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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023
Submitted to Contest #296
The storm breaks. Day dawns. Visibility returns. I find myself secured to the prisoner before me, nestled up inside them, so close. Last night no other companion was pushed into me, but that is not the blessing it might seem. It means I am exposed. Vulnerable at the back of the line. Available to be taken by the first.Unsafe. Unprotected. Pristine.Pristine?Could that be what they think of me? The other Rollers. I have no way of communicating with my fellow slaves so I don’t know what they call me in their thoughts. Like they don’t know what ...
Submitted to Contest #295
On the final day of his sabbatical, Ananke of Kvantheim sat inside the window of Flat White Noise, Clatterdown’s finest café, basking in blissful equilibrium.The sleepy, coastal hamlet he’d escaped to following a traumatic ordeal at Axis Spire was his kind of place. Quiet. Slow. Dull with few unruly elements, ones that could be easily tamed. The tide ran on schedule, the weather followed a weekly rhythm, and the library, park, and gallery opened and shut like clockwork, attended by the same faces.Troy Bucknell, owner of the cafe where Ananke...
Submitted to Contest #294
**TW: SUGGESTION OF CHILDHOOD S.A**I was happy to see her again. Happy to be held by her, happy to hear her news, to be opened up with the bicycle repair kit she brought from her other home, the one she shares with her mother, and have my inactive bluetooth module replaced. That was a surprise. How she had found a replacement for something so old, the means by which I used to share my pictures. How she had learned how to install it. She told me her teacher Mr. Frayne had helped, Mr. Frayne who knew about old tech. Mr. Frayne from the pl...
Submitted to Contest #293
“Vite! Déshabillez-vous! Vite!”Calla St. Germaine barely suppressed a laugh as Madame Beauchamp, pendulous breasts and rolls of fat jiggling, pushed her corseted gown down over thunderous hips. She was glaring with a face like a simmering bouillabaisse, her once elaborate chignon now a frizzy mess on her head. “Merde, keep that thing away from me,” said Calla, side-stepping around the suddenly nude facilitator, who wobbled while slipping off her pumps in a shadowy alleyway near the Seine. “That’s gonna need more than a hedge trimmer now...
Submitted to Contest #292
The brass bell above the door jingled, startling Jonas from his slumber and causing the leather-bound book on his lap to fall to the floor.“Damn,” the twenty year old in britches, canvas shirt and scuffed boots cursed as he hopped to his feet, scraping his chair back from the counter and turning towards the bookstore’s entrance.A woman stood there, silhouetted against the glow of the setting sun, a woman unlike any he’d seen before.“Good evening,” she said, nodding as she eased the door shut, closing it in the face of a short, fat man clutch...
Submitted to Contest #275
***TW: Inference of Childhood SA*** I’m not gonna take a dump in a public restroom. I’m not gonna take a dump in a public restroom. I’m not gonna…Damnit.I’m not gonna make it home. And it’s RIGHT there. That grim, concrete bunker masquerading as a sanctuary of sanitation. Sickly 40-watt bulbs over twin entrances generating just enough illumination for the beast to be visible in the night. Barely-there beacons of hope guiding desperate travellers to safety. Or to ruin if they function for a siren.Which, to me, they always have done. Late nigh...
Submitted to Contest #272
Having loaded ice chests full of freshly caught crab into the back of his muddy 4x4, secured his sixteen-foot, red and white Orkney Strikeliner to the trailer attached to the vehicle, and returned to the pier to retrieve the nylon-mesh crab pots left behind, Myles Burke caught sight of something bobbing in the water, an object he hadn’t noticed there before.He recognised it at once as an old-style lobster pot, its slats covered in thick, brown seaweed, its netting encrusted with barnacles. Mud and silt clung to its frame, and plant matter da...
Submitted to Contest #270
Recipe #666 / Variation 091Servings: 7 Preparation Time: Varies (based on resistance of ingredients)Ingredients:1 eye of newt1 toe of frog150 grams wool of bat1 tongue of dog10 scales of dragonA pinch of dead man’s bloodA drop of a virgin's tear1 swollen, pus-filled witchetty grub for flavourPreparation:A. Acquire pre-selected ingredients from their natural habitats. Successful extraction requires careful attention to prevent accidental damage.1. NewtNet the Newt in a crumbling inner-city neighbourhood. Still in his teens, the Newt is m...
Submitted to Contest #269
6Mitchel Conroy’s oxfords clacked and heart thumped as he hurried through the settling dusk from something.Since breakfast, the eerie sensation of being watched had intensified with the crawling of his skin.He hadn’t seen anyone. Or heard anything. But he felt it wherever he went.Something was coming and the darkness was making it bolder.He picked up the pace as he turned into the tree-lined avenue that led to the wrought-iron gates of his community. Sticky puddles of sweat beneath his suit urged him on until he reached the keypad, disengage...
Winner of Contest #266 🏆
08:50:05.000:RequestGeneratedHey Phaedra, can you give me a recipe for vegan lasagne with a rich, creamy bechamel sauce?08:50:05.005: ResponseDispatched++Certainly! For a delicious vegan lasagne, you'll need lasagne noodles, marinara sauce, vegan ricotta, and a homemade bechamel sauce. Here's the recipe and step-by-step instructions, Michael!++08:50:05.012:RequestGeneratedPhaedra, how do I fix a leaky faucet?08:50:05.020: ResponseDispatched ++Here’s a step-by-step guide to get that faucet fixed. Grab a wrench and some plumber’s tap...
Submitted to Contest #265
The De Havilland Twin Otter charter plane shuddered through grey clouds as its mouthy pilot wrestled with the controls, navigating toward the barely visible landing strip ahead. Like the plane’s humming engines, the bearded Inuit’s mouth hadn’t stopped buzzing since we’d taken off from Iqaluit three hours before, and my tolerance for both noises had grown slim. Happily, the end of this ordeal was in sight, the small hamlet Mittimatalik–known as Pond Inlet–which we were rocking and tilting down towards. From this vantage point and in this daw...
Submitted to Contest #264
Two and a half hours after touching down in Innsbruck and boarding the SUV that waited to greet her, Amelia Carver’s overnight expedition came to an end at a squat, crumbling structure in the rugged terrain of Saminatal Valley. From Dublin to Austria to Liechtenstein, from 12am to 6, from civilisation to desolation, and she still didn’t know if it was worth it. Looking at the building, little more than an abandoned mound of concrete, it was difficult to see how it could be. She hadn’t accomplished anything of note since last year. She w...
Submitted to Contest #263
Theme parks are the best, the roller coasters rule, but I didn’t want to go into the House of Horrors. It looked dark and creepy and I knew it was full of dead things and madmen, like the pictures on my dad’s scary videos. That kind of stuff made my insides squirm and threaten to erupt buckets of puke, but Bernice had the tickets and me by the hand, and she was dragging me along and wouldn’t stop.What was I supposed to do, sit down and cry? I’d look like a baby and Bernice would laugh. It was the first time she’d talked to me, so I didn’t wa...
Submitted to Contest #262
"Attention inmates. This is an advisory notice. Today’s HEAT, previously scheduled for 16:33:07, is now expected to initiate at 16:06:34. Anticipated duration: Fourteen minutes. Revised intensity level: 20. All prisoners will cease operations imminently. All Scorpiens will return their charges to their Habitats. Protective protocols must be complete by 16:04. Notice ends."The garbled message, issued from the speakers in her helmet, ended with a crackle and Eva lowered her welding gun from a grid of metal girders, turning to look at her guard...
Submitted to Contest #259
It came at her with a high-pitched wail and thick froth foaming from its mouth, black eyes wide on bald head, stubby limbs flailing as tainted feathers slipped from its wings.“Scelus!” she gasped, as the prune-skinned not-child crashed into her, knocking her into a wall that wasn’t a wall. Grasping the pair of swallow-small wings protruding from the creature’s shoulders, she tried to hold it back while it pawed at her chest. “Get off me!”The ‘wall’ behind her shifted and two pillar-like arms shot forward, one of them clamping around the todd...
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