Dena Linn - Writer on Reedsy Prompts

3 Stories

578 karma pts

The World’s on Fire

Winner of Contest #249 🏆

Trigger: Cancer My head rocks back, long hair sticks to sweaty shoulders and my tank barely holds my jiggling A-cups as I pound it out, dancing. I’m that “Girl on Fire,” a single mom gyrating to Ms. Keys. Flinging out one arm, hips swing and dip, fingers snap, eyes close, and my rock and roll fantasy, straight from a music video: my apartment’s clutter, with the snap of my fingers, flies to order. I burn, more than a flickering flame, heart thumps, shoulders shimmy, sweat drips into my pierced belly button. The fuchsia, sun-yellow and ...

85 likes

72 comments 72

Read story

Motherland

Dena Linn

Submitted to Contest #216

Have you ever noticed the strange things people do with their hands? Some grip tiny porcelain cups between thumb and forefinger, sticking out their pinky. Others have the mug between their palms like a chunk of gold. Some stare down and let the warmth hit their faces while their hands caress their phones. This is what I see when I push through the glass door and hear a shot of expressed steam. My ankles and wrists itch, my mind and heart are in separate bumper cars going 90mph. I find an empty table, and sit, trying to catch my breath, keepi...

17 likes

2 comments 2

Read story

The Problem Is

Dena Linn

Winner of Contest #127 🏆

CW: terminal illness It was day four hundred and fifty-eight for Paul. He weighed in at fifty-eight kilos, down from a strapping ninety-three. He was also fifty-eight years and counting. His doctor prognosed it and Paul felt old, sick, and wasted, his body no longer his own, and tomorrow would be 1999, another absolutely nothing new year.  It was years now, he’d asked Matt what Silence equals Death meant. He’d be the first to admit to being a simple guy, the one whose IQ matched his shoe size - a running joke back at...

170 likes

109 comments 109

Read story

Author bio

Ex-urban, thriver, commune child, not one of ‘those girls,’ obsessed with the darker sides of the fragile human spirit. From different lands and through eyes of imagination, melding cultures, and adding zest (key lime), Dena’s story will take you on unexpected adventures, and you’ll not leave this world. She’s a two-time 1st place winner for her shorts, “The Problem Is” and “The World on Fire” published by Reedsy. Her first book chapter received Honorable Mention from Craft Mag. Her dark fiction is published in The Chamber Magazine, and by Hackshaw Press in Hardboiled and Loaded with Sin. Additional works appear in Down in the Dirt Magazine and ArielChart International Literary Journal. Eight literary fiction shorts are published by Transcendent Authors and are available via Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and on ebook platforms.

Author website: https://linnfiction.com
HardBoiled and Loaded with Sin: https://bit.ly/3Lgs1A1
Down in the Dirt/SCARS: https://bit.ly/3oSD4rL
ArielChart: https://www.arielchart.com/2022/07/my-name-is-youssou.html
Prompted: https://amzn.to/4220vxz