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Alex Marmalade

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020

Stories (116)

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80 Followers

0 Following

116 Stories

1925 karma pts

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Babel's Children

Submitted to Contest #304

The silence stretched like a taut wire.Hassan's notebook trembled, pages fluttering like prayer flags. Around the circle, four faces stared with the careful stillness of people trying not to shatter something fragile.Hassan had just read them a story about a twelve-year-old boy forced to choose which parent died first while soldiers laughed. The writing was devastating—present tense, sensory details that crawled under your skin, dialogue that cut like surgical steel.It was also, Marcus was beginning to understand, not fiction.Amara gripped h...

2 likes

Breathing Between Words

Contractions.Mei-Lin counted them like she counted syllables—obsessively, incorrectly, losing track each time her breath caught between one beat and the next. Four minutes apart. No, three and a half. The spaces between were shrinking, like margins on a page running out of room for revision.Her phone buzzed. Kenneth again. She'd been ignoring his calls since the contractions started because explaining why she was on public transport during labor would require admitting she'd lied about the due date. Again.The thing was, she'd known for weeks...

3 likes

Midnight Markets

Midnight.The grandfather clock in Marcus's hallway chimed twelve times, each resonance a starter's pistol firing through his bones. His wife Sarah rolled over in their bed upstairs, mumbling something about checking on the baby, but sleep reclaimed her before the thought fully formed. Marcus sat perfectly still in his home office, laptop closed, waiting.The transformation wasn't like the movies. Instead, it felt like finally exhaling after holding his breath all day. His shoulders straightened, his mind sharpened, and the familiar electric c...

3 likes

Afterlife Admin

Sorry.Marcus Henley whispered the word into his Nokia 3310—the only phone that seemed immune to spectral interference—while Mrs. Pemberton's ghost dictated her final letter to the Tesco customer service department. Something about a dodgy tin of peaches from 1987 that had apparently haunted her for thirty-four years."Tell them the syrup was too thick," she insisted, her translucent form hovering near his cluttered desk in the cramped Stockport bedsit. "Unnaturally thick. Like treacle made from despair."Marcus typed dutifully on his ancient D...

3 likes

Invisible Ink

Words.That's all Khalil had ever been good at—reading them, writing them, understanding how they fit together like puzzle pieces. But speaking them when it mattered? That was different.He felt invisible most days, sandwiched between his twin sisters' constant chatter and his mum's growing belly that seemed to absorb all the oxygen in their cramped Slough council flat. Even now, hunched over his geography homework while Amira and Fatima argued over hair elastics, he might as well have been furniture.But not today. Today he had a plan."Baba," ...

2 likes

Blood Wine

CRASH.The crystal goblet exploded against marble like scattered stars, Falernian wine bleeding across white stone in dark rivulets. Marcus Pontius stared at the mess, then at the trembling boy holding the empty serving tray.Claudia didn't even flinch. She'd been expecting it—had dreamed of breaking glass three nights running. Her hands shook as she lifted her own cup, the poppy extract she'd mixed with the wine making everything feel distant and strange."Brilliant," she said, voice steadier than her pulse. "Simply brilliant."The new servant—...

3 likes

Twenty Four Weeks

Submitted to Contest #303

The biometric scanner was cold against Chloe Whitmore's thumb, its red light pulsing like a mechanical heartbeat as the clinic's security system logged her arrival at 9:47 AM. Twenty-three weeks, six days. The numbers had been carved into her consciousness for weeks now, a countdown that followed her from sleep to waking, scratching at the edges of every conversation, every meal, every moment of attempted normalcy.Her hands trembled as she pulled them away from the scanner. Such small hands, people always said. Piano hands, her father called...

4 likes

Swept

The blood on my kitchen floor wasn't going to clean itself.I stared at crimson droplets trailing across Italian marble, leading to an abandoned crystal stiletto at the foot of the staircase. Grabbing the mop, I considered how to salvage this disastrous morning. Board meeting in two hours. Merger announcement tomorrow. And my stepdaughter missing.My phone vibrated. Diane, my assistant."Tell me you've found her," I said without preamble."No sign of Celeste. Her credit cards haven't been used since yesterday's ATM withdrawal. Eight hundred doll...

3 likes

Burn Notice

Michael stared at the cream envelope on his counter. Actual paper mail was a rarity these days, like phone calls or personal integrity. The wax seal with its embossed "P&T" felt pretentious, almost medieval.Paul and Tessa. Together. Perfect.He traced his finger over the calligraphy, feeling the indentations against his skin. Whoever had addressed this had pressed hard, committed to each stroke. Unlike him, who'd spent fifteen years avoiding commitment of any kind.Michael reached for the bourbon bottle that had become his most consistent ...

3 likes

La Sangre Dorada

Alex Pastor-Shepherd pressed his forehead against the cool window of his Lexus, watching rain transform the Santa Barbara estate. The invitation—embossed with his family's crest, a shepherd's staff crossed with a conquistador's sword—sat crumpled in the cupholder beside a half-empty flask of añejo tequila."You gonna sit here all day?" Marco asked from the driver's seat. "Your father's security already made us twice. That guy with the earpiece has been taking our photo for his shrine to mediocrity."Alex exhaled, fogging the glass. "Just calcu...

3 likes

Forgotten Fluency

A green palm frond slapped at Mira's face as she ducked into the dimly lit hut. The smell of smoke and something medicinal—herbs perhaps—filled her nostrils as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Three days ago, she'd been in an air-conditioned library surrounded by textbooks, cramming for her final clinical rotation. Now she stood in a small village in rural Indonesia, watching a ten-year-old boy slip deeper into unconsciousness."No, no," she said, raising her voice over the rhythmic chanting that had started in the corner. "He needs glucose...

3 likes

Intercepted at Westminster

The Westminster cafeteria smelled of weak tea and broken promises. David Alton, Junior Minister for European Affairs, stabbed at his soggy chips while Malcolm Peters, Undersecretary to Defense, nervously tapped his phone against the table."It just appeared in my inbox," Malcolm hissed, hunching forward. "American intelligence meant for Ukrainian officials."David raised a perfectly calibrated eyebrow. "And you're certain it wasn't meant for us?""Absolutely. It references Ukrainian military positions, names their generals, details American equ...

3 likes

Across the Narrows

Sunlight cut across Eli Cohen's face, dragging him from darkness. His eyelids fluttered open to an unfamiliar ceiling fan spinning lazily above—not hospital fluorescents, not his Williamsburg apartment. Pain radiated through his ribs with each breath. Memory came in fragments: walking from the N train in Crown Heights, three men with baseball bats, slurs about "Zionist sympathizers" after his editorial in the Jewish Daily Forward.Voices filtered through the wall—rapid-fire Arabic punctuated by English phrases. Bay Ridge accents, unmistakably...

2 likes

Pending Approval

Submitted to Contest #302

Munich, August 1938Margaret Spencer's fountain pen hovered over the document, a drop of ink threatening to fall onto the Ministry of Foreign Affairs letterhead. The transfer request before her seemed straightforward enough—a lateral move from her current post as a junior translator in the British Consulate to the newly formed Cultural Exchange Division."Do sign it, darling," urged Vivian from across their cramped office. "Cultural Exchange sounds far more glamorous than decoding tedious diplomatic cables."Margaret frowned. "It's rather vague...

9 likes

Banana Fish

"Banana fish?"The marketplace frozen around Min-jae. Twelve pairs of eyes locked onto him in various stages of shock, confusion, and – worst of all – amusement. The halmeoni behind the fish counter set down her cleaver with deliberate slowness, her weathered face unreadable behind her face mask."What did you say?" she asked in Korean, her tone dangerously measured.Min-jae's throat constricted. That familiar sensation of being trapped between worlds – too Korean to be American, too American to be Korean – crashed over him like icy water. He'd...

3 likes

Author bio

Hi, I’m Alex Marmalade. I tell stories that try to dig for the truths we bury beneath the surface.

Yes, Marmalade is a somewhat ridiculous last name – I've made peace with this (sort of 🙃). But sometimes it takes an unusual perspective to see what others miss.

My stories explore what happens in those pivotal moments when pretense falls away—when characters stop calibrating themselves against artificial standards and finally embrace who they truly are. I'm still figuring this all out myself, honestly. 🤗

Fiction is sometimes the clearest way to tell the truth. As Over the Rhine once said, "If you're not embarrassed, then you're not doing it right."

These stories are fragments I've unearthed from somewhere deeper—fossils carefully brushed clean and held to the light. I publish a new one every weekday, along with reflections on the unexpected discoveries found along the way.

If these explorations resonate with you, find more at: https://alexmarmalade.substack.com/

The garden gate is always unlocked. ✨

1 winning story 🏆

Contest #294

Unspoken Orders – read story