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It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost.

Posted in Short Story on May 30, 2025

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✍️ 78 stories

Ghost Protocol

Submitted to Contest #305

I volunteered to be safety officer at the autumn festival because I had no problem being the killjoy that confiscated joints off zombies. Most of my job was running the opening checklist, sweeping flammable brush away from combustible effects, making sure all the mechanics were away from the reach of tourist fingers, and doing a quick sniff test for the sobriety of killer clowns. I did the final walk-through on the way out, but for the run of the haunt, my walkie was comfortingly silent, proof of how responsible a chainsaw massacre can be. O...

22 likes 10 comments 10
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Lola

Submitted to Contest #305

LolaTW: Includes sexual innuendo. “T'was the third of June another early summer typical Tuesday in Dullsville. Mom and Dad were off to work already but I hadn't lined up a summer job yet so I decided to take a run.Clad in my slick Nike's from gym days, knee-high striped athletic socks, short silky running shorts and a happy face t-shirt I'm the height of jogging fashion. I take a well-worn path but when I come to the intersection where I could turn right and head home or left and end up ...where ever, I get a second wind and turn left.Hey, I...

17 likes 19 comments 19
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When the Nightmare Ends

Submitted to Contest #305

I took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost.Not lost in the woods, or lost in a city I didn't recognize.No, this was a deeper, far more unsettling lostness.It was the kind that gnawed at the edges of your perception, a phantom limb ache for a reality that had just… vanished.My last memory, sharp as a freshly honed blade, was of plunging my gloved hand, claws extended, into the chest of some screaming teenager.A typical Tuesday night, really.The usual fear, the usual delightful spray of crimson. Then, blackness.Not the c...

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Up a Tree

Submitted to Contest #305

“What!”Charlie awoke feeling small clawed feet on his back. Though not painful, he felt the tentative steps travel up his spine toward his head. He opened his eyes. Seeing he was twenty feet off the ground, he tensed. Somehow, he’d slept straddling the tree limb he was clinging to. How…! Did I sleep up here?A squirrel bounded off his head and up the branch. It turned and scolded him. Its chatter didn’t need translation. His panic subsiding, Charlie told the creature, “It’s okay, buddy. I thought you were lost.”Its tail twitching, the squirre...

13 likes 6 comments 6
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Angel in a Yellow Dress

Submitted to Contest #305

June 12, 2024 ~ Cagliari, Sardinia“Angel in a Yellow Dress” The charcuterie board was pushed across the counter to my husband’s surprise. He had gestured to the meats and cheeses through the glass counter but perhaps should have googled the Italian word for sandwich. “What’s this?” he demanded. “Just eat it,” I hissed at him hoping he wouldn’t refuse to pay or, worse yet, make a scene. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled, taking the tray and heading for the orange couch tucked behind a mahogany coffee table. Surrounded by floor-to-ceiling wine bott...

13 likes 9 comments 9
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Concrete Jungle

Submitted to Contest #305

It took seconds to realise I was utterly and completely lost. I should have known my way home by then. I’d lived in that apartment for a year. I’d seen it in every season, from every angle, in all weathers. I thought I knew my way back there intuitively, like a blind person knows all the ridges their cane detects on familiar footpaths. I guess you can become wrong about something in a single second. I kept moving. Stopping and examining signs hadn’t served as a compass in any way. I didn’t know one restaurant, one bar, one shuttered shop tha...

12 likes 7 comments 7
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Armadillo Picnic

Submitted to Contest #305

It took me a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost.I looked around. Corn stalks towered around me.“Great! Just great!”“Yoohoo!” a high-pitched voice sang and an armadillo materialized in front of me.“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” I jumped back.“Don’t be scared, ya silly goose!” The armadillo reached down and opened its chest with its claws.“What the Hell!”He pulled a cigar out and stuck it in his mouth. The end briefly caught fire and smoke arose. The armadillo inhaled. “Yeah, that’s the stuff!” He blew out smoke rings.“Who the Hell...

11 likes 10 comments 10
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The Loop

Submitted to Contest #305

It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost. Not the kind of lost when you’re shopping in a grocery store with an unfamiliar layout and the bread is no longer on aisle three. No, this was the kind of lost that makes your head spin and question whether or not you’re even in the same country you started in. I knew I was in the Texas Hill Country, somewhere between Wimberly and my intended destination, Fredericksburg. At least, that was the case forty minutes ago before my phone died. “Mark, don’t you have a phone charger...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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June 16th in the Franklin Mountains

Submitted to Contest #305

It took me a few seconds to realize that I was utterly and completely lost. The trail that I had taken to get up to the mountain seemed to have vanished into the Ocotillo and cactus, blown away like the sands. Everything was the same rocky, dry earth that I had scrapped and clawed against getting up here. The jagged red rocks were painted with stripes of crimson from my bleeding palms.This is fine, I thought to myself. I never had any intention of coming back down anyway.I looked ahead, and the view of rolling hills and mountains, endless in...

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Where the Spirit Horses Drink

Submitted to Contest #305

Where The Spirit Horses Drink By Johanna Lor Rain Parry ---- this story is based on true events, and real experiences. It includes historical trauma from indigenous genocide. She could hear them drumming for those praying in the lodge...the heart-beat rhythm reminding her of the thousands of tears that drip slowly into the red earth from the eyes of those who have seen too much. A trail of prayers trickled upward from the fire in front of the sweat lodge. The swirling smoke spiraled, threadlike towards the sky. Life had always been hard in ...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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Echo Canyon

Submitted to Contest #305

THE SUN WAS HIGH when they dropped into the third canyon that morning, hooves clattering loose shale, the sound echoing off rust-colored walls that offered no shade, no relief, and no end. The wind didn’t move down here. It hovered. Heat sat like a drunk on their shoulders, pressing down slow and mean.They hadn’t spoken in miles.The tall one, the quieter one, rode with his broad-brimmed, dark hat pulled low and his eyes behind dust-crusted lashes, scanning the narrow trail ahead. His shirt clung to his back, darkened with sweat down the spin...

9 likes 4 comments 4
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The Expath Chronicles: Conversations with Ghosts

Submitted to Contest #305

(Sensitive content: grief)It hit me in the middle of a bustling street in a new city—I was utterly and completely lost.It was a simple mistake—a wrong turn, a missed landmark—but the feeling went deeper than that. I'd lived in multiple cities, mastered metro systems in foreign languages, crossed continents. Getting lost didn't scare me.But this time, it stirred something else: a quiet ache.I missed the kind of place where I couldn't get lost. Where even with my eyes closed, I knew every crack in the pavement. A village tucked between green h...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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~ Help Wanted ~

Submitted to Contest #305

~ Help Wanted ~ Cap’n Dick sat in his living room on a kitchen chair turned backwards, his mighty arms crossed on the top of the seat back. To his right behind his gargantuan shoulders and belly, his old pal Wishy sat on a couch from the sixties. The couch was still pristine because it had been preserved with a thick plastic cover for the last fifty years. To Cap’n Dick’s left, kicked back in an old and tattered recliner sat Mr. Willie. Thought by many to be the oldest man in Deep Creek, he was even older than Cap’n Dick’s daddy, Beauregard ...

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Saved For Him

Submitted to Contest #305

Aakesh’s Journal NotesTwo months after the final waveBiochemical Warfare has decimated most populations of the world leaving behind a mix of abundant forests, mutated creatures, and humans.The Long-legged Yellow Sac Spider, otherwise known as the Cheiracanthium mildei, has reportedly overrun Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia. Usually the size of a small car, these arachnids are not only nocturnal, but have developed a venomous disease that causes its victims to adopt a hybrid zombie-arachnid form once infected from a bite wound. Victims of th...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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Where am I

Submitted to Contest #305

The biting wind tore at my exposed cheeks, staining them a forbidding crimson. Snow, a seemingly endless cascade of icy needles, relentlessly assaulted my eyes, blurring the already indistinct landscape. It took a few seconds, perhaps even a full minute, for me to realise that I was completely lost.I’d been so foolish.The map, a tattered, laminated thing that felt more like a taunt than a guide, lay crumpled in my gloved hand. Its faded markings offered no comfort, no direction. I cursed the overconfidence that had led me to stray from the m...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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