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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020
Submitted to Contest #84
In August 2017, I joined university as a physics major. The initial weeks were riddled with anxiety and deadlines. By the time things petered out into routine, I realized I had failed to become part of a friend circle.In India, we had Mess’s for dining, where we would be served our meals. The food was poor, and the dal was mostly water, the rice had small stones that broke your teeth, and there was an insect for dessert. Even if you weren’t served one, a flying insect – a clothes moth, usually – would plop dead into your plate.Our hostel was...
Submitted to Contest #83
Grover awoke at 5 am, brushed, and gargled loudly like a tiger. He lifted weights. He lifted until his bones hurt, then he shouted at his wife because the eggs weren’t done yet, and he had to leave; did he have to do everything around here. He worked as a carpenter at a workshop in a local university. He chopped and shaped wood with vigor while splinters, blood, and death roared through his veins. Why was he stuck here in this pansy job, simply to provide for his wife and child? He thought about the original men. Men with shapely and hard c...
Submitted to Contest #80
They said they would reward good deeds with money so everyone was trying to be kind and giving. No one knew when an act was considered good, the governments had made some sort of omnipresent AI to judge actions.Three days after the declaration I was on a train and at a certain stop there were children sleeping in rags on the platform. Hair brown with dust and muck in their eyes. A woman sitting a few seats away from me got up and went out to the platform. She bought a chips pack and a biscuit packet and took it to a girl among the children, ...
Submitted to Contest #78
Narko woke up at one o’clock in the afternoon and quickly ran through his head the tasks he had for the day but having planned nothing he went back to sleep. An hour later he woke up again and got out of bed this time because he was itching to brush his teeth. He used the washroom, then he ate a limp banana that looked roasted by its peel.He opened his laptop and logged onto his chess.com account and played a few games of chess. He lost eight and won three. He decided to stop as he had lost four in a row and was frustrated at the other playe...
Submitted to Contest #77
The whiteboard where Crawford had showcased his ideas to us, his team, was there in front of me. The ink was a dull green, the content was just dull. We had finished a meeting in the conference room, and I was back to retrieve my mug which I had forgotten. There was no one else in the room, and when the window started rattling suddenly, it scared me.I looked over and saw the window shaking like it was shivering. I walked to it and looked outside. The snow which had been there on the ground in the morning was still there, but some of it was r...
Submitted to Contest #75
I woke up and there he was, wagging tail, smiling eyes.“All right…”I removed the blanket and sat up, my feet on the floor. The pup, I named him Blu, was an early bird. This was my second day with him. Maybe I was feeding him too much, he was too energetic. I looked over at the clock. Christ, 6:12 in the morning and it’s already this pumped up?“You know. My boss would really like you.”The dog said nothing.“You might even be paid more than I am.”Still nothing. Soft, dumb eyes.“Okay…but don’t tell me I didn’t offer you the job.”I got out of bed...
Submitted to Contest #71
The doorbell rings. I walk over to the door, peep through the peephole, and open the door.“Ms. Chaise?” he says looking down at a piece of paper, “delivery for you from Cuddly Confections.”I know that, your uniform has given you away, I think.“Yes.”I pay the man and go back inside. The box is white cardboard with red lettering and patterns of flowers, hearts, and stars on it, characteristic decorations. It has been secured with clear tape. I put the box in the fridge. The digital clock beside the kitchen sink shows 2:53 pm, and the afternoon...
Submitted to Contest #70
Jenny and I lived in Dallas and were part of a local cycling club when we were kids. I met her on the track one morning. I had helped adjust her helmet. We were both pretty regular, but I didn’t know if she wanted to be there. She would always ride slowly, and speed was a drug for me; I would slow down for her. Then she stopped cycling around the time there came an invisible divide between the boys and the girls and the girls seemed to know something that we didn’t. I had read somewhere that girls matured before boys. I ascribed her decision...
Submitted to Contest #68
Four cows were popping out from beneath a wooden railing and feeding, and one was ruminating and looked at Beanie as he entered the cowshed. It flopped its tail lazily.Wally, who was milking another cow into a wooden bucket reinforced with steel bilge hoops, did not notice him coming in. He pressed and pulled adjacent teats while the cow stood there appreciating the release.“I killed yer pig,” Beanie said.“What?” Wally stopped milking but didn’t look up.“I’m sorry.”“Whaddya mean?” He looked up now. He was sitting on his haunches.“It was a mi...
Submitted to Contest #67
As a boy he had pattered across puny dunes on a simmering beach in San Diego lined with conch shells, and occupied by crabs and slaters and barnacles, making ephemeral depressions on the soft sand bed, and into an old wooden skiff to leave Bird Rock and venture into the great Pacific Ocean in 1912.Bramblebone, presently a man in his late forties, was pale with an obsidian beard that reached down to his bellybutton. He had hair bunched in deadlocks thick as the ropes supporting the masts of the gigantic ship, Griffin Slayer, he now possessed ...
Submitted to Contest #66
31st October 2020Writing. Will get better at it. I've enjoyed doing it since I started school as a seven-year-old kid with a runny nose, but I never consciously tried to become a better writer. I never thought about it the way I did yesterday. But when I did decide, it seemed like an obvious decision – I suppose the seeds were always there. It seems to me, that not many people -- especially teenagers like myself -- invest time in reading. I always did, though. I’m not very disciplined at all, never thought of it as an investment. It was fun,...
Submitted to Contest #64
It looked lovely. And it was big, and I was seeing it for the first time. I could see the soccer field from the spaces in between the heavy black gate. The words ‘Randara International School’ were pasted on a large building in a capital, bold font. I had seen advertisements about it being one of the top all-boys boarding schools in the country – although which ad doesn’t make that claim? I assumed the building would be the main academic block. We were checking in at the gate where two guards were sitting, one on a chair outside the building...
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