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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2020
Submitted to Contest #105
Everyone has their butterfly. Warwick has one tattooed on his inner elbow. It's a neat party trick, sure, to say that he can flap its wings to make it fly. The ladies love it. It's not why he has it. It's to remind him that one little thing can make his world change. If he hadn't fallen off the monkey bars in second grade, he would have never scraped his knee on the woodchips. He wouldn't have been sent to the nurse. He wouldn't have found a girl sitting on the cot, feigning ill to get out of gym class. She wouldn't have smiled at hi...
You don't know it, but you're the villain in my story. Everyone labels you the good guy. Class president, lead in the school play, girlfriend of the hottest player on the basketball team. Do you even know your victim? Do you recognize the face that's been waiting for you to falter, waiting for their chance to be the star? I doubt it. I hope you choke on your oatmeal. I watch you through your kitchen window like I have for years. I've seen my plot line unfold in your life, because you beat me to it. You don't choke on your oatmeal...
Submitted to Contest #104
"Are you coming tonight?" Monday, she said yes. Tuesday, Wednesday, same deal. Chelsea had asked her every day, including Thursday, where she had given a less enthusiastic yes. Thursday her red tide had come to shore. It had also been the day of white pants, because she thought that she had a few more days until it showed up. She'd spent the afternoon with her cardigan wrapped around her waist. Well, there went her self esteem. "I'm not feeling too up to it..." she drew out, Friday morning, putting the cap back on her Midol. Truth was, as mo...
Submitted to Contest #103
What the what now? The photo is pinched between her fingers, as if it'll disappear if she lets go. It can't disappear. She needs to be sure that this is real and not her imagination. In the sixteen years that she has lived in this house, she's been in this attic twice. That's if you're being generous, counting the time she peeked her head in the door to tell her mother that dinner was ready. If you didn't, you were only counting the five minutes it took to find her grandmother's old sewing machine before lugging it downstairs. Her pa...
It's not like her to wake up hot and sweaty. The air conditioner has kept her room at a cool sixty nine degrees all summer. The number held some irony, given the dream that she'd just awoken from. Her heart really needed to calm down. Pulses shouldn't go that fast. Especially when the boy wasn't even there. She wiped the sweat off her forehead. "Get ahold of yourself, Thorley," she said, positioning herself in front of the unit. It blew in her face. It's not like her to have a dream like that. She was raised a good Christian girl, one ...
Submitted to Contest #102
When Chaia dies, she wants a plaque on this park bench. One of those tacky ones, where you put a quote and the person's name, in memory of. She wants it to be an interesting quote, because she wants to be an interesting person. Key word being 'wants,' because she doesn't think she has achieved it yet. Perhaps she has. Maybe they don't tell her because they don't want to pale in comparison. Their voice boxes are polluted in envy, jealous of all the interesting things she has done. Perhaps her imagination is getting the better of her aga...
Submitted to Contest #101
Shower steam messages have always been a habit of Sadie's. Her roommate hates how hot she lets the bathroom get, but how else is she supposed to write and erase her deepest thoughts if the mirror doesn't fog? Her therapist tells her to do affirmations each morning. I am strong. I am beautiful. I am Sadie. She scrawls the last one across the mirror. Her cat pushes the door open and trips her, falling towards the sink. She steadies her hand on the wall. More specifically, the mirror, smudging the i and e away. I am Sad. Her cat meows up ...
Is love just a figment of his imagination? Because he hears those words coming out of her mouth, but anyone can say those words. "I love you, Vance." It's been two months and nine days since they met. That's seventy days of thumbs flying over the keyboard, sending silly texts between dates. He's gotten pictures of her at work, song recommendations... goat videos from the internet. Judy loves goats. That's why he's taken her to the petting zoo today. He wanted her to have a good day, because she had to work the holiday weekend, and she ...
Submitted to Contest #100
These shorts don't have pockets. What kind of monster makes shorts without pockets? She had been wearing pants. Ones with deep pockets, where she could tuck her phone, headphone cord winding up her side. Instead she carries it, because her backpack is stuffed with her pants and that book that she brings to read on break. "Hey!" she hears. Her music is loud, a feeble attempt to drown out the past eight hours. She almost doesn't hear it. Her name follows. The truck pulls to the curb. Behind the wheel is the new guy, Ethan. "Hi." "G...
Largo wants to die. There's a knife in his hand, and he thinks about how easy it would be to just angle it up, right into that artery, to let the blood gush out of him. Maybe the feelings would gush too. The miserable ones, right out of him, until he could feel nothing but bliss. Bliss and stickiness, as he'd be covered in blood. What if it could be that simple? What if he could purge all the negativity out of his system with one flick of the knife, and be left with only the glittery emotions, like happiness and serenity? He sticks the tip o...
Submitted to Contest #99
This is insane. There are eight hours and thirty eight minutes between the sunset and sunrise. That's 516 minutes this date is going to last, 516 minutes of sitting in the dark, because Melody insists that it'll be the most beautiful blind date he's ever been on. Technically, it's nine hours, because she arrived early to set up a tent in his backyard. She's triple checked her compass to make sure it points exactly west, right where the sun is going to set. He's never watched the sun set before. To be honest, he spends most of his day i...
Submitted to Contest #98
There was a place, some two thousand miles west, where puppies ran amok, and grandmothers let little boys lick the spoon when making brownies for Thursday night bingo. A place where he could put his feet up on the coffee table, without his wife nagging him to put his legs back down. That place is gone. Technically the building is there, albeit with a white front door now, but Mawmaw passed about a year after he moved east. He thinks it's from heartbreak. His wife insists he's crazy, that she died of old age. That somehow, Miss Spring in Her ...
Submitted to Contest #97
Jerome waits to hear the sound of the car backing out of the driveway before he dares to move. It's not that he can't move, rather where he can't move to. He wants to go to the window. The one hidden behind a layer of curtain and blinds, ones that rattle loudly enough to expose his secret. He knows that there's something better beyond these four walls. His mother has convinced him that she can enter her car, safely tucked in the garage, drive to another garage and enter a store to work. She says the outside world is dangerous, and refuses to...
Submitted to Contest #96
When you're starting over in a new town, you can be anyone you want to be. In this case though, there's someone yelling after you "Garf, Garf," footsteps hurrying as she cinches your wrist, bringing you to a halt. Garf, she says, and you're not sure if she is a choking puppy in a human body, or if she thinks it is your name, but your name is Talbot, not Garf, so you yank your wrist free of the stranger. "Wait, you're not Garfield." You love lasagna, and you're starting to hate this particular Monday, but you're not a cat, or some...
Submitted to Contest #95
Drucilla's been staring at the menu for ten minutes now, and it flips so rapidly, front to back that the breeze displaces her bangs. She smooths them down, regretting their existence. It was the hairdresser's choice. She was all ready to go in and ask for the same haircut she always does. Trim the ends, leave the rest. Her best friend had tagged along. He'd goaded her to try something different. That haircut had been with her as long as he had, which was saying a lot, considering she had moved next door when they were both still potty traini...
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