Christine Calhoun

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2019

Stories (4)

4 Stories

93 karma pts

?

“Sparrow Killer” by Christine Calhoun

Submitted to Contest #105

Sparrow is my favorite meal. It’s why I frequent Willa’s yard at dusk. She spreads seeds on the porch railing in the evening and they flock without fail, shitting a dazzling white I can see from the air. Usually, I don’t mind interrupting her meal on the picnic table, covered in papers, weighted down with rocks. But tonight she has a visitor. “You’ve got another neighborhood done since last I was here.” The man gestures with the shining wine glass to the table, his head is ringed in a puffy gray down, he is round and shorter th...

Read story

“Seething in the Marrow” by Christine Calhoun

Submitted to Contest #53

“Fuck off!” I yell at the muskrat. I hurl a river rock and it strikes the metal I-beam of the trestle. The deep gong muffled by rust and ancient algae. The muskrat jerks its nose out of the popsicle wrapper and waddles away. Shyanne breaks the surface of the nearby eddy, hair plastered to her lumpy head and points at the trestle, level with the treetops. “Not much left to worry about.” Red syrup drips into the river from the punctured wrapper. Flies and gnats drone. We watch the sun shine through the drops as they fall,...

Read story

“The Weaver Comes Out at Night” by Christine Calhoun

Submitted to Contest #49

His mother whispered her last words to him. She was half way through when they pulled her away, a great wrenching swipe that left heat burns on his hands and his chin where it pressed into her cloak. She was ready to go, bonnet and gloves the color of unripe mulberries. His aunt didn’t let him go the next day, had locked him and his cousins inside until night fell and she came back with a drained face and red eyes. When he was older he built a cottage on the edge of town, and even though he didn’t want to he made several ...

Read story

“Ophelia Unknown” by Christine Calhoun

Submitted to Contest #46

The house has an articulated skeleton; shifting forward one story at a time, the attic forever interrogating the front steps. It leers with its cyclops eye, a round window reflecting the rippling grass, the cottonwoods, and a woman in a battered raincoat book ended by two stolen duffel bags. Purple? Probably the reflected character in the window is a little too close to looking in a mirror, front and center on everyone’s most hated trope list. The support beams are long pale rib bones, forming a cavernous porc...

Read story

Author bio

Christine Calhoun has not written a bio yet!