This competition should feature your characters in some sort of simulation, virtual or augmented reality. Maybe they find out their entire life has been a voyeuristic simulation and now are trying to get out of it. Perhaps they create a sim to work out real-life problems such as science experiments, or even to plan a bank heist. Or maybe they use a simulation to unwind, to experience a life they don’t have, or to be intimate with someone they cannot have in reality.

We welcome erotic thrillers, love stories, or hardcore fucking, and as always, we encourage you to look through the genres for additional inspiration. Get wild. Get weird. It is a fantasy, after all. The max word count for this competition is a generous 5,000 words. We will accept flash stories, but please, no micros or poetry.

Lush competitions bring out the best in our authors. Unfortunately, cash prizes also attract fraudsters. If we deem you to have submitted a story to the competition which uses AI for writing or editing, you will be banned from this, and all future competitions, so we would recommend keeping any working notes and drafts as you go. If you have used AI to translate, edit or enhance your work in the past, we would strongly advise against. We will treat this the same as using AI to create and you may be banned for cheating.