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Derek Roberts

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2021

Stories (34)

Comments

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66 Followers

129 Following

34 Stories

797 karma pts

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Highway of Living

Submitted to Contest #325

(There are allusions to molestation and abuse) She leapt over the short wall and climbed through the hole where a basement window will one day be. She was running from the wind that brushed against her when she thought she was free of him. Foolish. She slid along the wall; it seemed like the wind was kicking in every brick. She swore she would go to bed that night with a topographical road map of remarkable bruises. She looked down. There were none to see. The wind has been careful to hurt her deeper than any eye could spot. She felt them. A...

1 like

All She's Done

Submitted to Contest #323

(This story blends fiction and non-fiction elements.) Five words. She has to turn her head sideways to read them. They run down the spine of the book that's sitting on the library shelf. She crouches and tilts the book, sliding it from its home. She holds it flat in her palm. The title is a memory. She is looking at me, like a portrait, holding that book. That’s how I see her. Her eyes never blink.And the author of the five word title is dead. Dead and buried. I want her to read the book. I know the book. I know the title. I wish I could re...

6 likes

I Desire That None Shall Sleep

Submitted to Contest #322

Imagine being so turned off by marriage that you'd rather kill anyone who tries to propose to you then to marry him. Sounds like a good plot for a fairy tale? From the beginning of my life, my mother saw me as a miracle. She had lived a hard life full of tragedy. She had a daughter before I was born but she gave that daughter up to the man who left her to return to his wife. They raised that daughter. Not my mom. My mom met my dad when she was a dancer at a go-go bar. Not a stripper... but close. He was likely in the middle of a manic episod...

15 likes

Matthew (Part 2)

Submitted to Contest #317

5:6 I only know pictures. Your eyes open like a book. The kind of book that's got hard covers. The one that's so big you have to sit it on a table to read it. It's delicious. It uses all the words found in any dictionary but for some reason when you read them in this book they seem to have deeper meaning. The pages are silky. The margins are two fingers deep. The letters are blackberry black. They're blacker than any letters you've ever seen before. Somehow the blackness gives emotion to the story you're telling. It's like the color of a cav...

9 likes

The Angry Ocean

Submitted to Contest #318

The beach doesn't care about my bare feet. This is the wrong time. Late Autumn. The wind creates lumps in the sand that look like dead bodies. There are no bodies now, living or dead. The bodies are home, working and driving and sleeping in their beds. They’ll be back, though. Alive. The beach isn’t a bed now. It’s not a place to rest. The sand accepts this simple fact and waits.But the ocean is always angry. He is a shark with his teeth out, row after row. People or no people, it’s all the same for him. A tortured force. He tumbles and ...

15 likes

Matthew (1)

Submitted to Contest #315

Matthew (1) 5:1 - 2 He found his way over the sharp rocks. His sandals might as well have been his bare feet, they were so shabby and thin. It was a pain that might discourage other men, but He was driven by the words in His heart. The words burned His lips. The pain of His body would not challenge His faith until much later when His arms are hanging from the nails piercing His wrists. The word "forsaken" had no meaning to Him now. It hid in the shadows of His mind and on the other side of this mountain. Today He climbed the bright side, wit...

18 likes

The Flood (Part 1)

Submitted to Contest #315

CW: Physical violence and sexual violence Warning: This story explores the idea that it would take a despicable, hard edged person with very few morals to sit safely on a ship (an ark) and watch everyone on earth be killed by a flood. G-d would have to choose a monster of a man to build the ark for only pairs of animals and his own family while He destroys the earth with a flood. Every neighbor, every friend, every stranger will die as Noah and his family sail safely to a new Eden. This story is not meant to offend, but if you prefer to see ...

6 likes

Echo

Submitted to Contest #314

My voice keeps me safe from the old man. He terrifies me, but I am in his home at his invitation. He arranged meetings with his wife. He had heard of my talent, and he wanted to keep his wife “happy and occupied.” She delights in my stories. I speak endlessly to her. That’s why her husband doesn’t bother me. I distract her so that he can do his foul business.She sits close to me and lets me whisper my stories to her. We spend hours this way until her husband is fast asleep. His days are spent hunting. The young girls in the Achaea don’t stan...

18 likes

Oil on Canvas

Submitted to Contest #314

Interviewer: When do you paint?Artist: At NightInterviewer: When do you sleep?Artist: I don’t. I can’t sleep. Too much work to do. These canvases won’t paint themselves, you know? Painting 1The cold choir of the endless white waves ignores the monster on its side. The sand wrestles with the saltwater to become a brown sludge that holds him on the shoreline. She has made him. He is painted into the middle of the canvas with only one witness other than we who watch him living or dying or breathing or not. The particles of his beard stretch lo...

9 likes

Cornhuskers

Submitted to Contest #313

There is a brief mention of bullying The whole house smells like fried chicken. I hate it. I close my bedroom door and pile towels to block the stench. Nothing stops it. The funk slips from the kitchen window and creeps up to mine. I wish I could nail and caulk my window shut. It’s a sneaky smell, and it finds the cracks and the smallest openings.My grandmother’s fried chicken is “a family favorite.” Obviously, it's not mine. I refuse. I choose to be a vegetarian rather than eat that garbage. I’ll leave the dismembering of dead chickens to t...

19 likes

There Are So Many Ways to Die

Submitted to Contest #313

The huntsman confronted me in the woods. He asked, “have you been eaten by the wolf today?” I told him no, and then he said, “Well, I have to ask that first. You understand.” He said, “the wolf is my only enemy, and I hunt him because of that. I do not want him to eat you. I want to stop you. I want to break into you like a thief, but I couldn’t be second to him. He might have stolen what I want to take from you.” With that he lifted up his heavy ax and split my head like a piece of wood.As I stood there with my face cut in half, I asked “w...

17 likes

Life as a Shadow

Submitted to Contest #312

I am curled up at the head of the bed between the pillows. It is my spot. He and she are off doing separate things, and I have the apartment to myself. I can stretch myself from one end of the bedroom to the other, especially when the blinds are pulled to the very top and the Sun streams through the window. I can be anywhere, but I love her pillows. I am Shadow, and I have lived here with her since the beginning. Since before there was a him, there was her and me. Day and night, I find a way to exist for her. To hide. To think. To dan...

21 likes

A Love Song

A prose interpretation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Let me take you out when the night is stretched like black paper over abandoned windows. Let’s go to a bar where you can feel the crunch of peanut shells under your feet. It's possible that the people we see are not going home alone tonight. Don't ask me “what is it?” Let's just go and make our visits. Even if we wind up stuck in the front room with the old women who look at us like we're deranged. I'll hold your hand and pull you through, and we'll pretend they are...

5 likes

Everything All At Once

Submitted to Contest #311

TW: Scenes of injury and dying When I walk into a hospital, all I feel is envy. Look at all these injured people. These sick and collapsing people. Life is crumbling. There's nothing more important to them right now than being fixed and getting well. Getting better. Whatever other problems were leaning into them now can be ignored.They don't have to pay the gas bill today. They don't have to call their grandmother and thank her for the birthday gift. They don’t have to break up with their boyfriends or sign important documents.Not today.Toda...

42 likes

Burn This Book

Submitted to Contest #310

Δολοφονία* ForwardThis book is transcribed by hand. If you possess this book, then you know that you are a part of a rare group. This book is to serve one purpose only.If you have found this book without instructions, destroy this book. Burn it. Do not turn the page. You will regret the day you read this forward even if you follow my directions. There are things about this book that can only be explained to you by a previous owner. When he is finished with the book, he will know exactly who should inherit it. He will know what to tell you.If...

14 likes