reedsymarketplace
Hire professionals for your project
reedsyblog
Advice, insights and news
reedsylearning
Online publishing courses
reedsylive
Free publishing webinars
reedsydiscovery
Launch your book in style
Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2023
Submitted to Contest #218
The water crashes in this dark; a washing roar, wet and briny, eclipsed only by the alarming sense of pressure that arrives with each new wave, searing our ears for a moment and leaving the blackness dripping ice in a muffled crescendo of absolute panic. Seaweed swaddles my legs like wet roiling toilet paper as I scream, “keep looking!” “I can’t see anything,” Steph screams back at me, over the muting of a new wave, the terror in her voice thunking in time with the heavy driftwood logs the ocean is smashing into the entrance of the cave...
Submitted to Contest #217
“I’ve been a trapper most of my life. It was good money,” he says to someone off camera, “too good, really. On a bad month I could bring in five thousand, a good month, forty.” His smile is embarrassed, a swirling mix of nostalgia and misgivings. He wears a green jacket, dark brown pants, and heavy worn-out boots. His hair is thinning on the top, a riot of black and grey and white all fighting for dominance. His beard is full and long, without any hint of the black that still resists above, wiry and forgotten. The creases on his tanned face ...
Submitted to Contest #216
He takes his seat opposite me at the little table and clumsily scoots his chair forward, filling the little restaurant with a sound like a child playing the trumpet. For a moment, as he tries to pretend he’s not embarrassed, I can’t remember if I swiped him, DM’ed him, or found him in a box full of farmers, Christians, or cupids; which is distantly irritating.“Wow, this is, so awkward,” he says and laughs. His eyes crinkle at the corners and the awkwardness is clearly genuine, which is sweet in a way. Oh god, what was his name again?“I know,...
Submitted to Contest #215
“Did you find anything yet? I want something weird, something no one’s watching, you know?” “Yeah, I get it. I’m trying. Look, I’m on page thirty-two of the search, ok? First ten pages were all the same shit.” “Oooh, what about that one.” “Uhh, let’s see. Monster Boss. Some kind of show. What do the comments say? ‘Its like if The Office happened in hell.’ ‘Omg wtf is this?’ ‘Low budget arthouse crap.’ ‘I don’t get it. Is it supposed to be a joke?’ ‘How are there three seasons of this?’ ‘The monster is kinda hot, ngl.’ ‘Something about ...
Submitted to Contest #214
The rough wood of the little old dock is warm beneath me, and the sun is setting into the lake. It was almost perfect. It was a good Summer. But here I am, sitting at the edge of it, staring at a sunset that would simply go on forever if I let it, and instead of reflecting on how great this has been I’m stuck on what went wrong. I’d been involved, I had participated. But only some had laughed at my joke during the barbeque sequence. I should have seen the issue with the bug spray. And the frog still weighs on me.I don’t think it matters if y...
Submitted to Contest #213
Clickety clack goes the keyboard. Clickety clack goes my mind. The due date is November 13, 2046. Which is a fun way of saying tomorrow. Which is a misleading way of saying in seven hours. Which is best described as screwed. God, I went to college for this. Back when that cost a finite amount of money, and not the twenty percent of everything you ever make that it is now. Not to say it ends when you die, oh no, they take twenty percent of all proceeds from anything with your name on it forever. That’s the price of higher learning, and y...
Submitted to Contest #212
You shouldn’t read this. But if you’ve gotten this far it’s already too late for that. It knows you’re there. God I’m sorry. This is plan B, it’s desperate and selfish and probably pointless. But I don’t want to be nothing, less than nothing, whatever it is that looks at nothing and thinks that’s too much. I’m not trying to be funny; I just don’t know a word that does what I need it too. Maybe it ate that first. It eats things and ideas, information in all its forms, it takes them out, out of, this. But the damage they did, the things they t...
Submitted to Contest #211
The Boy and the Beast.The beetle at the edge of the road was huge. When it skittered into the woods, the boy skittered after. Through shrubs and ferns, around young trees and old, over boulders and across little creeks. It was lively for a beetle, the boy thought as he carefully placed his feet on the little log that acted as a bridge over a trickling stream. He wasn’t sure, he had to admit, if the beetle was leading him on an adventure or doing its best to run away. It surely couldn’t hide, this hulking thing. A leaf would sit on its back l...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email:
8 likes
