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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019
Somehow, you drag your suitcase to the station with your face and clothes as worn-out as the wheels on the luggage. Your smile fades as the sun does into the horizon not unlike the plaid on your suitcase because Delphine is gone back into town, back to stocking supermarket shelves and checking out customers. Her smile faded before yours in her big black truck as she tucked soft fingers into your cheeks to push your smile...
The day hasn’t been a shade over grey in the sky, on the ground, in this house which gives way to an obnoxious assortment of colors. The grey is coming from a heated disagreement at the dining room table between Kenny and his girlfriend, Caroline over the length of a denim skirt. Kenny, with his blood orange tan and hair, soft features, and pale overalls, feels the length is too short while Caroline, whose skin and hair are as mahogany as her eyes in a plain off-white t-shirt that drapes to her knees, believes the length meets socially ac...
“Aiden, it’s a little odd being in here like this again; at least without you.” The parlor, with the ice cream in different shapes and sizes and flavors, is tiny when you’re not here but that’s life when your close friend is a little distant these days. I met you in the middle of a junior high school summer where the sun melted anything cool before it touched a fridge. You wore polos and jean shorts like me which made me think our mothers shopped with the same brain or we were secretly long-lo...
Dear Diary/Journal,In the time of this virus, I didn’t think I’d be taken with anyone given the social distancing going on. Everyone is holed up in their homes or they’re swamped with work. I figured I’d go grocery shopping because the beer is low and I need some way to cope with being temporarily away from my retail job.
There are no fucking idiosyncracies with doing laundry. A spin cycle will always be a spin cycle, you’ll always wash your uniform with your bed sheets and towels and washcloths on cold and low spin for 23 minutes. You’ll dry the massive amalgam of wet things for 40 minutes or 55 if you aren’t doing laundry at the last minute as usual. You’ll fold clothes at your latest convenienc...
My eyes flit between the dregs of coffee in this mug and my watch. I’ve spent roughly fifteen minutes or so in this cafe waiting on my briefing and the cappuccino wasn’t remotely worth it. The watch is though, roughly $40,000 worth with a diamond-studded face and gold hands and the charcoal suit, tailored by my employer’s finest from imported silk, makes a solid case for the costly timepiece. The pants are kind of riding up my ass, as the tailor must have taken a wild guess...
Ever since North Korea began to demolish the US in World War 3, the general landscape of the country proved as brittle as the hope of its citizens nationwide. President Jeremy Laramie refused to concede and Florida, specifically Aketonka Bay where I’m from, has become a target of North Korean dictator Ji-Woo Hyeon-see. I am a musician who penned mushy love songs for commercials and films for ten years and my lucrative business was leveled in the latest attack by Ji-Woo’s fo...
Serving drinks on Christmas Eve is far from ideal. The bar isn’t exactly the final frontier for the holiday season and yet, everyone is itching to drown in booze whether sprinting away from problems or getting the liquid courage to stare them down. No one wants to cover a holiday shift and I’ve got no family living to spend the time with hence why I’m here providing respite to anyone who needs it unless it’s emotional. I’m tapped out or at least closed up with that.
“It was just here!” I must have scrounged around in my coat, pants, and jacket pockets for two minutes pulling out my: keys, stray border collie hairs from my the last house I hit for the day, a packet of unused gum, tiny phone book/agenda book, broken sports watch I need to get fixed and a random ballpoint pen. “It has to be here somewhere.” The sole picture I have with Isabella...
I stare into the crowd of familiar faces, scattered laughs rising from their throats as they tear into some blackened chicken, hot dogs, and beans over conversations ranging from scandalous to flat-out boring. Everyone is having a good old time of course and I make a conscious decision to cut through the ocean of family and friends to greet Mom. Of course, my body tenses up, my heart races and my hands turn clammy instantly at the sight of Aunt Malina stepping through the s...
I leap out of bed onto a glass floor surrounded by the boundless universe with shooting stars, planets, and other outer heaven sights I dreamt of admiring through telescopes. The rest of my room is dry concrete painted a rainbow of colors and dressed in ribbons, streamers, confetti, and silly string. I shrug and balance on the balls of my feet towards my closet and two ballet dancers in oversized black denim overalls sashay and pirouette out of it to reveal that all my outf...
Dishwashing wasn’t the intended end-all-be-all for Pennie Udeba but neither her student loans nor her books for class or rent would pay for themselves. It turns out living in a fifth-floor apartment five minutes from campus has more drawbacks than she previously imagined. In fact, she has realized within her fresh three months she’s lived away from her father’s house has been a succession of heartrending firsts.
Based on the prompt, “Beside the Sea- Mountain”.Into June’s EyesBy Daniel BrownThere’s a universal understanding that June’s eyes tell a thousand bonfires worth of stor...
A Florida-based author who hopes to be published someday
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