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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023
Submitted to Contest #256
Time of contact: 15:05:01Impact Force: 6000 NewtonsServe speed: 135mphDistance travelled: 25.5mAngle: 60 degrees to horizontalVelocity: 82m/sRequired service return response: Ten paces left moving forward 30 degrees, commence swing at 15:05:03, apply 5500 newtons of pressure in a topspin forehand shot with an upward trajectory of 35 degrees to the horizontal.That’s what the voice of the AI vocoder instructs inside me head, for the umpteenth time this session, an’ who am I ta argue? It’s not like I’m important. Not like I was ever a champ, mu...
Submitted to Contest #255
A day.Mummy and Daddy left me. They went away and left me on my own, in this scary place with sharp and spiky stones that stab my feet. I don’t want to cry, on this beach, if it is a beach, because the only sound is that of pebbles crunching beneath my toes and my voice sounds weird, like an echo. There’s nothing to see except the wispy grey fog that folds around me. It feels like I’m by the sea, because of the stones and that disgusting, salty smell, but I can’t hear any waves or people splashing. If it is the seaside, a boring s...
Submitted to Contest #253
“Hey, Ed, could you slow down please? These country roads are lethal, you can’t see a flipping thing.”“Yeah, Edmund, headlights can barely pick out the bends before they appear on this stretch, slow it down.”“You’re going to slam us into a tree, or a herd of sheep, or a big pile of shitty manure if the smell around here is anything to go by. Put the window up, Edwin, it stinks!”“Could you all shut up? It’s fine, I do this drive all the time, you know that.”“Yep, some of us more than others. You don’t have to go so fast though. It's not like ...
Submitted to Contest #239
Monday, 6.50 p.m.Sitting hunched over the scratched, wooden surface of the desk in the corner of his room, Hideo Nakamura froze mid-brush stroke and stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck rising up in response to the sudden, inexplicable certainty that he was being watched.He was home alone, had been for days, the house was deathly quiet and the night was still. He’d been buried so deep in silent concentration while he practiced his kanji that he could have heard a moth flap its wings or a spider scuttle across the floor. Nobody, not a...
Submitted to Contest #232
January 1st, 202411.15pmI was five hours into a twelve hour drive from Edinburgh to Penzance, on my way down for Gran’s funeral. A gran I didn’t like and hadn’t seen since I was a kid but had still been harassed into showing up for. I was doing it under duress. It was New Year’s Day for God’s sake. Who has to travel on New Year’s Day for a funeral on the 2nd of January? Who dies on December 30th necessitating the need for said funeral? My inconsiderate, miserly, reclusive Gran on my mum’s side, who used to shut me out in the cold and shout a...
Shortlisted for Contest #231 ⭐️
Inasaki primary was no more than ten minutes’ walk from my father-in-law's place, small, cramped quarters that were only meant to be our temporary home, but I still had the kids dressed and fed and out of the house by ten past seven. There was a tension in the air that morning, and for everyone’s sake, it was best we were gone before she woke. The kids didn’t need to witness another scene like the one the night before, and I didn’t need to be a part of one.“Do you have to go online and play that stupid game the second you get home? Could you...
Shortlisted for Contest #230 ⭐️
On the last day of my life, as I prepare to breathe my last, you summon me from my deathbed to once again write.But this time to write something different.Something I have never written before, composed of words that are my own, from my own heart and life, not from your head or your tongue.Which, if I’m honest, I’m finding difficult.For I am not used to this kind of freedom.It feels wrong, somehow, writing these words of my own volition, being allowed to record my own truth, rather than transcribing words spoken.And Heaven knows I’ve transcr...
Submitted to Contest #229
“Hey, can we call it a night after Europe?” said one of the two who could speak in the party of ten, as they bumped and rocked and skittered across the sky. “That’s like 70% of the world and I’ve been reading about this 70-30 rule, which advocates allocating 70% of your time to taking action and leaving 30% aside for having fun. I’m really into this. I say we’ve worked hard enough and deserve a break. The Bahamas would be nice. It’s a straight run when we drop this load, what do you say?”“I say the same thing I always say when you make this ...
Submitted to Contest #228
Oh. You’re awake. Bit sooner than expected but…oh well. Must have got the strength wrong. I’m not exactly experienced with using chloroform, only tried it twice so far, and once was on myself. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy but how else was I supposed to see if it worked? Amazed it did, to be honest. Thought it was just a movie thing. But it gave me the best sleep I’ve had in years. Kenji too. Doesn’t look like it did much for you, you were only out for about three hours. Your eyes look like shit. Crusty and bloodshot. Lucky for you, she won...
Submitted to Contest #220
“Now, little Diz, I think we're set, but can you think of anything else your momma would like to sink her fangs into when she’s done giving birth?”Saying this, the elderly mouse spider, Gra’ma Occatoria, tip-tapped eight steps back on spindly legs, revealing the feast she’d laid out on a platform made of hundreds of layers of silk. In the banquet-hall, the lowermost chamber attached to the central shaft of the burrow, which was illuminated by fireflies and glowworms secured to the webbing on the walls, the young spiderling with the bright re...
Submitted to Contest #219
TW Suggestion of domestic violence, general violence, and child abuse. May cause offense.In the darkness of oblivion, now and as forever, swathes and waves of misery wash over me.Disembodied, immutable, adrift, I should be at peace after all of this time on my own, but the sounds of suffering and pain continue to assault me, as they have done since I was delivered, from one prison to another, tethered by the constraints of many others.Breathless, urgent cries like the bleating of sheep being slaughtered.High-pitched, keening wails like those...
Submitted to Contest #216
The shorts and t-shirt clad exercisers of various shapes and fitness levels, sipping their beverages while panting, stretching, beads of sweat on their foreheads drying in the cool evening air, dark patches on their backs and stomachs glaring like mournful, weeping eyes, making you feel guilty about unused gym membership that's about to expire.The tap-tap-tapping keyboard pounders, lost in worlds of their own creation, focused, on the words appearing on their screens, working or creating, for themselves or others, lidded containers over-seei...
Submitted to Contest #214
To you, who is reading this, wherever you are, it saddens me to say this will be the last of my personal scribings, which you have presumably been perusing for some time, possibly out of curiosity for a civilisation lost, as I assume it must be, following the events of this eve. I am writing these words by candlelight, wrapped in my wolf hide cloak, attempting to fend off the cold and unbearable darkness that has descended on my mother’s Hall and lands, not to mention the world, following the death of the sun.Yes. That is what I wrote.&...
Submitted to Contest #213
For more years than he cared to remember, Stanley Easterbrook had been a doctor in the village of Newhall, driving every day through rain, mist, blinding sunshine or bone-chilling snow along back roads lined by wild privet hedges to the main street that led to his clinic. He’d served as GP for the small parish town for thirty-seven years and he knew the area inside out, as well as the people who lived there. To him, this was a good thing, as he believed it made him efficient at his job. He knew his patients’ ailments and their maladies...
Submitted to Contest #212
Hey. Testing testing. If you get this can you reply and tell me what time it is? -19.45Hi. Sorry, who is this, I don’t have your number saved? It’s 6.45. Your message is time-stamped 7.45, your phone time’s wrong. -18.45Holy shit.No way.I don’t believe this actually works. Sorry, just to be sure, is this Dave?-19.46Yeah, it’s Dave, who’s this?-18.46My phone time’s not wrong. It’s 7.45. This is so weird, your messages are popping into the chat up before mine, chronologically.I have to keep scrolling back up ...
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