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Tell a story using a series of diary or journal entries.

Posted in Short Story on Jun 6, 2025

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✍️ 18 stories

The User Agreement

Submitted to Contest #306

“Welcome to ReWrite®. By using ReWrite you agree to these terms of service. The user acknowledges and accepts the potential hazards and risks involved in memory modification, including but not limited to injury, amnesia, and death.” I am sitting in a sterile white waiting room in a medical gown. My hand trembles as I hand the last remaining picture of my son, Leo, to an attractive young woman, named Circe. “It is okay,” she says with a smile. Her eyes are aquamarine, and her hair is a metallic orchid color that shimmers as she speaks. Those ...

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Tomorrow is Yesterday

Submitted to Contest #306

June 6th 2000. Tomorrow is the day. I can’t believe it. I knew the day would come eventually but it’s actually here.A new chapter, a new last name, the unknown, an end and a beginning.I can’t imagine my life without him.I’m nervous and a little scared.I wonder what he’s thinking now.Does he have any regrets or cold feet?Will he sleep a wink tonight? I know I won’t.I want to call him but I know I shouldn’t.True love is rare, more so than I could ever have imagined.Will I cry? Probably, I usually do.Ok, enough stalling. Lights off, time for be...

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Fracture Lines: Craniotomy Notes, Day One

Submitted to Contest #306

June 23rd, 2021AMAnother day, another dollar. I am doing my best to remember these daily entries to keep myself focused and composed. Composed? How cute that I think I could ever be composed. I am feverish to write and yet never quite know where to start or end. Irrelevant, these cheap little writing exercises I give myself upon waking feel tiring. I am writing, though. Every day I am writing, it is a habit, a ritual, and a promise I keep to myself. I am a bit anxious today about some meetings at work, maintenance is coming to the house duri...

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The Diary of Victor Perez

Submitted to Contest #306

Dear Diary, Ms. Rodriguez has assigned us to do diaries. “To record our thoughts.” I don’t know if I have thoughts. I mean, I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts. But I don’t think they’re good or important enough to write down. My thoughts are usually, “What’s for lunch?” “What’s for dinner?” “When is the next Spiderman going to come out?” These are my thoughts. Dear Diary,Ms. Rodriguez asked us to think about who our heroes are. Not like Spiderman or Superman. Real heroes. Like a fireman or a doctor. If I had to choose one, my hero would defi...

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Aeris

Submitted to Contest #306

FINAL COPY:Title: Aeris They broke through the jungle canopy at midmorning, damp with sweat and soft declarations of wonder. The jungle made everything softer. The air, the light. Even thoughts, if left untethered long enough. The air was thick with that sweet, vegetal stillness that only comes miles from roads, wires, and clocks. Every breath tasted green.There were six of them. Scientists, in theory. But none moved like theorists. Their boots were scuffed. Their gear was worn. They moved like people who had spent too many weeks together i...

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Please Do Not Read

Submitted to Contest #306

November 29, 2024 I haven’t done this since I was a kid. It feels silly somehow. Maybe I’m self-conscious of my thoughts. I took the suggestion, though. What else am I going to do? When I was little, my diary was one of those chintzy little things. A fat block that would now lay easily on my flat hand. The edge dusted with gold, a gilding that would rub off on my fingers in the summer. A flat lock pressed against the pages that my sister would undo with her identical key. Maybe that’s the reason I never wrote the truth in it. Or maybe it’...

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Hidebehind Me

Submitted to Contest #306

1/30/1995 I got him! Don’t ask me how I convinced him, but I did. Matthew and I are hitting the trail! The Superior Hiking Trail, that is! I’d consider the name hubris if it weren’t for the hike’s namesake, Lake Superior. Matthew put up quite a fight about my timing, saying things like, “It’s dangerous to go hiking in the winter!” and “What if it snows?” But you know me, or, well, I know me. I could persuade dandelions to bloom in December, if only I had a reason. Still, I understand that he has a point. December hikes are not only disallo...

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The Echo Garden

Submitted to Contest #306

3rd June 2025 — NinaFirst day here. The journey took over 10 hours, mum made us set off at 7am this morning, apparently so we could get settled and unpacked a bit before dinner. After battling miles of traffic though, the thought of unpacking is nauseating to say the least.This house smells like an odd mix of tobacco and lavender. Mum says it’s “vintage,” which is her way of romanticising the fact that there’s damp in the bathroom and mice in the loft. Dad’s already made friends with the local DIY shop bloke.I didn’t see anyone my age on our...

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She Broke A Little Bit Today

Submitted to Contest #306

(this is an excerpt from a book I am writing. It is a paranormal romance set in a pre-dystopian world. Charlie is a character that was taken by a future tech company and experimented on with DNA infused tech. It's about her mental state upon returning after getting free.) Charlie's fingers hovered over the phone screen, thumb hesitating mid-type, words flickered in her mind – half - thoughts, half-jokes, and none of them right. Bruises spilling like ink, blooming low on her ribs, tucked where fabric could hide them but not the ache when she ...

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Frontier

Submitted to Contest #306

Frontier Sunday September 18I have buried my husband without a prayer. God is not listening. This place is beyond Gods reach.It is equally futile to hope.The baby fights but she is weak. The sweats will win. Just as they did with my husband. She is too small to win this battle.I regret I didn’t have time to name her.I regret I never asked my husband why.Why did he think this land could be tamed?Why did he bring me here promising a good life.This place eats life.I regret the fever hasn’t taken me too. Monday September 19The baby has succumbed...

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The Journal of Eteri Sibrdzne

Submitted to Contest #306

Journal of Eteri Sibrdzne 2024.11.15 Morning Preparation I dreamt last night that I was deep in a birch forest of the sort one finds in the North of Russia. Now this forest, being a dream forest, was also a library, and I was its caretaker. I moved freely through the forest, sometimes along foot paths and sometimes along canals, paddling a small canoe or kayak. But mostly I just flew. Each tree bore a multitude of texts in its bark, which it yielded when asked and then regrew. I was gathering texts for something, impelled by ... I am not sur...

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Signed in Ash

Submitted to Contest #306

Tobias stared at the sealed scroll, its wax crest gleaming in the candlelight — the mark of the Covenant of Ash stamped deep into crimson wax, like a wound that never fully closed. His stomach twisted. The Covenant was a relic. A horror. A warning. And now it stood between him and Evie, a shadow threatening everything they’d fought for. He could almost feel Evie slipping away from him, her laughter fading into silence, her warmth turning cold beneath his fingers — just as Sorien had for Elara. “You should read it,” the old archivist said sof...

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The Breach

Submitted to Contest #306

The Breach Entry #1: June 1, 2025 Location: Somewhere in the Nevada Desert The sky bled red tonight, like God Himself had torn open a vein. I'm crouched in the ruins of an old gas station, the air thick with dust and something......heavier. Evil, maybe. My hands are still shaking from the fight. There were three of them – those shadow-things with eyes like oil slicks – came for me at dusk. I drove my blade through one, whispered the old words, and it screamed like a soul being ripped asunder. The other two fled. For now. I am not crazy. I...

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A Journal for Melanie

Submitted to Contest #306

April 30th, 2014 Hello, diary 2.0! It’s been too long since I talked to one of you. Mom took forever getting you after I filled the first. You might be surprised to hear that I already filled one of you up, but you’ll soon understand why. There is only one thing that I need you for, and it’s not to tell you about friends or boys (EW). What filled the pages before yours was my sister, Melanie. The singular worst thing to exist. I don’t know why sisters were invented. All mine does is stalk the hallways in the morning hours, raid the kitchen...

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Together We Burn

Submitted to Contest #306

Entry #1March 3rd, 2024 – 2:47 a.m. I wasn’t going to write about him again.But he’s the only thing on my mind. Again. Two years, two weeks, five days.1138 fights, 334 ignored messages, 4 breakups.And still counting. He calls me annoying. I call him frustrating.But we’re still here. Still burning. Society calls it toxic.But society doesn’t sleep in his arms when the rain won’t stop.They don’t know the smell of tulips soaked into a Pandora bottle.The way he whispers my name like a promiseEven when he just finished yelling. They don’t see the ...

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