EVERYONE THEY TOUCH DIES - EXCEPT EACH OTHER. For 423 years, Libby has been a walking biohazard: one accidental brush of skin and it's game over. Now she's the world's oldest virgin, a shut-in, and a not-so secret romantic who spends her nights writing about the experiences she can never have firsthand. But she isn't alone. For centuries, a robed figure has watched her from the edges of history. Libby assumed he was a hallucination, a coping mechanism for a mind fractured by four centuries of solitude. Then one night he slid into her DMs. And after four centuries of living without a single IRL connection, Libby is ready to be touched by a Reaper - whatever the cost. NOTE: This story is one of my Wattpad ONC 2026 entries. I wrote it in response to Prompt 114: "An immortal being, worn down by centuries and cursed so that anyone they touch dies, starts searching for a way to finally end their endless life. But Death, who has grown possessive and infatuated with them, refuses to let them go." ⚠️ TW: death, dirty language, sexual content, suicidal ideation.

White. The color that haunted her entire life. Born into a lineage of warriors and witches, she is the Matriarch's only daughter and her greatest disappointment. In a world forged by blood and conquest, her power does not burn or strike. Instead, she sees what others cannot: colors bleeding through the cracks of reality, a spectrum hidden beneath the violence they worship. They call her weak. They call her useless. But power does not always arrive as a weapon. Sometimes it arrives as perception. Sometimes it arrives as the space between. As ancient traditions close in and the weight of expectation sharpens into a blade, she must choose whether to disappear into the white that defines her-or claim the colors that terrify everyone else. A dark fantasy about inherited violence, quiet rebellion, and the power that exists where no one thinks to look. ---------- Open Novella Contest 2026 Based on prompts: 2. The first flower to bloom in spring isn't just a sign of the season changing. It's a portal. When you touch it, you're transported into a magical world you never knew existed. 11. The daughter of the most powerful witch is nothing like her mother.

After Travis McPherson dies, his fiancée receives a voicemail, recorded an hour after his passing. (Prompt 90: You receive a voicemail from someone you love, recorded one hour after their confirmed death). Wired for the Open Novella Contest 2026

Where the evil Queen of Hearts and the eccentric Mad Hatter fall in love. Based on the classic books "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll. +0+0+0+0+ An Open Novella Contest 2026 entry. Prompt 44. "May I have this dance?" "Seriously? Right now, in this situation?"

Tris McCoy is having an uneventful summer. It's the summer before eleventh grade, and it's the last summer she has before she has to start worrying about driving, and college, and a career. With her mom being in the hospital and her dad enjoying the title of father out in Australia, she's left to spend the next six weeks alone. Until she (literally) stumbles across a stack of old letters from her pen pal, July Souders. July lives in British Columbia---four provinces away---but Tris knows of a camp she used to attend. Unwilling to spend the summer alone and desperate for any change, no matter the size, Tris sets off for summer camp.

Spring arrives quietly.... soil rich with fertility, petals swaying and a garden that has never known wonder. Until one flower blooms where none should. When reaches for the first flower of spring, the world does not change all but It opens. A single touch pulls her into a place hidden between seasons a world where gardens guard secrets, portals breathe softly and magic has learned how to wait. What was once ordinary becomes dangerous and what blooms beautifully may burn just as fiercely.... because some flowers are not meant to be touched. Some doors do not open without consequence and some creatures long thought to be myths have been watching all along. In a story where spring is a threshold and the garden remembers everything, one choice will decide what is saved... and what is lost forever.

After her office burns down a successful editor is forced to share a workspace with the most irritating man alive and a different kind of fire ignites between them. **** Chielozonam 'Elo' Williams is thriving. Not only does she have the job of her dreams she's about to make Acquiring Editor of PerfectRomance, the publishing imprint she's been working at for the past five years which would definitely prove to her judgmental father once and for all that he was wrong about her wasting her life away at a dead end job but she's also determined to enjoy the prime years of her youth. Endless fun and casual romps in the sheets are the name of the game. That is until the unthinkable happens. After Elo's building catches fire and burns down she has no choice but to share an office with the one person that makes her blood boil: Connor Price. Archenemies since their days at college Connor makes getting under her skin an art form with his world famous scathing remarks and condescending attitude. When they're forced to work together to acquire a potentially lucrative manuscript, they discover that some fires burn hotter than others. An ONC 2026 story inspired by prompt 40. You and your greatest enemy are struck by a curse that binds your lives together. The only way to survive is to share a kiss, but you would both rather face death than each other.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield meets The Haunting of the Hill House (the Netflix series) in this tale of paleoanthropological terror that plays with the famous theory of the uncanny valley by Masahiro Mori. *** PhD student Giselle Brown is at her hometown to complete her dissertation in peace, hardly expecting anything surprising to happen. Her life is muddled as it is; she doesn't need more trouble to spice it up. But when the bones of a human cadaver are discovered by the local anglers, which turn out to be the remains of her long-lost mother, Giselle's life is thrown into a tumult. Twenty years ago, Giselle's mother, Julia Brown, had disappeared from their house, leaving behind a trail of heartbreak and despair. The police never found her mother, which drove her father to suicide, her older sister to turn mute and to be admitted in a mental institution, leaving the full onus of raising Giselle on her grandmother. Her mother was more a legend in their house than a person who haunted their every action and Giselle's most haunting thoughts. Somewhere deep down Giselle had always sought answers to what happened to her mother and the disturbing facets of the last week she was with their family. Now, with the corpse recovered and identified, the investigation that had once gone cold resumes upon Giselle's insistence. Yet things get stranger as the police uncover the most bizarre facts about the cadaver and details about the last days of Julia's life. Giselle is plagued by reflections that are not quite hers, shadows that stretch too long, figures appearing at the edge of the woods close to her home and a lingering sense of being watched. Giselle doesn't know what to do. Can she really trust her mind? Or is nothing as it seems? For Julia Brown had unearthed a secret that humanity must not know, and now her family must pay its dues... *** An ONC 2026 entry

Ian starts having detailed dreams that feel like recollections. Seeing people she's never met before and places she's never been. Her therapist told her that these were dreams and decided to use hypnosis to assist her shut out her memories. She is invited to a wedding in the town of Zoey. Upon her arrival, locals continue to mistake her for Anna. But the question is: who is Anna?