Carol Stewart

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2024

Stories (46)

46 Stories

1448 karma pts

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“The Trouble with Being a Kindly Spirit” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #272

*** TW: death by sky-diving ***No rest for the wicked? You’re having a laugh. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt since (quite literally) crash-landing on the ‘other side of life’ so to speak, it’s that while the truly evil spirits might have their work cut out when it comes to the number of guest appearances they’re obliged to make in the minds of the living (and which, let’s face it, only serves to boost their already over-inflated egos) it’s rarely the case that us run-of-the-mill, inherently good, peace-loving souls are compensated in kind....

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“A Bitter Blend” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #271

***TW Mentions of child loss, infertility***Hat or glasses? Tough decision. Couldn’t wear both. Looked about a hundred years old… Still got it, girl…? Not like this! Outdoor conditions, in spite of the onset of winter, weren’t too adverse yet, so the glasses would have been more practical. But my new white angora slouch beanie… Ah! So soft and gorgeous… It went so well with my white zip-up jacket and snow-boots, those black fleece-lined leggings which lifted and shaped and sculpted and trimmed and controlled.A backdrop flurry of snow, blonde...

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“In Comes The Bogeyman” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #270

Granny’s in the kitchen doing a little stitching, in comes The Bogeyman and pushes Granny out…Needle in hand, workbox on the table, Adeline Cruikshank - Ads to her friends – recalled the old skipping rhyme of her schooldays. Hazel and Ruth - polio victims so it was always them - rope stretched between them, turning it up and over the pigtailed head of whoever’s ‘go’ it happened to be. Whoosh, skiff, whoosh skiff, fifteen jumped beats. White knee-high socks and buckle-my-gravel-scuffed-shoe, grey-pleated skirt a-swishing, till the word was ‘o...

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“Doll” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #269

On the bric-a-brac shelf / of a nineties’ charity shop / a doll, feet glued to a wooden box…Three lines in, and after a good deal of jiggery-pokery to centre them just so, I turn away from the screen, unsure of whether to grimace or grin, or if, indeed, there’s any point to my adopting either expression. The doll about which I’m writing, and whose shape I had hoped to recreate in the form of a calligram (Oh yes, I can do that, no problem, Mister Writers’ Group Task-Setter, Sir, I can attempt to rival George Herbert’s ‘The Altar’) will smile ...

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“Sponsored Silence” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #268

For all she'd insisted on a quiet companion, she was far from docile herself. Even when his eyes were closed, her words flew towards him like arrows; pink, shocking, feathery tales with no end. A boa to be sneezed at or...‘He tried to strangle me, you know. And he tried to drown me in a bucket…’Wait… Who was she jabbering on about now…? The bully-boy brother or her teenage crush from fifty odd years back who’d had a fancy for her really… Like they all did, apparently… He guessed she must have had money then too…Whoosh… How long the journey n...

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“Getting Away from It All” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #267

***references to outdated attitudes - homophobia, racial - veiled references to self harm and eating disorder - strong language***Sam had been tracking the girl’s movements for a while. Not obsessively so, that would have made it all too obvious, but through a combination of social media and word of mouth –eavesdropping mainly – it had been easy enough to find and pick her out, approach her if and when he decided that was what he wanted to do. However, when he first came across her, encountered her face-to-face as opposed to through some sho...

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“The Right Thing to Say” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #266

The cogs were turning, that was for sure. She’d serrated the edges of her doodled flowers and had begun to fill in the gaps in between. One great black swirl of ink after another. The words would come soon. They always did. And this time they simply had to…Trust me, trust the method…Okay, so that was a start, the kick up the butt Gertrude felt she needed scrawled diagonally across the lines of the facing page. But what next? Swirl round some more, add a spear-headed arrow…Can’t get over this… but it’s not about me… It’s Sandra who’s lost her...

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“Homebodies” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #265

***CW descriptions of civil unrest (mild), one or two swear words***When the girls were small, I used to tell them that if Mother Nature wanted us to fly, she’d have given us wings, and because we could only walk a matter of miles in any one day, it was only right we should stay close to home. It’s then they would joke that at the rate their father was going, constantly zooming ahead of us on our family trips in and around the city, he would be on the other side of the planet by tea-time, so no point in yelling after him to wait for us to ca...

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“The Age Gap” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #264

***Contains a single reference to racial prejudice***There was a great deal of talk when April and Simon got together, and more when aged just seventeen, she moved in with her forty-six-year-old lover and announced their plans to marry. ‘Whatever next?’ her friends would shake their heads and speculate but frequently descend into giggles when Belinda, who was easily the most vocal amongst them, would, in the midst of what had started out as (and ought to have remained) a concerned discussion regarding these new and outrageous developments, a...

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“The Thorns of '69” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #263

When Barbara left for Universe City, Dad said she went with a rocket up her ass. 'Not a by-your-leave' according to Mum who still couldn’t quite believe she'd 'just flounced right on out of the door'. I think she really meant 'bounced' for I could see how my sister would have done that if she’d been sat on a rocket. Don’t know where she did blast-off. Maybe the carpark.Mum was so mad at her going like that as she’d wanted to see her off, and she’d made all those sandwiches too, went out and bought that special coffee. Wouldn’t get anything n...

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“Ladybird, Ladybird” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #262

***TW fire***July 1976, the hottest day of the summer so far, perhaps the hottest since UK records began, and in the driest of years. Even Scotland, known for its rainfall, had imposed a hosepipe ban. Everything about this day was intense; the heat, the glare, the colour clash – sun and sky, yellow, blue and naked above the wilting green - and ladybirds, each a blink of a sty-in-the-eye of the borderland cemetery mourners, red swarm through their black and white swelter, their cluster of onyx and pearl broken ring, diamond in a box.Ashes to ...

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“Colouring Outside of the Lines” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #261

School brought the smell of the herd; brown leather straps, regulation pens, black and blue pulled out of a multi-pack, ‘rather see than be ya’, Purple Cow… And Mrs Arnot…Mary Ann Bretton! What on earth do you call this? I don’t know what colour the cattle are where you come from, but I’m fairly certain they’re not purple. Are you really so stupid that you can’t even complete a simple colouring task? Cows are brown, Mary Ann… Brown!Shockwaves of icy blue, stun gun electrocution sparks. The split-second eyes-wide-open upward chin-jolt, and do...

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“Night Watchers of the Rain” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #260

It was that kind of rain; rebound romantic, film-noir. Stars rising up from the concrete, playing strobe to the night, a ricochet of orbs under the streetlight. Silver-screen, cinematic black and white, like Bogart had never been buried and Marlowe was out there somewhere casting shadows. Collar turned up on his trench coat, one foot against the wall, fedora tipped… Here’s looking at you kid… She waited. Sheltered in her doorway, one curved flight above the street, the sultry Bacall. One last draw on her cigarette, firefly orange, flicked ov...

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“Trunk or Tail?” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #259

Ten years on, and there I was, looking down on him again. At least I would have been had my gaze possessed the power of the scorn it contained, and had it been intent enough to bore through the various layers of dirt. Not that there would be much of the man left to see beyond the macabre, but the six-foot distance between us, for all it was indisputably vertical now, brought his rodent-like, bespectacled features so clearly to mind, I might as well have been back there in that flat we'd once shared, staring across the floor to where he’d slu...

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“Finding Focus” by Carol Stewart

Submitted to Contest #258

*** CW: contains a description of a panic attack***They were making their way down the steps at the back of frozen food store, Haid’s (the acronym derived from the company slogan ‘Have an Ice Day’) when Louise stopped and pulled out her phone.‘Hold on, a minute, Ree. Just got to get a picture of this.’‘What now?’ Ria turned as Louise held the phone askew, photo taken at an angle to include her own foot.Ria was as many steps ahead of her as there were years between them, but in spite of her being the younger sibling – sixteen to Louise'...

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Author bio

Carol Stewart is a 57 y.o. mother, grandmother and former content mill editor (2011 - 2015) who lives in the Scottish Borders. She writes both poetry and prose. Her poems have featured in various print and online journals including That (Literary Review), Gravitas, Coffin Bell, Change Seven, Scapegoat, and most recently, '45' magazine, with another 3 poems forthcoming in Bar-Bar. Her most recent short stories (outside Reedsy) appear in Etymology (May 2024 issue), Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal (June 2024), The Stygian Lepus (Aug 2024) and Pentacat (October 2024). Favourite authors include: Ian McEwan, Thomas Hardy, George Elliot, Peter Robinson, Steve Cavanagh; genres classic literature, modern literary, domestic sagas, 1960's 'angry young man' type lit, and contemporary thrillers unspoilt by obvious Hollywood style endings. Currently reading Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenin.

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #255

The Silence and The Noise – read story