Deborah Mercer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (321)

321 Stories

9615 karma pts

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“Going Through with It” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #79

Lynette wished that people would stop telling her, “Of course we would understand completely if you didn’t want to go through with this,” and then promptly, in those bright well-meaning voices, try to persuade her exactly why she should. I know all about persuasion, she thought, and you’re not even very good at it. She hurriedly reminded herself that it was to their credit, and to her benefit, that they weren’t very good at it. Only Gran-Jan seemed to genuinely respect her views. Even long after putting aside childish things (many of which s...

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“The Best-Laid Plans” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #79

Tammy was different. Or I always thought she was. Tammy was the one person I could trust completely. The one person who knew all about me, who really knew, and still loved me anyway. The cousin who described herself as more than a sister and more than a friend. That was the kind of sentiment I liked to pretend I mocked and thought was only appropriate on a Hallmark card or a fridge magnet. But the truth is that deep down I rather liked it, and though I won’t say it comforted me, I thought it might be rather nice to actually believe it. Tammy...

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“The Re-Opening Before the Re-Opening” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #79

We will be delighted to see you at the Trafalgar Hotel for the Re-Opening before the Re-Opening. It had been done the old fashioned way, through the post, and with little cards bigger than a credit card but smaller than a postcard, that pointed to them being specially made. There were little blue and gold chevrons at the corner, and an artist’s impression of the Hotel. But there was also a little personal note, in Sally’s distinctive handwriting. Somehow you could never quite decide whether it looked untidy but was really neat, or the other ...

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“Shades of Grey, but Maybe Not Fifty” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #78

Never underestimate that word but. Oh, we all know those dreaded sentences like I’m not racist BUT or I’d love to help you BUT. It’s far more versatile than that, though. You learn to see it coming, and to know it’s implied even when it’s not actually spoken. Well, here at the Ambrosia’s Ark Animal Sanctuary (the Ambrosia is after our founder, Ambrosia Hopwood, not the creamed rice) we’re not as hidebound (pun unintended, though we don’t have any cattle in at present anyway) as some others. We are happy to send dogs and cats to homes where t...

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“The Right Machine” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #78

Author's Note. This story is fictional, though it contains autobiographical elements. But the two typewriters most definitely existed!  It’s my Mum I have to thank. And most of the time I don’t mean the word “thank” ironically. It’s one of those things that prompts you to say “it’s a long story”, except it isn’t, not really. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t get irritated easily, but has things that really irritate her. I suspect I take after her in that respect. Anyway, when she was a young woman – and I mean really young, only a coup...

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“Sticking it Out” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #78

“The trouble is, Sandra, you’re not a sticker.” Well, I was on the point of saying something sarcastic and (in my opinion) funny on the lines of it never having been my life’s ambition to be a small piece of adhesive paper asking people not to smoke or decorating the correspondence of a teenage girl. But the trouble is, my friend Shona had a point. A very good point. She hadn’t exactly moved heaven and earth to get me into the ceramics class at our local adult learning centre, but technically they already had the numbers they wanted and her ...

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“The Animemorialists” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #78

The owner of the Grange Ridge Hotel, Mr Edgar Megson, had been in two minds about accepting the booking. But he prided himself on being broad minded and after all, especially when they had never really recovered after that bad business with the bootleg booze in the bar (and it wasn’t even as if it had done anyone any harm, apart from the off license up the road!) he wasn’t going to turn away a group booking. Certainly not for a convention. And you had to give the nice lady who phoned up to enquire (and did sound like a very nice lady, and Mr...

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“Two to Tango” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #78

I thought I had finally managed to convince Ruth that nothing she could say or do would ever persuade me to even give ballroom dancing a go. That I have nothing at all against those who love it, and that I’m sure they’re all kind and decent people – it’s certainly true of her. Well, at least most of the time. But I actually believed I had penetrated her figurative tin ear and that she had realised she was wasting her time. Yet today, oh so casually, over a coffee, she brought it up again. The ballroom dancing, not the coffee. So she doesn’t ...

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“Snow Stopped Play” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #77

My Dad, Gordon Meredith Merchant, was a great cricketer. But I doubt you’ll have heard of him. Oh, I know there are hundreds, probably millions, come to think of it, of people who say that either they or some relation of theirs could have been a megastar at some sport if only the fates hadn’t conspired against them. But in Dad’s case, there’s some truth in it, and quite apart from the fact that I know he was a deeply truthful person. He was one of the youngest people ever to captain his school eleven, and there are still some precious old ye...

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“Witless Woman in the Wilderness” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #77

There were a great many movie and TV clichés that grated on Sylvia Murray’s nerves, but if she’d have had to pick her worst bugbear it would have been the one she termed Witless Woman in the Wilderness. Otherwise known as the one where Our Heroine, in mortal danger, retreats to a remote cabin cut off from all access to the outside world and often with a very iffy lock in the bargain, and if there were neighbours, the kind that made the Addams Family look like The Waltons. But that wasn’t what she was doing. That wasn’t what she was doing at ...

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“Before and After the Fall” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #77

Marilyn looked out at the pavements and the road, carpeted in morning snow. It had not come overnight, and had not yet been rutted and trampled on by car tyres and feet. In her little front garden, there was no green anymore. It had not been a heavy snowfall, but it was the ground was dry, and it had stuck. She smiled a little as she realised that though humans had not yet made their mark on the snow, birds had already hopped across the frosted lawn, and the frozen air had crystallised their light, fleeting impressions. As her eyes accustome...

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“The Truth and Nothing But the Truth” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #76

Matilda Moresby was strongly against any medical experiments being performed on animals, and that most definitely included an animal of the species Homo Sapiens called Matilda Moresby. If anything she regarded psychological experiments with even more horror though she determinedly mixed in a dollop of disdain for both the experimenters and the participants. She would never fail to notice a gorilla (or at any rate, a man in a gorilla suit) and could never, in any circumstances, be induced to inflict torture on anyone (though of course it turn...

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“A Promise to Auntie Trish” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #76

It’s not exactly a New Year’s Resolution because I’ve stopped “doing” New Year Resolutions. I’ve never been that intense or rigid about them but finally realised last year when I had a shot of Baileys in my coffee on the 2nd of January and got a cab home on the 3rd even though it wasn’t raining and my bags weren’t heavy that it was a pretty futile exercise. So I’m going to call it an “intention”. Okay, maybe that’s just semantics. And that’s ironic as this particular intention is to be more direct and not to pussyfoot about. I suppose someth...

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“Making Life More Complicated” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #75

This year I won’t be so sure of things and so intent on letting people know all about it. Oh, let me qualify that (and perhaps when you start qualifying and quantifying resolutions and putting terms and conditions on them they lose their potency, but I don’t care.) There are things I will always be unashamedly sure of, things that are unreservedly wrong or unreservedly right. Hurting a child or an animal comes into the first category and remembering (well, most of the time) to sort my rubbish properly comes into the second. But there are hug...

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“The Ivy and the Holly” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #75

Lois and Neil had decided that they would have to do something about Mrs Carter. About Ivy. Neither of them really wanted to, and both of them had been putting it off for months, but they knew it would have to be done. “It’s the kindest thing in the long run,” said Lois, when they discussed it, in one of the many discussions they had in that long, surreal week between Christmas and the New Year. They had discussed it before, of course, but those discussions had become more frequent and more serious. Even if you didn’t make resolutions as suc...

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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