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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2021
Submitted to Contest #89
Death searched the desert, a moonlit shadow stalking sand and shrub.The Cowboy’s horse whickered softly at Death’s approach, but remained faithful and did not run.“It’s a cool night,” Death called from just beyond the ring of flickering light that warmed the Cowboy’s tired hands.“It’s about time,” the Cowboy replied, welcoming Death to his fire. He did not stir from where he lounged back against his saddle bags, left leg stretched long, right knee propped up, dusty hat lowered over his eyes.Death was polite and settled down in easy quiet; th...
Submitted to Contest #88
My mother’s slaughtered corpse still cooled in the battlefield’s mud as I stood between my two sisters at the foot of our family’s gilded throne. Tallest to shortest, youngest to oldest, father placed the three of us on display like common goods in a storefront window.While we suffered the scrutiny of the conquering King, Anna and Maria kept their eyes on the floor and their shoulders folded. Their hands were clasped solemnly at their navels, and they did not fidget as fate calculated their worth.I held my head high the way Mother always did...
Submitted to Contest #86
Harald was a troll who lived in a tree. This was quite unusual, as trolls usually dwelled deep in mountain caves or in the shadows of long wood bridges. But Harald always liked the trees. Even as a troll-child, when he was expected to carve rocks, break rocks, move rocks, eat rocks, he had instead gone into the forest to study trees, climb trees, talk to trees. Harald had only been three years old and half-a-foot high the first time he snuck from the caves. He remembered gazing up at the towering woods in wonder, astonished at how they str...
Submitted to Contest #85
“That’s the thing about this city,” Grandpa says, polishing off his third Pilsner since we sat down at the pub around the block from my tiny dormitory. “An’ every other city. Makes people soft.”Part-time rigger and full-time rancher, Grandpa is the definition of a roughneck. His stocky frame is wrapped in solid cowboy muscle. His blue eyes are bright and sharp under the rim of his tattered ball cap. His face is like leather, weathered by too many winters atop oil rigs in the unforgiving cold and unrelenting wind in the country’s harshest, mo...
Submitted to Contest #84
Betty turned 95 yesterday.She gazes out at the grey March morning and tries not to think about how old that sounds.She tries not to hope for 96.Her window on the third floor of the Glenview Manor overlooks a barren snow-strewn field, lined by tired fence posts and spotted with scrubby shrubs.It’s not an exciting view, but it’s a view, and she’s grateful for it—there are many residents across the country that aren’t as fortunate.A few weeks after moving in, she asked Ameena, one of her favorite nurses, to move her chair to the window. She sit...
Time was meaningless in her sad sarcophagus of self-confinement.Liv had no idea what day, month, or season it was when her mother, Lydia, arrived at her door without notice. Or maybe there was notice. Liv hadn’t checked or charged her phone in hours, or maybe weeks. After Jack’s accident, the calling of well-intentioned friends eventually sputtered silent. The check-ins and chin-ups chattered themselves out. The thoughts and prayers moved on to other tragedies.But Liv was caught in the quicksand of devastation and burrowed deep under bl...
Submitted to Contest #82
I do not understand death.No—my apologies—that is inaccurate.I know death is a natural conclusion to every individual living organism, in which all biological functions that sustain said organism cease to function, prompting the process of decomposition. This can happen organically with aging or illness, or it can be inflicted early—as it was upon you. When your Kia was struck by a much larger truck and rolled off the highway, you were wearing the armor of youth fabricated by your still-developing brain instead of your seatbelt. Your in...
Submitted to Contest #81
Stiff in starched green, Daniel returns home alone on blistered feet. Stately elms line the lonely road, their twisted arms reaching up to the pink sky in silent salute of his unexpected return. His left ear rings. The doc says it might go away, or it might not. He knows it won’t. He’ll hear the ringing until the end. Just like the screams. Just like the whistles that foretell flying limbs, flinging mud, a piercing headache, and oozing floods of blood. He limps up the dirt drive without fanfare, his polished boots kicking up parched pu...
I was under the impression that first kisses were meant to be magic.I had been led to believe that the long-awaited lip-lock would be witnessed by a star-spangled sky at the top of a stalled county Ferris wheel, or cheered on by roaring crowds at the end of a victorious football game.I had been deceived into thinking that I’d be tangled up with a brooding boy whose cruelty was a shallow façade masking a kind soul, or that I’d be wrapped up in the arms of a letterman jacket way above my own social standing. I had been taught that under t...
Submitted to Contest #80
“Let’s play a game.” Grandma pushes aside the flyers and coupons littering her kitchen table to make space for the yellowing cribbage board—a brittle piece of plastic molded into the number 29.I collect the dishes from the coffee and stale cookies she’s been saving for my visit and place them in the sink. Using the crocheted rag that always hangs over the faucet, I douse the cups and saucers down with soapy water and rinse and stack them in the drying rack. Despite our persistent pestering, there’s still no dishwasher.It hasn’t snowed yet, b...
Submitted to Contest #79
Your tea is tolerable? Can I get you anything else? No? Good. You’ve come to ask Aunty about Baba Yaga. Sit. Sip. Have a biscuit. I will tell you what I know, but you mustn’t be upset with me when you hear it. Promise? Very well. Do not be fooled. She has chosen the façade of the homo sapiens species, but she is not one of us. Ancient, cunning and cruel, Baba Yaga is the world’s first witch. She has been the subject of much speculation and the source of countless stories over the centuries, though many of them are outrageous and egregiou...
The wind the last few days had been relentless, endless, spearing from all directions. It had ripped and whirled and twirled and screamed through the valley, bringing with it stinging rain and icy sleet. But today…today it is still, and the sudden calm crushes her heart with fingers of stone. High in the hills, standing behind the empty house, she gazes across the fjord and tugs her tattered wool shawl tighter around her shoulders. The lake below is shrouded in an ethereal milky mist. The brook murmurs its ancient song at her feet. The...
Winner of Contest #78 🏆
It took us almost two months to comb through dad’s house, sorting the pieces of his unpursued passions into piles. Keep. Sell. Donate. Trash.He didn’t have much in the way of food, but cookbooks in mint condition spilled out of his kitchen cupboards. Mystery novels were stacked neatly on his bedside table, suffocating under layers of dust. Princess Di’s biography and Stephen King’s The Shining lay face down on the coffee table, spines cracked towards the ceiling. Poets hid, forgotten, behind the basement bar. Daunting masterpi...
Submitted to Contest #77
Beside the crumbling remains of the Trans-Canada Highway, between the ghost town of Banff and what was once one of the most photographed lakes in the world, rots a cluster of forgotten chalets.Long ago, when money mattered, it cost up to as much as six or seven hundred dollars per night to claim the keys to these coveted log cabins. Rustic and charming, nestled in a grove of towering pines, they welcomed travelers from around the world at a time when the park buzzed with tourists, like millions of ants, swarming the pristine rocky passes.Now...
Carol stood on the front porch waving, watching taillights disappear into the dark through the first fat flakes of November. Marmot had received an early dump of snow this year, and Dan and the kids had been eager to hit the slopes. With winter’s opening act forecast to fly in fury across the prairies overnight, she had tried to convince them to wait until morning to make the four-hour drive. Dan insisted it would be better to beat the stormy roads and weekend traffic, and she hoped the weather would hold until they arrived safely in Jasper....
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