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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2021
Winner of Contest #288 🏆
We’re seeing some big storms roll through south of the capital region, bringing hail and even a few isolated funnel clouds… Rachel mutes the forecaster waving his arms at the churning mass of red, yellow and green spinning in their direction on the radar map. She retrieves ice cubes from the freezer that hiss and spit with displeasure as they’re plunked into a glass of ginger ale. She slides the patio door aside and hovers in the midst of combat between the heavy humidity and the cool AC. She lifts a trembling hand to her brow, shieldi...
Submitted to Contest #284
The dark bags under Ben’s eyes droop like day-old tea bags. He’s washing the breakfast dishes, a tattered tea towel flung over his shoulder. “Have you been sleeping, love?” Ruth asks, troubled eyes tracking him from the table. “Not really, Ru. You’ve been sleepwalking again.” “So? Let me sleepwalk.” “It’s dangerous.” Souvenirs from her witching hour sojourns bloom on her shins under the creeping vines of varicose veins. He noticed them this morning while he helped her with her socks. “Lock the doors if you’re so worried I’l...
Submitted to Contest #283
The final splashes of pastel recede to the west as the harvest moon rises in the east. Its glowering face emerges over the old railroad tracks, flanked by silhouettes of the crooked barn and creaky windmill. In the brief moment that it’s tethered to the horizon, I can almost reach out and pluck it from the sky. Closer to home, mewling kittens tumble over each other in their soft nest of hay at the foot of the bales. Their mother stalks the shadows in search of her own dinner. Horses whicker, soft snorts hanging like wispy ghosts in the cool ...
Submitted to Contest #178
Mom tried to lay down ground rules at Christmas this year because respect couldn’t be counted upon to intervene.“Come in, come in.” Dad pecked cheeks and swung kids to the foyer ceiling while Mom and Grandma wrestled with the turkey in the kitchen. “I’ll take your coat. You’re so tall! What grade are you in now?”The kids barreled into the living room to inspect the name tags dangling on carefully wrapped boxes guarded by the twinkling tree. My aunts and uncles piled in after them, leaving Dad staggering under a mountainous armful of winter w...
Submitted to Contest #117
“Full moon tonight,” nurse Mary Bennett remarked, tying the strings of her paper gown with raw cracked fingers. The rest of the night shift stirred uneasily. Louise kissed the delicate silver crucifix that hung around her neck and muttered a prayer to the ceiling. Michael re-tied his shoelaces three times. Shelley lifted her face shield to chug the remains of a Red Bull. Superstition always flicked its forked tongue in the face of science on nights like this. Outside, the fluorescent EMERGENCY sign shivered awake. A splatterin...
Submitted to Contest #108
Ash drifted down, dusting their lives and lungs grey while hell’s fingers scuttled across meadows, sprang over rivers, and sprinted between trees. Mother Nature thwarted every effort to contain the flames, scoffing at prayers for rain and instead delivering dizzy winds and dry lightning. The billowing smoke plumed so large that it developed its own weather system—creating more lightning, igniting more fire, and belching more smoke. Sari leapt as high as her little legs could muster, dancing on their driveway face flung upward, tongu...
Submitted to Contest #102
The cluster of skyscrapers that define the city’s skyline loom impassively across the river, sparkling glass teeth sprouting from concrete gums under the red tongue of a late autumn sunset. Sometimes I marvel at the fullness of this city life—opportunities always available in the unknown, absolute freedom in every unfamiliar face, space to pursue passion without personal persecution. Other times I despair at its emptiness—anonymity dismissing family legacy, unpredictability abolishing comfort, novelty closing the door on community. ...
Submitted to Contest #101
The mirrors in my room are hidden under white sheets that hang like silent ghosts. The nurses think they’ve contained him, but I still catch glimpses of Creepy John—watching, waiting. His rotting teeth snap from the edge of the stainless steel sink. His rolling amber eye leers from the curve of the polished doorknob. His gnarled finger marks me from the window. The surgery they tell me I’ve had has shaken my fortifications, vibrations of pain and drugs sending the stone walls of my will crumbling. He senses the we...
Submitted to Contest #99
Caterpillars rained from the sky that summer. The sticky, squishy, hairy creatures destroyed trees and suffocated crops, crept up legs and crawled down necks. The lettuce in our garden fell victim to their hunger and the cornstalks wilted under their weight. They survived the heat. They persevered through rain. They gripped on to life with astonishing strength against the constant threat of swinging brooms and stomping boots. “Change is coming,” Grandma said, gently tugging a mottled orange string of fuzz from her shoulder and placing ...
I sit with my chin on the steering wheel and watch the stars wink out over the office, slowly stifled by sly hues of violet and then suddenly smothered by angry slashes of pink that just as quickly fade into pale swaths of blues and golds. I love my job. I love my job. I hate my job. Shit. The truth creeps into my morning monologue yet again. I’m parked in front of the squat brown building where my dreams are dashed day-in and day-out against the poster-slathered walls, where my creativity is cursed to curdle in the confines ...
Submitted to Contest #97
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing in this purgatory, with perfect life squirming behind the window at my front and grotesque death lingering behind the door at my back.It might be seconds.It might be days.Time is lost amidst the whitecaps of my internal tempest, a ceaseless assault of blooming heaves of love and bleeding hollows of loss. The clock behind me points to one—in the morning, I assume, given the night shift that bustles at the periphery of my exhausted existence. Behind the small steel diamonds that reinforce the glass...
Submitted to Contest #96
She appeared on my front step at 4:38 a.m. on a Saturday in October, dark hair a wild mess of tangles that mimicked the fury of the black autumn wind that raged around the house.Raindrops slipped like tears from the shoulders of her leather jacket, glistening under the suspicious glare of the porch light. Her hands hung limp at her sides. Her bottom lip, slashed and lopsided in a plump pout, quivered. Her fierce eyes bled a blooming nest of blue and purple. They grazed my face and down my neck to the scars on my collarbone. I tugged my ...
Submitted to Contest #95
Shadows of the towering oaks that stood sentinel over the dead stretched long and lithe in the final yawn of light.I hung back, hesitant, wary and waiting, while the visitor paid her final respects.She stood, a lonely wraith in the eternal breath of a midsummer sunset, a silent statue over an unremarkable headstone amongst a sea of the same. Tall and lean; willowy and pale. Her hair was like moonlight, curled in a wispy knot at the base of her bowed head. Her white skirt rippled on the wave of a gentle evening breeze, the only indicatio...
Submitted to Contest #90
Before Adam made love to his wife on the outskirts of paradise, Eve fell upon the cursed dust of their banishment and coughed up seven seeds that rooted in the flesh of the earth from which humankind was doomed to coax mortal sustenance. - Alexander King Alexander watched on with pride as his son stood in the sparring ring amongst a defeated circle of his peers, brandishing his wooden practice sword with mighty arrogance. At only ten years old, everyone could see the boy was destined to be the world’s fiercest warrior. For years, t...
Submitted to Contest #89
The road between Nanaimo and Uclulet is long and winding. It snakes around stunning lakes and curves under ancient trees. It clings to breasts of craggy mountains and stretches over bowels of deep green gullies. The way is occasionally barred by rockslides and often slick with steady island rain.Today though, as Natalie returns home, the pavement is dry and a few brave rays of the late summer sun peek through the Pacific Rim’s constant coastal mist in tentative greeting.Her tiny rented Prius put-putts patiently behind a rust-spotted Westfali...
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