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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2023
Submitted to Contest #325
"I didn't do it.""But you were there."I say nothing. "You were there," the man says again. He pushes a large photograph across the table. "We have you on camera."The man uses a fingernail to swivel the photo around. I cast my eye over it but keep my mouth shut. The man cocks his head and raises an eyebrow. With the same fingernail he taps the head of the woman in the picture. He thinks I haven't quite understood. "That's you," he informs me.It looks like me alright. A dim lightbulb illuminates my face as I step from a door into an alleyway. ...
Submitted to Contest #278
I never knew winter could be so merciless. I remember blue skies before the Kulak Purges of '37. I remember skiing over glistening surfaces and loving the innocence. And the laughter. But here, beyond the barbed wire of Kapitalnaya Forced Labour Camp, the bitter snow has frozen all colour from the Siberian landscape. Swept away all form. Deadened all reason.For the hundredth time today I gaze through the dirty barrack window, past the heavy guards with their steaming dogs to the watchtowers. I can just see the metal fence, heavy with ic...
Submitted to Contest #277
Sue leaned her forehead against the glass, a wiry, middle-aged woman gazing through the lacy streams of rain, out into her garden. The huge Oak in the middle of the lawn lifted its branches and held out its spindly hands: 'Me? It wasn't me. Who did this?' But it was the Oak. It tossed its acorns onto the lawn every year and shortly after began to litter the grass with dead leaves. It started with one. One dead leaf, brown and shrivelled around the edges: an explorer into another world no-one noticed. In the subsequent days and week...
Submitted to Contest #272
Londolozi Game Reserve, South Africa. I scramble to my feet and hurl myself at the tree. My legs are clumsy. My heart beats in my mouth. The tree is old and dead; the trunk grey and knobbly. I reach, fumbling for handholds. And look back. The leopard's head emerges from the bank above the river. She shakes herself. And sees me. I jump, grab onto a stub of branch and haul myself up. My boots and knees scrape on the bark. The leopard bursts up from the bank and runs after me. She leaps at the tree trunk. Reaches up a pa...
Submitted to Contest #267
[Contains themes relating to the treatment of slaves in Southern US, around 1830, but no actual violence.] You are not supposed to listen at doors. If I am caught, he'd have the skin off my back. But how can I resist? Late September, Georgia. Outside, the Estate was waking up from the hottest, most humid months of the year. What appeared to be vast flocks of fluffy white birds overwhelmed the cotton plantations. Field Slaves who'd been out with their picking bags since dawn toiled in the sun while the Overseers on their ho...
Submitted to Contest #262
He had to raise his voice. 'Look, it's great here. We should definitely stay.' Ice-creams melting, they surveyed the heaving beach. A deep mass of colourful umbrellas and sun-tents crowded the hot sand. A confusing delusion of semi-naked bodies lay prostrate in little encampments, or wandered about lugging chairs and paraphernalia. They blew up shiny beachballs and inflatable loungers, ate from paper bags or drank out of plastic bottles. They sweated and chatted and shouted under a midday sun that beat down from a blisteringly ...
Submitted to Contest #260
1The Scientist, a tall woman, crisp white lab coat, hair pulled tightly back, adjusted her thin spectacles and clinked the screen with her fingernail. Charles listened attentively.'This, here, is the gene that gave you hair on top of your head, yes? Screwed up by your testosterone. Why you ended up with male-pattern baldness. Just look at it! What a mess. Even from here.' Charles gawped at the VDU. All he could see were flickering lines of stripes, like a drone shot of black and white zebras streaming across the African plains.The ...
Shortlisted for Contest #232 ⭐️
Here's a word: Entoptic. It means that what you are seeing is entirely within your nervous system, your brain. It's not 'out there'. You've experienced it: Before you go to sleep; when the curtains are drawn and the lights out, and the room is totally dark. Stare into that darkness and watch the brilliant spots and sparkles wandering in the air. Only, they aren't in the air. Now rub your eyes and watch the fireworks; the streaks of blues and bursts of orange. The scintillating world that isn't there. Now imagine you're in a cave, a rea...
Submitted to Contest #231
- You're kidding me. - No. Really. - You're going to start playing the trumpet? Well, bugle, actually. A pause. - The bugle? - Yes, you know. Ta-ta-tootle-tootle. Ta-ta-tootle-tootle. That one. - What was that? - That's the tune they play at dawn to wake everyone up. You've heard it: Revelly. You know. Cowboy films. Bugler by the flagpole. Get Out of Bed. - Sounded more like raspberries. I suppose it could get someone out of bed though. - I'm not actually playing a bugle, am I? Just doing the lips. - I get that. Just kidding. So y...
Submitted to Contest #230
Dust from the rocket choked the street. It choked the huddled women, silenced the screaming children and stuffed the nostrils of the dogs shivering in the alley ways. Dust roiled from pulverised stone, from houses that had once been homes, with bedrooms where love was made and kitchens where families had gathered. Powdered lives drifted in the heat, shutting the mouths of angry men. The young woman writhed like a desert demon from the rubble, coughing and spitting. Debris spilled from her black hair and robe. She stagger...
Submitted to Contest #225
So it's said: The Buddha, before he was such, left his home, deeply dissatisfied. He encountered three phenomena from which he'd previously been protected: old age, sickness and death - and a fourth which came as a revelation: a meditating monk. The impact of what he saw was transforming. He became 'awakened'. 1 I'm falling. Plummeting down the brilliant, glass wall of a soaring office block. The day is bright, the sky blue; the sunlight reflects off a whole field of windows, the clearest of mirrors. With utmost clarity I s...
Submitted to Contest #224
I can't sleep. Owl-eyed, I watch the dark, dragging its black body through the night.I let my ears wander the house. Somewhere, I hear a quiet murmur and imagine a hummingbird struggling softly against a window. Down the corridor, a tiny conductor taps lightly on a music stand. Outside in the garden, my mind sees an old man gently creaking his rocking chair.And next to me, I hear faint waves running in and out over a pebbled shore: my wife lies deeply sleeping. Her body is an island under the blankets; her hair cast on the ...
Submitted to Contest #218
The sickly sweet smell of his aftershave oozes through my attention. He's there, behind me. Again. He's looking over my shoulder as I sit, slowly moving in closer. That's the third time this morning. I want to react, to pinch my nose and pull a face, but I daren't: I'd lose my job. So I just stop breathing. There and then, as my nose puckers with the first astringent note, I just stop. I let my lungs relax and simply refuse to let them take in more air. The room is huge and airless; rows of office workers sit at their work stations ...
Submitted to Contest #217
'Look. I have to kill you. It's my job!' The Dragon looked down and breathed a little acrid smoke over the exasperated knight: 'Right, you said. But I know you don't want to, not really.' 'I do, I do!' cried the knight. 'Well, then,' said the Dragon. 'Get on with it.' Let's back up a minute and introduce our characters. Our knight and likely to be our hero is handsome and, of course, dressed in shining armour. The armour is a bit big having previously belonged to his older brother, who'd cast it aside for another career - one that didn...
Submitted to Contest #215
In our culture, there are two main stereotypes for the Devil.The first is the bright red, cloven-hoofed, horned and trident-carrying beast of Medieval art. The one who growls gleefully as he dunks you into hell's fiery pit.The second is the suave, rather vain gentleman in a dark suit, its cloth giving off a little sulphurous smoke when you look sideways. A bit of a Vincent Price. Loves to wind you in slowly, with charm and a contract. The pit comes later.However, both these images are wrong. The real Devil doesn't look like them, at all.I've...
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