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Dhruv Srivastava

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2020

Stories (53)

Comments

Library

67 Followers

24 Following

53 Stories

1252 karma pts

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Struck Out on a Full Count

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #136

The slender maple wood felt like the hand of an old friend between his calloused fingers, and the wear of home runs showed on the barrel. This was not his latest bat, but rather the one he’d hit his first high school single with, and the one he thought he’d take with him to Texas. The unlit stadium lights loomed like sentinels over the nearly pitch black field, and in the darkness Jeremy Davis gripped the old bat in one hand and a scrunched up letter in another. Occasionally he swung the bat from his familiar home plate, memories of crushing...

7 likes

The Song of Death and Glory

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #135

The gentle bite of a morning spring wind came over the hill, sending gray banners fluttering like wisps of cloud bound to the earth and yearning to return to the azure sky. On this particular morning, the sun rose with clarity not seen since the autumn, though the residents of Andolens looked upon it with dull eyes, tending to their tasks with mellow movements. These people were of northern descent, so their hair was a mixture of red and pale gold, and their eyes were piercing, especially when contrasted with their pale skin. Some people had...

13 likes

Love and a Fantasy

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #133

“I’ll just have a coffee and a blueberry muffin, please.” His voice was gruff, sandy at the edges and yet soft on the consonants. He brushed jet black hair onto his face to obscure his dark brown eyes from the server. She jotted his order down and smiled at him, just barely parting full lips to reveal crystalline white teeth. It was a smile which tore his mind in two. “Is that all?” Her voice was throaty and velvet textured, with just the hint of a New York accent on a few of her vowels. “Yes,” he said quietly, giving her a nod...

11 likes

The Final Letter

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #132

Are you there God? It’s me, Jesus. Actually, my name is Paul, but wasn’t Paul one of Jesus’ friends - apostles, if you will? Anyway… Paul Schmidt, he is me, and I is him. I’m writing to you because I read somewhere online that if you list out all your problems in a letter to someone it helps get them off your chest. Well, I have a lot of problems, and strangely enough I seem to have them all with you, God. I have spent my adult life holed up in a cathedral, trying to be your servant, but here I sit in a pew, writing this letter in black ink ...

17 likes

The Locked Door

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #130

“So, what’s next for you?” The reporter’s gray eyes shone in the bright camera light and seemed to pierce through to her subject’s soul. “I mean, you’ve sold art worth millions, you’ve been philanthropic… You even have your own wing at some museums around the world. Are you going to keep painting, even at this age?”It took her subject everything he had to muster up a response. After thirty seconds, he frowned and muttered, “I… I don’t know. I will keep painting.”“And can you support the claims that the motif of a locked door in all of your p...

14 likes

The Unexpected Guest

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #129

For most of the year, Lydia Coulter was able to enjoy living amidst the tall cedar pines of Vermont rent-free, watching nature pass her by. Every day she got up around dawn to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee - her alarm clock actually made drip coffee for her which was hot and ready right when she got up. She’d head down to the kitchen and fix herself a modest breakfast, likely consisting of oatmeal, and then take care of each of the bedrooms in the lodge. Once things were clean, she would head outside if the weather was nice and roam one o...

17 likes

A Chance for Spring

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #128

Every morning at 6:30, the neighbors of John Davos would notice his bedroom light flickering on almost exactly fifteen seconds after the clock bottomed out. That is, they would have noticed if they were awake, but John lived in a sleepy old town, full of retirees who went to bed early and slept in late almost every day. In fact, on most days the trunks of shiny Cadillacs and Lincolns could be heard thunking around noon as people packed their golf clubs and headed down to the range, even at the zenith of the swampy Florida heat. If the neighb...

13 likes

Closed to Open

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #126

Each of the seven years Natasha Wright had lived in the small New England town of Belfry, she had experienced a rare encounter on New Year’s Eve, though she’d never known it. There was only one dual coffee and pastry shop in town: Little Armaño’s, which sold the best danishes and fruit cakes in the country, as far as the residents were concerned. Even those people who came in from the far reaches of the world lauded the small shop and the husband and wife who ran it. Natasha always got the same thing at the same time. She’d come in near clos...

15 likes

Drinks With Righteousness

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #122

Jack Washburn’s heart hammered in his throat as he sat in the stall just outside the food court at City Center Mall. He’d been there for half an hour already, and his legs were starting to get sore, as were his arms, mostly from the fact that he was perched with both feet on the toilet bowl with his hands pushing at the sides of the stall for support. Sweat beaded on his face, and his mop of curly black hair was sticking to his forehead from beneath his hoodie. He gave his arms a short break, but a ding from the intercom made him quickly pus...

12 likes

The Cottage and the Lighthouse

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #119

Though the waves crashed against the cliffside and the wind battered the thin walls of the old cottage, Cindy Davis didn’t stop smiling and set the table in her kitchen for one. She couldn’t hear it anyway. The lights had gone out, but she had a plethora of candles just for this occasion. Every time she went out to the market, she bought a few candles, especially if there were new scents out. Something about the dancing yellow flame enchanted her. It was so frantic, so desperate to escape its shackles, and yet so playful. She liked to put he...

11 likes

The Mansion on Harrow's Lane

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #116

“-and whatever you do, stay away from Harrow’s Lane,” finished the older boy emphatically. It was a saying all the children in White Lake knew by heart, and so it came as no surprise that the boy’s grisly story was met with a tired nod from his audience; they had all heard every type of story about Harrow’s Lane one could imagine, from the old man with the axe waiting to dismember you by the toolshed on house 114, to the ghoul that lurked the shores of the property at the end of the lane: White’s mansion. An outsider may have scoffed, and in...

17 likes

River Falls

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #115

I suppose when the four horsemen came up to my car, I should’ve known to put it in reverse. Or perhaps their grim faces should’ve sent me running. Either way, I swallowed the hot stone lodged in my throat and lowered the windows as they approached. Their lanterns bathed the dirt road in a ghoulish orange glow. Not vibrant, but tempered and sickly - as though someone had placed frosted glass around the Mona Lisa. The hooves clopped on the ground and a horse whinnied as it stopped by my door. A man slid off, his coat dark and graced by a shimm...

17 likes

The Last Dinner

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #112

Her heart beat so rapidly it was folly to try and measure it against her watch, though she tried, tapping her foot on the ground in a similarly frenzied pace. The ambient, romantic lighting of the restaurant was so juxtaposed to her state of mind that some part of her felt like laughing, but most of her thoughts were bent on keeping herself from sweating through her red dress. She’d worn this dress the first time she’d been at this restaurant, when she was nervous for a much different reason. Glancing at her watch again, she realized he was ...

18 likes

Saving the World

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #111

“Go to bed, honey,” her tired mother said, clutching a glass of wine in one hand and an old harlequin novel in the other. Her blond hair was frizzy in the humid night, and she was sweating through her clothes. “But mum-” “Listen to your mother,” said her father lazily. He was likewise pouring sweat in the heat, and didn’t even bother to look up from his TV program. John Rolston was a sad sight - overweight, red-faced, and losing the last bit of hair from the top of his head. His thick round spectacles dug into his pudgy face, and his...

21 likes

Most Nights

Dhruv Srivastava

Submitted to Contest #110

Most nights, Eleanor Robin manned the counter of Lazy Night Diner with a cigarette in one hand and a flask full of vodka and orange juice by her hip. Of course, it was strictly against protocol for any employee of the diner to be drinking on the job, but her own boss Clyde Wilkins was such a boozer that she could smell the whiskey on his breath the moment he’d hired her. He was rarely in - always with some excuse about his car, his home, or his wife, and he was never in during the night. Since Eleanor exclusively worked the night shift, she ...

15 likes