’re living some happy lives with tea and cookies in a bow-tied little hole in the base of a tree trunk, and that they’re nibbling at...

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The Water House

Kelsey R Davis

Winner of Weekly Contest #324 🏆

Halloween here had always been pretty typical before the Water House. It’s been the Packer House before, up on top of our street. Out front, the Packers grew basil beside wild blueberries, kept hummingbird feeders full and dangling from their cedar-shingle porch, right above crayola-colored old buoys everyone flanked their exterior railings with. You could make out the Packers heading to the pool each morning by sound: their screen-door’s spring stretching, their flip-flops smacking downhill like clucking tongues, their long swim parkas swoo...

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The Left Shoe First

Sonia Yousaf

Winner of Weekly Contest #323 🏆

I wake to the ghost of the track: sweat, turf, the echo my muscles still expect to chase. Rain works the window , patient and deliberate. The alarm shivers until my palm quiets it. In the gray light, the ceiling lines blur into lanes, and somewhere inside me the body flinches for a starter's pistol no one fires anymore. The blade leans patiently against the nightstand. Sometimes the rain still carries the ghost-smell of rubber and smoke, the scent of the crash baked into the weather. I listen first: rain drumming like a crowd that forgot my ...

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The Last Soldier

Caroline Moore

Winner of Weekly Contest #322 🏆

CW: Mental health, violence, warThe soldiers file into the mess hall, squeezing onto benches and finding open places away from the canvas walls to sit. Outside, the wind shrieks, whipping and beating tarps throughout the whole encampment, in some places tearing them from their posts.Calling it a mess hall is an overstatement, since it’s all just one big tent. There are windows near the top, flexible sheets of plastic framed in velcro and wire to hold it in place. The hall is propped up on portable wooden beams, built to keep the waves of san...

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Thousands of Short Stories to Read Online

Featured recently

The Road That Has No End – Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

Windows to the Soul

An Ode to the Archduke

Forgiveness

By any other name

The Fish

Six Home Runs

Negative Capability

The Super Pals

The Bends

The Fifth Treatise of a Scurvy Cur, 1747

Wax/Off

The Bear Necessities of Contract Law

Peel and Core

Slippery Nonsense and Other Atmospheric Crimes

First Snow

TAG

The Protracted, Peculiar, and Probably Quite Pointless Trial of Bertie Masturbine

A Matter of Time

The Fidget Hypothesis

People Person

Dust

The Water House

The Left Shoe First

The Last Soldier

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