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If your story is listed in the top 5 below, congratulations, you are among the 125 writers moving on to the 2nd Round kicking off at 11:59PM EDT this Thursday, April 11th!   Congratulations to everyone that submitted a story, narrowing down a top 5 in each heat was incredibly difficult and everyone should be proud for rising to the challenge and creating a story outside your comfort zone from scratch in 8 days.  We hope the challenge was inspiring and hope to see you in our next challenge!

#1 'Endlessly 1983' by Anthony Jones SYNOPSIS - Murder in outer space.

#2 '23' by Ram Sundaram SYNOPSIS - An accountant obsessed with certain “meaningful” numbers, discovers favorable numerical patterns inside a motel room that houses her dark, personal secret.

#3 'It Came to This' by Alex Stephens SYNOPSIS - A man loses his wife and tries to navigate through his mundane life.

#4 'Snow Moon' by Chris Carson SYNOPSIS - A woman is trapped in the mountains with her co-workers by a terrible storm, and struggles to protect the people she cares about from the dangerous monster trapped inside with all of them: Her.

#5 'Ben's Jessica' by Kevin Phillips SYNOPSIS - Ben finds himself in the middle of an expected twist at his bosses annual bonfire of feelings meeting. What begins with simple misogyny misunderstood ends with Ben hopelessly running through the woods trying to find Jessica.

#Honorable Mention 'Confessions of a Bean Counter' by Henry Zimmer SYNOPSIS - A much-maligned accountant uses cutting-edge technology to commit the perfect crime with horrifying results. The real-life applications and possibilities are endless….

#Honorable Mention 'In The Red' by Fiona Tuohy SYNOPSIS - What goes around comes around, this is a lesson Martin McHugh learns the hard way at the hands of a Karmic accountant.

#Honorable Mention 'Synergy' by Matt Springer SYNOPSIS - Passed over for a promotion, Pat takes matters into his own hands.

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