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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2024
Submitted to Contest #305
The sweat is pouring down from my forehead and my T-shirt is wet with it. I stand in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant in my home town, loading dirty dishes into large plastic trays and running them through an industrial dishwasher. The kitchen is already hot from the stoves and ovens, but even hotter around the steamy dishwasher which is where I am stationed for this crappy job. At 17, this type of work is among the little available for young, unskilled labor like myself. It’s not my first rodeo, I’ve had a few of these gigs before, but ...
Submitted to Contest #304
The night is alive all around me. It's always been that way. Something dark, mysterious, and inviting. Always luring me deeper and deeper into its hidden secrets. I love walking the city streets, the later the better when everything is closed up and most sane people are sleeping. My footsteps echo and ring in the encompassing silence. It’s exciting, anything might happen. New vistas might appear and unique ideas emerge.Even as a strange little kid, I would sometimes sneak into our backyard when my parents and siblings were asleep and stare u...
Submitted to Contest #302
“I don’t understand, I just don’t get it.” His voice is quivering and shaky while his face is flushing with emotion. “Why are you doing this?” I sit there snickering behind the trumpet raised to my lips. The band class around me still making a most discordant noise. He is losing control quicker than usual today. It’s only 15 minutes in to the hour long class and he is almost at total breakdown already. He’s already started to run his hands through his combed and jelled dark hair so it is already quite disheveled. He’s tapping his baton ...
Submitted to Contest #299
"Hey look! It's Jesus Christ"The small crowd around him laughs as he makes fun of my long hair and beard, as usual. My boss allows Stan the Entertainer, as he styles himself, to do his street performances outside the music store where I work. The owner of the store thought it would be good for business. It does guarantee there are always people on the sidewalk in front. There are even more now that I started to be part of the act. I’ve come to enjoy my role. It’s a rush, and I even show up for my job early in order to perform.“What are you h...
Submitted to Contest #295
I’m lying on the ground. The bright sun warming my face. Squinting, I rise up feeling the grass with my hands. Strange, tall, smooth, with some green while most gold. Is it wheat? I’m not sure. Looking around, I’m in a huge meadow surrounded by trees. Deep rust red but smooth trunks under thick canopies of large yellowish leaves. The forest is thick and shaded. There’s something not quite right. The colors, lighting, textures, and scents all seem just a little off. Worse than that, I can’t remember how I got here. My last memory is puttin...
Submitted to Contest #293
“God, I hate flying” I look out the window of the 747 so foolishly boarded in my rush to get cross country as quickly as possible. We are flying through some dark clouds so there is little to see. The old familiar fear rises in the pit of my stomach as I try to push it back. I have to maintain myself. Don’t start to panic. Nothing’s going to happen. I try to flood myself with calm, even as I’m white knuckling the arm rest. The four Jack Daniel’s I had before the flight aren’t working. The ...
Submitted to Contest #291
I walk as fast as I can without breaking in to a run on the country path. I can’t let her sense my fear. It was a mistake to have met her “Just leave me alone.” “You know you don’t want that. We are meant to be together You’re my destiny.” “After what you did? After you stalking me? No way. Just leave me alone”. I feel like running but know she will see it as weakness. It is weak, she’s hardly a threat. I’m taller...
Submitted to Contest #290
The Crystal Ship The words echo in my head from a song I can’t escape. Jim Morrison’s voice is belting out the words. Sweetly singing in his demonically angelic voice. “Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss, another flashing chance at bliss, another kiss…..” Over and over the song has been playing, but now I think I understand the desire being suggested in the repeating words. I’m hugging her and we’re both soaking wet from the col...
Submitted to Contest #288
Something in a Storm It’s going to happen. I just know it. The air is electric, super charged, and sparking all around me. The breeze brushes up against my skin causing my arm hair to rise up. How strange. I’m looking in to the distance over the trees at the end of the meadow and there is a wall of blackness moving in while covering the grey misty sky. If it’s cold, I can’t feel it. My senses are focused on the advancing cloud. Is that what it is? Not like any cloud I’ve ever seen b...
Submitted to Contest #283
A Very Mortal Christmas “I can’t feel my legs” I can hear the panic in his voice. “What do you want me to do?” “Rub them. Do it as hard as you can.” So, I pull the hospital blanket back exposing his white and now wasted legs while starting to rub them. They feel unnaturally cold. I can tell he’s not feeling it and rub harder. This isn’t like him, my father had always been a man with a calm, balanced disposition and I can’t remember him ever bein...
Submitted to Contest #282
Rachael’s Tower It’s hard to imagine that we were all so young once, and how the world stretched out before us with seemingly endless possibilities. My friends and I managed to rent an old house in the now famous wine destination town of Napa, California in the early 1970’s. The town wasn’t as famous then as it is now. The house was huge and out of place in the poor neighborhood of small closely packed dwellings. Two forty-foot date palm trees perfectly framed the front of the house as w...
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