Deborah Mercer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (321)

321 Stories

9615 karma pts

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“Not Even the Back to Front Ones” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #25

Ellen Bairstow was determined not to make an issue of it, and she never mentioned it first, but she was also determined that she wasn’t going to be a hypocrite – not only, or perhaps not primarily, because she had an aversion to hypocrisy, but because, as her mother had once (more than once, come to think of it) said, lies have legs and she had no wish to embroider or elaborate on a throwaway remark made for the sake of it and to fit in.     “And what are YOUR New Year’s Resolutions, Ellen?” asked Priscilla Carp...

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“The Puzzle Solvers” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #24

“I’m the team captain, for my sins,” Flora Fenton said, every few days. Or sometimes a few times every day. Nobody was deluded, and probably Flora herself (and say what you liked about her, she wasn’t stupid) wasn’t either. Had anyone suggested that someone other than Flora should be the captain of the Archer’s Arms pub quiz team, then Flora’s sin might well be murder. Or at least GBH. Nobody did suggest it. And her teammates tolerated her with resigned good humour. Anything she didn’t know about the f...

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“The Slithering” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #24

I am in love, thought Eleanor. I was inclined to be cynical when people said that if you are, you don’t need to ask, you just know. But they were right. She had never imagined it could be so contradictory; could make her so restless and so calm, so fulfilled and so yearning, and as if she were a banal shadow when she was not with Owen. Her hands ached for the touch of his hands, her lips for the touch of his lips, and her whole body and soul for the waves of tempest and tranquillity that came when he lay with her.&nb...

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“As Boring as Martian Maize” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #24

The thinking behind it had been simple. Take two people who don’t get on, and force them to be dependent on each other for company and possibly for care.     Not such a crazy idea. It has worked many a time, and no doubt will work many times more, but it didn’t appear to be working for Connor and Cameron. Rumours had spread that they had been close once, and there had been a massive fall-out (over a woman or over money or over both, depending on which version you listened to) but the one thing that mig...

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“The Girl who Defied Dotty Moon” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #24

Nobody knew quite how or when it had started, apart from Dorothy herself, and sometimes even she wasn’t quite sure, but scores of people claimed they did. Doc Moon’s daughter Dorothy was a miracle worker, said the folk in Gifford’s Creek. Doc Moon’s daughter can make the blind see and can quite probably make the deaf hear and the lame run, and the mute talk the hind leg off a mule, and make the mayor have some common sense – no, that was probably expecting too much. Even of Dotty Moon.     Sh...

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“"Events Take an Unexpected Turn"” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #23

It was perhaps as well that the Internet was still in its infancy when Barbara Bellingham was born. Her mother Harriet, sitting sipping over-priced insipid coffee as she crouched over a clunky, chunky computer in an Internet café while she had trusted Barbara to the child’s grandmother’s care for a couple of hours, could not find out very much about her daughter’s condition. She had insisted that the doctor wrote it down, but still struggled to pronounce it. She discovered very little she did not already know. It was exce...

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“One Winter's Day in the Pig on Wheels” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #23

It’s fair to say that when you’re stuck in a traffic jam, and realise that you’re likely to be stuck there for quite a while, realising that your former neighbour (whom you were glad to see leave!) is in the car in front of you doesn’t make your mood any better.     I’d have known that car anywhere. An old VW Beetle and sprayed a shade of pink that no car was ever meant to be, even though I’m not a follower of the Ford “as long as it’s black” doctrine. We nicknamed it the Pig on Wheels – and quite apart fro...

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“Miracle on Morton Street” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #23

My friend Annabelle, who means well, bought me a tea-towel last year, only it’s not the kind of tea-towel you dry up the pots on. I mean, you could, I don’t doubt it was perfectly serviceable, and not like one of those ornamental teapots that don’t hold water, but it was obviously designed to be decorative, not functional. And not merely decorative, but inspirational. It had that little tale on it about footprints in the sand – you know, where it turns out there was only one set of footprints at the hardest times because ...

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“The Difference between Daydreams and Day Dreams” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #23

Perhaps I made too much of a point of endorsing the cliché that the weather forecasters always get it wrong because I had recently had a break-up (and not of the “but we’ll still be friends” variety) with a man who pedantically pointed out that in fact the opposite was true with great regularity. The trouble is, on this matter, if on few others, Bruce was right. And I, along with many others, was wrong.     Bruce’s daily paper of choice was one that went in for dramatic front covers about imminent weather e...

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“Once Spit on, Twice Shy” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #22

I still feel mean about it. And if I’m honest, not just that I’m being mean to Ross, but that I’m being mean to ME! He’s great company, has a sense of humour not unlike mine (and experience has taught me that’s by no means a given!) and manages to be both an interesting talker and a good listener. Dammit, I want to see him again! I’m not saying anything permanent or profound would come of it or that we’d ever be more than friends, but everything in me is screaming, give it a go!      Why did ...

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“Absolutely Nothing like North Korea” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #22

What I can’t seem to make people understand is this. My childhood was idyllic. And no, this is not some kind of inverse false memory, sugar-coating the insufferable, I am not in denial, and I am not speaking out of loyalty. Well, the last perhaps a little. But it WAS idyllic, and I still feel sorry for children who don’t have that kind of childhood. I’m not necessarily saying it was right, but it was idyllic.     I grew up in a world with waterfalls and wildflower meadows and fluttering snowf...

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“Noblesse Oblige” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #22

“Noblesse Oblige” his mother had always said. This was usually followed by the lecture about privilege bringing responsibility, and the necessity for good manners and graciousness. “Even with the most tiresome of persons,” she had once said to him, after a newspaper report about him being “boorish”. To be fair she didn’t nag, but had her two weapons of choice, the lecture and the look, and even though he was a grown-up now, he didn’t care to be on the receiving end of either. She was also possibly the only – well, person,...

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“Why Good Friday Came on New Year's Eve” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #22

I was about to say that our New Year’s music wasn’t the sound of the waltzes and marches from that gilded and flower-bedecked Concert Hall in Vienna, convincing ourselves that it was better on TV as we got to see the dancers and the scenery as well as hearing the music. But it was, though even when I was quite little, something struck a false note about the encores that you just knew were going to happen, and the orchestrated clapping at the very end, with the very raggedness having something that wasn’t entirely random about it.&n...

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“Those Years that End with a Nought” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #22

Matilda Blythe always swore, even to herself, that she really wasn’t that interested in whether she might soon be the country’s oldest person or not. Of course she knew it wasn’t entirely true, but it didn’t matter to her as much as looking forward to seeing her great-great grandchildren did, or as much as thanking the God she still believed in, though He had tried her patience at times, that she still had her wits about her and family and friends who cared for her. She did know that, in defiance of the norm, Britain’s oldest peopl...

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“Auntie Hester Comes to Call” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #21

I usually find it quite easy to at least MAKE a New Year’s Resolution about spending less money on magazines. Keeping it’s another matter. But pre-Christmas magazines get on my nerves. I was about to say that if you’re a bloke you won’t know what I’m talking about, but that’s shameful stereotyping, and after all, they do regularly print photos of their male readers, often, admittedly, on the same page as the dogs and cats that appear to be fans of them.     All the same – and no point to denying it – i...

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Author bio

Hi, I'm Deborah, generally known as Debbie. I'm growing middle-aged disgracefully in a small town on the East coast of England where I work for a local charity. My passions in life are writing, reading, cats, chess, crosswords, cheese, and shouting at the radio!

Shortlisted 3 stories ⭐️

Contest #26
Five Years Afterwards – read story
Contest #16
The Big Surprise – read story
Contest #12
The Tangled Town – read story