Danielle Barr

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2023

Stories (8)

8 Stories

670 karma pts

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“Literary Fiction” by Danielle Barr

I string words together in long, layered necklaces, plucking deep, dimensional baubles shimmering with spangled sheens like ephemeral and buttress, rolling them around in between my fingers, appreciating their shapes and textures, building sentences and stories around sequences of words that buzz with possibility. Don’t force it, Glen cautions. Keep it simple. <...

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“slug/salt” by Danielle Barr

Content warning: stillbirth, war She doesn’t know that I’m gone yet. I’ve never seen her before, not as anything but filmy shadows undulating behind creamy pink light, but I would know her anywhere. She’s beautiful; I knew she would be. I could hear it in her voice; the way it crackled with emotion as she sang the words of Taps to soothe the practice pains that washed over us both i...

10 comments 10 SHORTLIST ⭐️
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“Cletus” by Danielle Barr

My skin was slick with sweat, and the monkey bars left them smelling of pennies.   “You wanna race?” She sidled up to me as if we’d known each other all our lives, were only picking up a conversation briefly interrupted. I looked up at her silhouette, a shadow falling over me where she blocked out the light, tendrils of late afternoon sunbeams radiating out around her slight frame as if she herself were abl...

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“Whale Song” by Danielle Barr

Agony broils, but anguish simmers. I have known them both well and in equal measure. In the early days, my brain felt blurry and disjointed; I had the sense of being deep underwater, all undulating shadows and echoing whale song. The darkness was expansive, and the staticky, dull sense of confusion I felt was sometimes intercut with crippling panic. BP is spiking, ...

60 comments 60 WINNER 🏆
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“Fallout” by Danielle Barr

“I’ve been thinkin’,” Randall says, forced levity coloring his voice; it cracks just enough for me to raise a critical eyebrow at him, and his eyes dart back down to the hammock we’re attempting to string up across the hallway of our dormitory with bungee cables from the emergency kit my dad assembled and stashed away in my car. “I think maybe we should have sex.” I straighten now, my side sec...

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“What Kind of Mother” by Danielle Barr

Trigger Warning: infant/child loss, drowning The day my daughter died, I became the villain of my own life story. When your child dies of cancer, there are fundraisers and flower delivery vans and friends taking shifts sitting up with you through the long black nights and washing your hair. When your child dies and it’s your fault, there are no homemade casseroles filling y...

88 comments 88 WINNER 🏆
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“A Haunted House” by Danielle Barr

My beloved Antonin- I scarcely eke out the dash, smudging the ink as I do, my hands are trembling so hard. I set down the fountain pen, the only sound in the dark house the clacking of its metal clip against the scarred wooden desktop, and shake both hands back and forth, then massage my fingers, palms, and wrists- as if these tremors are just some byproduct of my age, or of fatigue, that I can r...

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“A Worry for Another Day” by Danielle Barr

“Brad, everything in me is saying this intel is good. We’ve got…hours to get the word out, mobilize a shitload of C-17s. Someone’s gotta activate the alert system..” A waterfall of the right things to do and the complete impossibility of getting all of it done in time cascaded through my brain and I suddenly felt like I was drowning. I felt the panic begin to strangle me and took a shaky breath to ste...

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Author bio

I’m a stay at home mom of four living in rural Appalachia. I peck out stories one sentence at a time while holding a baby and breaking up squabbles.

Winning 2 stories 🏆

Contest #218
Whale Song – read story
Contest #215
What Kind of Mother – read story

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #221
slug/salt – read story