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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2020
Submitted to Contest #97
Ananya almost goes back to sleep. She lies in her bed, startled from her slumber, blinking up at the ceiling, and feeling her eyelids grow heavy. When no new noises are forthcoming, she almost lets it go, warm and comfortable as she is. Sleep beckons to her, singing its siren song, and she wants nothing more than to let the waves of unconsciousness drown her. But Ananya is first and foremost a survivor. Tough. Ever-vigilant. Perhaps irrationally paranoid. So though her body protests the movement and her skin prickles with goosebump...
Submitted to Contest #96
She’s scanning the crowd for a man wearing a red fedora.He isn’t hard to spot. Even here, in the heart of the city, amidst this crucible of clashing cultures - merchants with their brightly dyed cloaks, aristocrats casting broad shadows with their padded shoulders and flared skirts, craftsman and criminals sporting the colours of their gangs and guilds - crimson hats with bright green trim are far and few between.She tracks his movement through the square, watching from her perch on the church spire above. His gait is heavy, ill-suited for n...
Submitted to Contest #95
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Daniel’s voice comes softly from the doorway, quiet and tentative. He stands there, looking into her room as though he can’t quite bring himself to enter, shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. He is taller than her, and has been for some years now, with thick muscled arms and a broad frame, but Jessica looks at him and all she can see is the little seven year old who would creep into her room during thunderstorms, or whenever he was woken by nightmares. Uncertain, hesitant, and always looking so very small. Her ba...
Submitted to Contest #94
Every third Tuesday of the month, Arik makes a trip down to the castle dungeons. It’s a pilgrimage of sorts, he thinks privately, though he knows Miriam would scoff at the likening of her dank cell to someplace sacred, or holy. But the journey - if travelling three flights of stairs and across a courtyard can be called a journey - is important to him, for all that it has fallen into mundanity, routine and redundant. It brings him little in the way of comfort, and is the cause of more than one set of suspicious eyes following him arou...
Submitted to Contest #93
Her fingers drum nervously at her hip.No, she reminds herself, not nervously. Bored. Impatient.They dance over the deep blue fabric, the small pocket concealed within it, stitched into the side seam. She fights to keep her hand from balling up into a fist and hiding itself away. Likewise, she resists the urge to toy with the ring, distracting in its unfamiliarity, that sits heavy at the base of her right index. It is already somewhat at odds with the rest of her delicate attire, the metal thick and dull where her dress is light and the rest ...
Submitted to Contest #92
Her vision dances before her, flecks of near blue in an endless black sea, stumbling about like drunken ants.She digs her knuckles in deeper, and blue brightens to white, a starry sky painted against her eyelids, then beams of bright light, then dizzying spirals that slowly swallow the darkness. Maybe if she pushes hard enough, they’ll swallow her too.She brings her hands down to rest in her lap, one atop the other, and in time the brilliance subsides, and she is once more alone in inky blackness.All around her are the sounds of panicked peo...
Submitted to Contest #91
Sleep hangs heavy on her eyelids. Outside the wind roars, but she is warm, buried under three layers of duvet and blankets. The Sandman comes for her, and she waits for him in a half stupor. Any second now she will succumb.On her bedside table, her phone chimes three times, loudly. The sound rings through the room, the vibrations reverberate through the wood. Ishita startles awake.Her eyes fly open on refex. The display is dim, but in the dark its light assaults her pupils. She blinks rapidly, once, twice, thrice, and by then her screen has ...
Submitted to Contest #90
The salt air burns her eyes.The cold wind lashes at her face, and the ocean waves assault her nose, her ears, the back of her throat, with their smells and sounds. The sand beneath her is soft between her toes, and the sky above is infinite and cloudless, studded with a thousand distant, blinking lights.This then, is Nature.****************************************************************************The people of Tyl live by a single tenet: ‘Do not disturb the natural order.’It shows in their every action, in the homes that they build among s...
Shortlisted for Contest #89 ⭐️
Thud.****************************************************************************In the dim twilight shadows, the late Sir Edmund, Knight of the Felled Ash and Rider for Tolden Castle, lists atop his steed and, seen by no one, falls to the ground.****************************************************************************A jolt runs through Sir Edmund’s spine. The air tastes metallic in his mouth. Absently, as if in waking dream, a hand reaches for his nape, and the fingers come away warm and wet .********************************************...
Submitted to Contest #88
Nisha stood in front of the mirror.It hung on the wall opposite her bedroom window, large and oval and gilt to the point of gaudy. Flecks of gold had flaked off over the years, leaving the frame looking somewhat battered and worn. A relic, clinging to a time not its own.She examined her reflection in the lightly smudged glass, perhaps for the last time. A shrewd gaze traversed her opposite self, half critical, half considering. She looked, nice, she decided. Pretty, even, though her hair was merely tied back and her clothes uncomplicated, si...
Submitted to Contest #87
“What did you do?”He bursts into the room, breathless as a man beset upon by demons, though she is certain she has not unleashed any.She does not turn to greet him, does not afford him any acknowledgement at all, save an absent hum.“What. Did. You. DO?”A hand collapses onto her shoulder. She exhales and lets herself grow heavy with it, roots herself to the floor. He makes to shake her arm, tug her around, but she will not be moved.This is purely for her own amusement. A power play of sorts. She has no intention of dragging this out, and besi...
Submitted to Contest #86
It’s a small lecture theatre, dimly lit. Dr Romano is a brilliant speaker, knowledgeable and engaging and just the slightest bit condescending - the just slightly pompous tone of someone who is the most expert in her field and knows it. She’s talking through some drawings right now, a collection of Da Vinci’s anatomical sketches. It’s fascinating, and the papers are incredible, and Antiope knows that she’s privileged to be here and she should be on the edge of her seat.And she would be, except she can’t. Stop. Sneezing. It’s infuriating...
Submitted to Contest #85
“That’s the thing about this city, see. It takes care of its own.”Bang.****************************************************************************Alyx stands by the sink in the corner. Cool water falls from the tap, just the wrong side of numbing. Slowly, methodically, she cleans her hands under the stream, alternating, finger by finger, than thumb, than wrist.It’s something of a ritual for her. ‘End the day with clean hands’. ‘Wash away the world and your sins’. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’. Her mother had had a hundred such phrases ...
Submitted to Contest #84
The girl stood in the corner of the room, twitching. Soft hands wrung together, nails biting reddened palms.Her build was slight: thin arms and a gaunt face. Thick, flaring fabric engulfed her slim frame, a delicate pink that left her pale complexion washed out and sallow.Every inch of her shook with nerves. Her butterfly gaze flitted about the room, from wall to window and door to floor, afraid to rest anywhere for too long. Her body too, would not relax: one moment her spine as straight as a flagpole, the next a rigid curve of faux-ease. S...
Submitted to Contest #83
EXT. MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN - DAYThe water is still. No land in sight. Blue skies. The picture of undisturbed tranquility.Slowly, bubbles start breaking through the surface. Small at first, growing larger. They appear with increasing frequency.Suddenly, a head breaks through the water. There is a loud SPLASH.THE WITCH(loud gasp)There are sounds of THRASHING arms and loud GASPING BREATHS.****************************************************************************The woman steps onto the shore, soaked in salt and muttering. Curses drip from her l...
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