The
Decameron
Project

The
Decameron
Project

The
Decameron
Project

Featured Stories

While every story makes our catalogue, our team of curators hand pick only the most exceptional to be featured. Read our favorites below.

"The glass has stopped falling. Now, I sit in the dark with open wounds and no way to..."

" A million different shards of glass are exploding all around me. They pierce my skin and itch my soul..."

Diary of an Anxious Dreamer

Saya

Ross

Montvale

11th Grade

"The panic began to set in and my eyes drifted around the room. To the far left of me..."

"The familiar tingling started at my feet and electrified my whole body as I gasped awake. It was dark..."

Repetition

Trenitie

Marie

Sarcoxie

10th Grade

"I’m drawn to pain. Suffering and death attracts me like a fly to honey. I didn't..."

Michelle, you don’t love me. For sixteen years I believed you did. I thought you were all I had..."

Correction

Haley

Betters

Cleveland

10th Grade

"And then she saw the man. He looked like all the others. He was wearing a plaid..."

"The nurse had pushed the curtains aside so that she could have a look out at the night sky from her bed..."

Strange Fruits

Andrea

Schenkel

New York

Other Grade

I hate that I fell for the wrong person

Yet even your locks of dusky night-Or permanent seas of Poseidon’s green-Could not stop me from Icarus’s doom

The Ballad of Scorched Skin

Polina

Datsko

Manchester

10th Grade

"People will lick her clean, Husbands and their Hearts, and she will be able to watch..."

Mature Content

"Marjorie is a Clockwatcher. She sits in a room and watches the Clock. Its face is round and flat. It is..."

A Pithos is a Wife is an Empty Jar

Gemma

Trimble

Phoenix

Other Grade

"He watched as his son flew, his heart tied along with him, higher and higher still..."

"Feathers collected, golden, revered, lay as still and as delicate as a piper’s fingertips suspended--..."

A Father’s Promise

Anabella

de Oliveira Castro

Arlington

11th Grade

"'Long live the kings of Summer, and may we continue to prosper under their reign'..."

"'Kings of Summer! Kings of Summer!' We chant and sing, running rampant along the sandy streets, biking up..."

Kings of Summer

Sasha Leah

Dunst

New York

10th Grade

"Robert doesn’t have a god delusion, because you can only be deluded when you’re..."

"The Glibman Building takes a long time to burn, but it looks very pretty as it does. Robert quit his job..."

Irony

Sylvi

Stein

New York

12th Grade

"I can't hold myself up anymore, so I sink to the ground, kneeling down, head bowed low."

Grief hits me like a flood, And suddenly I'm falling...

The Flood

Celia

T

Lake Forest Park

Other Grade

"Then a little girl, who’d stood behind him, opened her mouth to scream. As soon as..."

"'Calor! Calor!' Calor’s older brother tackled the giggling boy to the ground, their arms flailing about..."

Forsaken

Lucas

Nyman

Peachtree City

10th Grade

"Its tulle filtered the sunlight into a loud magenta ripple against the grey pathway"

She fancied herself a superhero: legs wide, elbows pointed, chin tucked as she admired her shadow. Today...

The Changing Courtyard

Elizabeth

Louie

Brooklyn, New York

11th Grade

I’ve always loved how alphonso mangoes turn golden with the suns rays, wrinkled and uneven

we’ve been playing this game for so long I don’t remember when it started. Khun-yahy’s brown eyes, the sam...

this little lifelong game

Kiran

Bhat

Winchester, Massachusetts

11th Grade

"Fresh off a war and ready to party. Ol’ Frankie."

Resigned to the saccharine recesses of my memory, I sigh. It has been 68 years, yet it all remains so tangible

Gazing Into Oblivion

Tyia

Boateng

Brooklyn, New York

11th Grade

"I exhale the memories. The sleeping theater starts to dream..."

The Theatre is Sleeping and I’m Still Awake

Logan

Wilbur

Bass Harbor

11th Grade

"Losing an antler is an aesthetic tragedy, and an infringement upon symmetry..."

The Yellow Car and the One-Antlered Deer

Clay

Miller

Morrison

11th Grade

"Our conscience knows this is not the way So it prays to God for an hour of understanding"

My window flickers off and on Subtle pixels of iridescent light Twisting and contorting I sway in their...

Bread and Circuses

Sofia

V

Brooklyn

9th Grade

"It is only after a forced subtlety that could be described as formlessness in the..."

A rectangular prism, twenty two feet in length, six feet in width, and seven feet in height with no...

Box Chair

Matthew

Wheeler

Trenton

11th Grade

"...tugged at her wrinkled dress as she gasped for air on the brink of her devastation."

In this corner of the world, the legends that kept children awake during humid nights were true; and people...

Mujer del Mar

Xavian

Plinde

New York City

A. Philip Randolph Campus High School

9th Grade

"Outside my bedroom window rests my whole world framed in my perfect image."

Outside my bedroom window, I see green and yellow and brick. I see the cool breeze’s slight rustle in the...

My Picture Framed World

Ia Sofia

Cabre-Jockovich

Somerville

11th Grade

"Can’t I decide who I want to be? Can’t I live in the intermediary? Girls are..."

"When I was in kindergarten I told my parents I was going to get married to a girl. I carried my love..."

Bi The Way

Silvi

Stein

New York

12th Grade

"what I’ve seen has stirred me up so deeply inside that it forced me to venture beyond."

Outside of my window what do I see? Unfortunately, that’s a question that I find myself unable to answer...

P.O.P (Pane or Pain)

Ina

L

Los Angeles

12th Grade

Clairvoyance

The ground is perpetually damp, the buildings creak, and the sun seems more like a hole forced into the sky...

Horror Fiction: 1st Place

Tanisha

Shende

Lodi

Bergen County Academies

11th Grade

The Thing in the Wall

If we whispered the name of a dead person, it winked like a friend. If we suppressed our fright and kept qu...

Horror Fiction: 2nd Place

Ife

Olatona

Washington D.C./ Olun, Nigeria

11th Grade

"She plucked his cane from his hand, a hawk grabbing a defenceless mouse"

He gripped his cane tighter, arthritis stiff digits curled around the handle. Rhythmically, he swept it side..

Blind Man Walking (Horror Fiction Honorable Mention)

Savanna

Maki

Cedar Springs

10th Grade

"Crying is my anthem. Ana likes it that way."

Mature Content

"I sit up in the creaky bed and stare at the bathroom door, mold on the sides, rusty handle, disgusting..."

Flavored Cigarettes

Salma

Aldibee

Islamabad

10th Grade

"It's hard "staying in the closet" but if I reveal it, I would get punished, badly..."

"We all can admit, this year was bizarre, but my life just began. Yet, this year was a struggle and we..."

Live. Life. Change.

Pinku

A

Sicklerville

Overbrook High School

9th Grade

"She clicks the light on and screams. A note reads 'BOO, did I scare you mommy?' Half..."

"'Jackson where are you?' Tori said as she wandered through the hallway. She opens the closet door and..."

Love and Family

Jorrin

E.

Upper Marlboro

11th Grade

"The boiling blood in my body melted the ice instantaneously. More than road rage took..."

"As soon as I clicked the radio on, I knew something was wrong. I had received this truck two days ago for..."

24

David

Jones

King City

10th Grade

"You can try to run. I did. But you cannot."

"No one talks about what happened in the Lands. Every time I see someone else like me: trying to look..."

The Lands

Alexandra

Volkova

Franklin Lakes

11th Grade

"The grotesque collection of bodies with some dead, drooping arms dragging on the..."

"'They didn’t treat the kids good here,' Marks inquired, 'did the?' 'Only the rats were,' Officer Bells..."

Rat King

Anais

S.

Saratoga

9th Grade

"when I look at them all the holes in myself are suddenly made clear and I curse the..."

Incident Report. Name: Dinah Rogers. Date: Last week, but consciously speaking, three days ago...

Incident Report

Dinah

R

Decatur, Georgia

11th Grade

“What if there’s no point to any of this,” He started. “What if we live just to die?”

Mature Content

"There’s an eerie silence that follows someone’s death. People stare out windows for hours at a time, lost..."

Purple Domino

Nelly

Zerbib

Brookline

12th Grade

"Imagination was my escape from the dull reality of my life."

I looked out into the bleak, moonlit sky while stirring my coffee that had already gone lukewarm, a routine...

Letters From a Familiar Unknown

Joseph

C

Las Vegas

12th Grade

If you put your country in a broken microwave, / how do you expect it to prosper?

“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all” / -Colson Whitehead

The Middle

Shelby

Darnell

St. Louis, Missouri

11th Grade

"We collided at the meeting of the sky and earth, and our bodies flew in opposite..."

My body cracks in two, flesh stuck in between the crevices of a boot, evidence of my life scattered across...

The One

Nazeefa

Ahmed

Calgary, Canada

12th Grade

"Teach us out of the quiet, & into the honey-life which knows how to heal out of dark."

The world goes red during lady business. I’ve stained my cloth with the dripping wine of overturned skin...

A Visit From Aunt Flo

Caitlin

Levy

New York

11th Grade

"But Themis, let the dawn show your silhouette as black."

Langston Hughes once said, That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise...

Impartial or Blind?

Rhea

Ahluwalia

New York City

11th Grade

My whole life was a fight intended for an audience that would never understand it anyhow.

Believing in your own superiority does not legitimize it. And so, do yourself a favor and acknowledge your...

A Revolution of Two

Gabrielle

Galchen

New York, New York

11th Grade

"My throat burns with unexplainably despondent longing for removal from an otherness..."

My mother says menopause is full of pain. Hot flashes, anger, despair, insomnia, a surge of untameable emotion

16 Siroccos

Mary Lawrence

Ware

Brooklyn, New York

10th Grade

"Embedded in the soil of our nation is racism, slavery, and persecution"

It seems as if over the past few months there has been a shift in the world.

What can we do to be heard and why do we need to share our voices more than ever?

Olivia

Hersh

New York, New York

9th Grade

Let loose. Have fun. Push the darkness aside, for a moment, a day, a night. For each other

March 21st - She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the blue light of her phone screen glaring back at her...

Passing

Kenna

L

Stowe, Vermont

11th Grade

You will see glimpses of her youth peeking out from where it’s been hiding all these years

My fortune-teller, Nashia, isn’t very good at telling fortunes...

The Teller

Diya

Sabharwal

New Delhi, India

12th Grade

"I have come to the realization that no one is coming to rescue me."

Inhale. Exhale. Air swifts through my lungs while I place my head on the trunk of a tree...

Deadly Militia

Emmanuella

Agyemang

Bronx, New York

10th Grade

"She was not a criminal, her body was criminalized."

Mature Content

Interviewer - “If anyone in the audience hadn’t heard it already, these were the exact words of Ms. Lynon:”

#JusticeIsNotServed

Jayola

Reid

Bronx, New York

11th Grade

"happiness could easily be like a soap, beautiful and cleansing, yet slipping away..."

Mature Content

It was in those days of such similarity that they could all be Mondays, or Wednesdays--or whatever pointless..

Within Limits

Gabrielle

Galchen

New York, New York

11th Grade

She turned toward him. “Besides, what is life without dreams?”

He was not the type to enjoy bars, or alcohol for that matter, but he felt obligated and a bit pressured...

Song of Solomon: A Prequel to Chapter One

Willem

Groot

New York, New York

Collegiate School

10th Grade

"Each speck had an ember inside, a manifestation of love..."

The stares of the cruel eyes penetrated through me, transmitting a notion that my body was some sort of...

Skeleton Love

Joseph

C

Las Vegas, Nevada

12th Grade

"She’s beautiful and amazing and she’s here, in the same room as M. Smiling at M..."

M has fallen in love with the girl and her math homework.

You Must Be a 45-Degree Angle…

Sylvi

Stein

New York, New York

Hunter College High School

11th Grade

"but we are / the same being different bodies / same blood different / beauty we are"

Her hairs black / fair skin subtle pink lips / eyes like mine

amoo – a story with collom lunes

Redeta

C

Brooklyn, New York

11th Grade

"The morning light snakes into the walls of the room, illuminating the truth..."

Only three minutes now, three minutes until the rest of the air in his body leaves him...

Night Terrors

Amanda

Castillo

Bronx, New York

12th Grade

"The library was a charm, each shelf gave its secrets to those who came..."

Ms.Eloise sat in her chair that rocked like the ocean, the bank notices rested in her thin brittle fingers.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Jocelyn

Horsfall-Arsenault

Penacook, New Hampshire

Merrimack Valley High School

12th Grade

"I miss his shallow breaths and the soft sounds of his well-worn yellow sneakers"

The sound of my own breathing is unfamiliar to me as the ground blurs beneath my feet;

Alone. Here. Now.

Emily

Philbrook

Penacook, New Hampshire

12th Grade

"But never, in all his 78 years of living on the river, did Ildefonso think the Puerco would come for him, and not like this, not in his beloved little Toyota truck..."

Every year, when late Spring brought the snowmelt from the San Juans, the Rio Puerco took a victim...

Crossing the Rio Puerco

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe, NM

11th Grade

"It doesn’t go, it’s not a fucking song. A book teaches you."

Mature Content

The sound of the 6 train always scared those who weren’t paying attention.

Skyline

Anthony

Bonavita

Little Neck, New York

Bronx Science

12th Grade

"She has long blonde locks, and I have dark brown frizz. She has piercing blue eyes, and I have common brown ones. Still, people say we look alike..."

Mature Content

She makes fun of me for being a sleepy grandma, but I can’t understand how she lives off of just five hours of sleep a night. She chats with friends in bed, while I read stories about characters I dream of being friends with.

She and I (Inspired by Natalia Ginzburg’s He and I)

Colette

Rohatyn

New York, New York

11th Grade

"...be the one to tell her that the world is not all good. For I am at a loss of words."

Welcome to hell, where the walls are crafted from the bricks of panic that weigh on my soul...

Welcome to Hell

Addison

Hodge

Loudon, New Hampshire

Merrimack Valley High School

12th Grade

"Yet, rather than listen to the warning they had received, the hiker set out towards..."

What started out as a snippet of news from a far off land, something that would surely be dealt with by...

The Birds and The Hiker

Matthew

Fortenberry

Stowe, Vermont

11th Grade

"Two tusk sharp enough to puncture the skin of any man brave enough to face it."

As I dipped my fingers into the paint I thought of the coming day. I extend my hand and press it upon the rock, sheathing my family with the paint in my fingers.

Crafting The Undesired

Ignacio Urbina

Gonzalez

Longmont, Colorado

Alexander Dawson School

11th Grade

"He exited the store and found Elektra sitting there, safely, in the apple tree"

Mature Content

Longanikos is a tiny Peloponnesian village tucked into Greece’s mountain-folds. The main street within Loganikos is just big enough to provide for its 500 inhabitants.

An Apple Tree Tucked in The Mountains

Artemis

Xenopoulos

New York, New York

11th Grade

"White privilege is built into the core of our nation"

Mature Content

I think it’s funny when one says white privilege isn't true / How could you think that when the evidence...

White Privilege

A.

JT

Fort Washington, Maryland

Episcopal High School

11th Grade

"They are humans who took one look at the canvas, and despite its rips and tears, created a masterpiece

Imagine being a character in a book, the story is the world that you live in. You can pick and choose the character whom you desire to be. You experience the same love they express.

Anyone Can Relate To

Liz

Jung

Bayside, New York

10th Grade

"Nothing really matters out here. There is no need to seek anything. . . all you will find is peace."

Finally, it’s your favorite time of the year. This time is truly superior in every way. There is just a unique beauty at the start of Spring in the valley.

Peace

Thomas

Gibert

Alexandria, Virginia

Episcopal High School

11th Grade

"I thought about what our country, Afghanistan, would be like without war, and what my home would be like. I imagined a country of great beauty, where the flowers blossomed in the warm sun as it’s rays gently kissed my skin."

I knelt on the glacial floor, reading a book about a free world.

Youth – Afghanistan

Archie

O'Donnell

United Kingdom

11th Grade

"But I was aware. I knew that our world was heating up."

Today, something changed. Every day, I woke to the deafening blare of “One Last Time” by Ariana Grande...

Loop-di-Loop

Debby

L

Alexandria, Virginia

Episcopal High School

11th Grade

"...she worried she wouldn’t get the robin to a vet in time."

The cold, evening air brushed across Julie's face as her shadow lurked behind her...

George

Emilie

Su

New York, New York

The Brearley School

10th Grade

There was absolutely nothing he could argue against these “circus animals”.

“What the — ?” James woke up in surprise to find himself in a cage with his hands and feet cuffed...

Animalia

Amy

M

Hummelstown, Pennsylvania

Episcopal High School

11th Grade

"Is that what we live for now? Waiting to tell the next story."

You just start crying for no reason. The subtle, yet wet tears rush down your somewhat lonely face...

Storytime

Arabella

Dixon

Edenton, North Carolina

Episcopal High School

11th Grade

"I don’t know this new man, counting calories and intermittent fasting. He is timid in the way he eats, trying to look his best after his heart being broken."

“Fat boy!” My dad yells after layering on leftover mac and cheese atop pizza. Cheese poured from all sides as he attempted to shovel the all hot, stringy, deliciousness in one bite.

Food Minus Flavor

Anonymous

Author

San Francisco, California

11th Grade

"Young children marveled at the towering buildings, scraping the sky above their heads. Black asphalt beneath their feet picked at their open wounds. "

Every day was the same. Get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner with my wife, go to bed, repeat. It was the average life of a working man.

Nearer

Sofi

Igyan

College Park, Georgia

Episcopal High School

11th Grade

"Having a Spot is what makes a New Yorker a New Yawkah (spoken like Dustin Hoffman or Woody Allen, you choose)."

Mature Content

There are two types of reservoir-goers. Those who saunter and those who run. The saunterers are the foreigners, ranging from the irritating ones with chunky Nikons

The Real New Yawkah

Jackie

C

New York, New York

11th Grade

"You would run and hide as he punched the door until it broke, littering the carpet with wooden shards..."

Mature Content

Your dress fluttered in the wind as it hung off the clothesline outside of your house, the afternoon sun glinting off the gold and silver threads finely woven into the fabric. The faded blue and white stripes complemented the loose strings that were barely able to hold the dress together...

The Empty Home

Maria

Claiborne

Richmond, Virginia

11th Grade

"they remember / the languor and warmth of / dreaming in company"

[central park] / somnambulic stupors often / lead one to an oasis of sorts

Central Park

Emilie

Su

New York, New York

The Brearley School

10th Grade

"More knocks sounded on the door, escalating in volume. They emanated from the main door, directly behind me..."

I had already read my Torah portion; now it was my dad’s turn to speak. We had rented a small, historic synagogue in Rosh Pina, Israel, for a private bat mitzvah ceremony. Well, sort of...

Early Adulthood

Ariel

K

New York

10th Grade

"With the brushing of skirts, softness in eyes, a haunting breeze."

Music brightens the moon and the dim lights are melted, Fled to the city of heaven, where the soul is accepted.

Night-Noon

Anna

Ren

Alexandria, Washington

Episcopal High School

10th Grade

"I never saw You fill up that ugly “Best Dad” mug. / It was always empty: just like Your chest"

The wind waltzed with every follicle of my hair. / And as I waited for the storm to pass / I thought of my first performance: Chopped, well, “choppy”

“Choppy”

Amber

Azmoudeh

Alexandria, Virginia

Episcopal High School

12th Grade

"...the only school pictures I have ever kept were the ones they sent us to proof, two pictures of smiling brothers, each proudly wearing a puffy black eye."

My brother’s Senior year, he went to school with a black eye on picture day. I did too...

Love and War

John

Smith

Sewanee, Tennessee

12th Grade

I want to see who I was— / before the world told me who to be.

I have an obsession. / It's an obsession with the old me

Before They Told You

Claire

Boehm

Cornelius, North Carolina

Episcopal High School

12th Grade

Fearful black eyes stare back at me, hopeless, as he breathes in his last breath

I scavenge a cupboard dry of food before setting off, three oatcakes left and no water. Cottonmouth. I bundle up for the November night, grab gun, knife and leave unseen.

The Hunt

Bear

Matheson

Charlottesville, Virginia

12th Grade

"I am courageous despite not leaving my house. And you are too."

"I'm not sure that I am courageous. I am certainly afraid. I'm terrified."

Fighting the Fight? Please.

Nina

D

Easton, Pennsylvania

12th Grade

"You are stitched by the hands of a broken mother, who is exhausted from her painstaking and meticulous routine in the sweatshops of India."

You lay on a false body–one that is displayed in the center of a decorated window for the purpose of selling you.

One Blouse Can Only Dream

Haley

D.

Atlanta, Georgia

12th Grade

"The front of the car crashed through a weakened fence, and we plummeted down the side of the road, plunging straight into the inky, black surface of the lake."

I tried to draw in one last breath before we broke the surface, but within a second, we were already submerged. Cold, mucky water burst in through the half open window on the passenger's side, and muffled Marissa's screams...

What She Didn’t Know

Lucy

C

Sewanee, Tennessee

12th Grade

"They will never forget their childhoods of unadulterated freedom—the days and nights that instilled in them an appreciation for something bigger."

One by one, they creep through the enveloping darkness into a dusty shed filled with baseball helmets. This posse of seventeen-year-olds slinks through the shadows of the town where there is nothing.

Family of Teenagers

Ward

Cammack

Nashville, Tennessee

12th Grade

"it becomes difficult for me to formulate the sentences that will allow them to comprehend what it means to be biracial and bicultural..."

Groggy-eyed and stuffy-nosed I set my alarm for 6:00 as I sank into the spongy mattress that I called my bed, the sweat of eight teenage sailing instructors permeating the humid air...

Identity

Sawyer

Cooper

New York, NY

Bronx Science

12th Grade

"You used to be the girl who loved dragons."

Armor doesn’t fit over stretch marks. Stainless steel dissolves when it meets your numb, purple scars...

The Dragon

Emma

Meyers

Santa Fe, New Mexico

9th Grade

"The world brightened with Calla’s radiant glow..."

Zeus, son of Cronus and Rhea, was the most powerful god in all of Olympia. Though he was mighty...

The Girl Who Could Light the Night

Alexandra

Su

New York, New York

"I pretend I am in her arms, the coat is her body. I run my hand over my forehead and through my hair. Over and over, just like she used to so I could sleep."

The lights don’t turn on anymore. And the sink dribbles but doesn’t run.

Glory Be

Aviva

N

Santa Fe, New Mexico

9th Grade