Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: It’s been years: Bailey clearly means him no harm and has managed to be discreet enough that Nick’s queerness isn’t the talk of the Chronicle.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: When the pandemic hit, the governor issued stay-at-home orders.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The eunuch draws his bow again and aims for another passerby.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Lore heaved in deep breaths as she drew closer, willing her stomach to expand, pushing the pain in her head to the edges.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Since the tanker had been empty when it had been seized, they didn’t need to dump three million barrels of crude oil into the ocean, avoiding the discovery of whether
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: They are staring at the stone floor, bare-chested, shivering.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Stop checking my phone,” Ella said.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: They were not in the path of vehicles that sped into the station to refuel, but who knew what crazy driver might decide to veer towards them.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Her thoughts felt slow and heavy.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I know that’s right.” “Your turn, August,” Julian prompted.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: She got to her feet, eyelid fluttering convulsively, putting the chairs between herself and where she’d heard him land.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Somewhere around the turn of the century he met an enterprising young reporter named Cecilia Marks, who was making a name for herself by getting thrown into prisons in order
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Michaela throws an unreadable look in my direction and follows.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: For now, she would do what she could to make Simon’s life a happier one.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Help me,” the old man repeats.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Without a goodbye.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Thanks for being part of his community!
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The dark figure starts running when he sees me coming, his sneakers slipping on the dew-slicked grass.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: For a moment it was as if the whole sky was full of campfire embers that swirled among seagulls distressed at the commotion but otherwise unharmed.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Titanium tables holding cadavers were lined in rows in the stark, laboratory-like space.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I turned a fierce scowl inward.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I’m gonna change in the bathroom; you get the episode pulled up.” I find the remote, connect to the right app, and get it ready to play.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I suppose you were, weren’t you?
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: But sadness is an ache I feel I need to continually swallow around, and turns out, sadness also makes it hard to laugh.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: They get killed off, and voila!
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: This was the cry of the first bird ever pushed from its nest, tentative wings stretching for flight.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Liza thought this a good moment to repeat her claim: ‘These families will not be broken up.’ Kasim shrugged.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Now,” Sefa added.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: A sickening thunk as a fist crashed into his temple; he slumped to the ground.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Most marionettes are fussy and clattery.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Oh, I’m great.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Ẹniọlá scratched his thigh, worried that there might be a follow-up question.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: He recanted his confession less than twenty-four hours later, saying it was coerced.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Despite my toxic marriage, I was privileged.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: So how old are you?” Ben asks.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: That’s what immigration did to the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration,” she explained.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: He emerged with the cloth bag, holding it aloft until his mother nodded to indicate he had gotten the right one.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Reggie looked downright petrified, while Hardy had now resorted to banging a catcher’s mitt–sized metal fist on the bulkhead.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Bastian pulled her to the center of the floor, through courtiers that parted like a jewel-toned wave.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: If she could unravel it.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: To my consternation, his gamble paid off.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: His father was alive beside her.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: He was still in the building.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I slid my thumb under the flap.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Between Bastian’s party and waking up at the first snap of dawn, she was tired, too.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Are there children?
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The internet and the millions of computers associated with it, the virtual reality that therein exists and that will become more vivid in the years ahead, is not a reality
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: She wished that she could love him in the same way that he loved her, except she didn’t know how.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: He dug around until he felt the wood and gears wrapped in cloth.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: ), if I’m not too exhausted.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: All I wanted was to have her back.” Silence engulfs us for a long time before Mr. Lamont speaks again.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Fran had offered me her couch, but the way she said it—“I mean, there’s the dog, and Jacob’s always at volume eleven, and Max still doesn’t sleep through the night”—made
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Is he building ships, too?” Alie asked.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Hazel looks about to say something else, but a muscular woman wrapped in a towel emerges from the shower.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Captain Glenn Stone had exemplified the unwavering resolve that defined us as US Space-Navy officers, as leaders.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I must trust that others are trying to find my mother, that they care as much as I do.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: In the Hudson?” “In the swimming lake.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The clock on the wall behind me was loud, and I tapped my foot as fast as the second hand moved, scrolling through NuLife’s social media aimlessly, not to digest
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Several brooding thoughts and a few pristine angles later, I switch off the engine and call Jordan back.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: It was more than possible.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Roped together in a procession, stumbling through the darkness, guided by the stars, they’d set up temporary camps, about to embark on one of the most famous expeditions in human
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Why’d he do it?” Andy knows as soon as he’s spoken that it’s the wrong question.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I wondered what it looked like.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I follow a bunch of Instagram accounts that are just pictures and the occasional close-up video of whales doing whale shit, like drifting or feeding or surfacing or playing.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: One of the monks struck out with a dagger; the sharp edge sliced through Bastian’s eyebrow, sheeting blood and shocking him into enough stillness to be subdued, arms twisted behind
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Urueta is going to give you the interview you need sooner or later.” “He doesn’t like us.” “He got a little tense, but Urueta loves talking.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I had to count the zeros several times before I could believe it.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Or maybe getting consumed with rage was part of getting over it … Fine then.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: He retrieves his sword carefully, cleaning it on his tunic.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: It was only real with me.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: He looked puzzled, wrong-footed entirely.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: These were not the tidy hillsides I was used to, but riddled with lumps, volcanic rock in haphazard garments of moss.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Are you calling Mari a liar?” “I have no reason to believe she’s not,” Gabe said.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Her heart started beating faster.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I once met a Manx man whose daughter had taken her own life after a year and a day spent in some horrific faerie kingdom so lovely that its beauty
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: His favorite was Consort Wan.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Subtle car,” Jonah says as a tall man with slicked-back hair steps out of the Ferrari.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The patient coming in is a thirty-two-year-old female found unresponsive while diving near Alki Beach.” “Diving?” Evelyn nods.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Yes, I was powerful.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Mr.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: If we’re not in the same room, then I’m usually working on his book.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Brad’s having sex!” Great: my brother has arrived, right on schedule, to ruin my life.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: And I could snap you in two pieces and all.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The lower offices were sufficiently warren-like that she could sneak upstairs without being observed.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Oh!
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Wulf said, ‘Was I really the only one who lived?’ ‘It appears so.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The girl I’d be sharing with was too pretty.” A man with a worryingly lifelike parrot on his shoulder edges past me, but it’s central London on the weekend, so
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Something inside her was healing at a rapid rate, not only because of this love stampede that had totally trampled her beneath its hooves.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: It’ll be the l-last thing you d-do.” “Do you make such promises to all the pretty girls you meet?” Nurse Ratched asked.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I recalled something Lucinda had said to me before I left; that it didn’t matter whether the decision you made was right or wrong, as long as you made it.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: After a few pumps, he slides upward again, stroking and rubbing and tracing and Jesus.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: These stuffed animals were how she had first learned to love something that couldn’t always love you back.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: Yes!
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: The fire on the hedges and grass had been extinguished—flattened by Turner’s roots.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: A country that first abandons and then condemns people without money who have the temerity to get sick, accusing them of causing their own deaths.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I have a cute story about her.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: This apparently meant she was mature enough (“sexually active,” they said) at twelve that anyone could have killed her, not just the bus driver who had the nude photos.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: If anyone saw her with Bastian and grass stains on her skirt, the conclusion they drew would have nothing to do with that kind of riding.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: I spot the shiny foil corner of a sealed condom and pull it out from beneath an avalanche of paper clips and broken pencils.
Please write a short story starting with the following prompt: But just before Mrs. Baker can pull the armoire doors open, the record player suddenly skips.
