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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2020
Submitted to Contest #96
A lone cabin in the woods, that’s what he’d been reduced to. The angled and desiccated logs barely holding his home together seemed more like a prison than anything else, and leaked the heat of his pitiful fire out into the snowy forest around him. The only food in the house was an old loaf of bread and some cheese he’d managed to steal from town a few weeks ago. Otherwise the horizontal surfaces of the main room in his cabin were littered with empty bottles of Everclear. He’d dilute it with water from the lake, though it was still strong en...
Submitted to Contest #92
The sun beat down on his face as he felt the wind whipping through his long, black hair. The rhythmic beating of his horse’s hoofs on the hard ground matched with the pace of his heart as he sped through the countryside, his mind uncharacteristically on distant matters. Tears which pooled in his eyes were quickly dried by the gale, and his scarred hands gripped his steed’s reins with their full strength, turning his knuckles white. He knew the quest he had just undertaken had but one result, and he knew too that there was no other choice for...
Submitted to Contest #90
The wind sighed as the great Oak stood sentinel in the park, watching over the children as they ran around, as he had done for over a century. Of course, he did not know his age, nor did he know where his acorns went, but he knew his power, and he knew the beings which played around him were his own progeny, be they the squirrels which hopped around his branches, or the birds which nested in his crevices and cracks. Or even the humans which climbed him so boldly and scratched his bark. Sometimes, they would rip out chunks of him or cleave of...
Submitted to Contest #86
The two walked in the meadow behind the Lovac’s pasture as they had done on countless occasions for the last twelve years, yet now their feet dragged in the tall grass and the boy looked anxiously at the girl, who herself was avoiding his gaze. Occasionally, they would see a bee in the distance and stop automatically in their tracks - the boy was deathly afraid of bees, and the girl had been so conditioned to protect him from them that even in this bittersweet moment she put her arm in front of him the moment one buzzed from a nearby flower....
Submitted to Contest #81
The quick rhythmic sound of the knife hitting the cutting board conflicted with the slow Pink Martini record playing on the radio, yet this conflict seemed to only enhance the melody as Justine Watts sang along softly in French. She finished chopping the onions and threw them into the pot, adding a crushed clove of garlic on top. The aroma quickly filled the spacious kitchen, and she took a quick sip of Cabernet to bring the whole scene together. If only it were snowing, she thought, and I had a fireplace crackling in the living room. Alas, ...
Submitted to Contest #80
His face held the bitter stoutness of a man whose tears were spent, whose throat was dry from screaming into the night, and whose days were numbered. He sat, perfectly still, on the patio of his small home, watching the brilliant orange sunset over fields of yellowed grass. Its beauty would have blinded any other man, but he had seen the ferocity of a thousand suns light up the night sky. In his left hand, he held a glass of ice cold lemonade, untouched. Every evening, his servant would bring him one, though he never asked for it. His right ...
Submitted to Contest #67
I talked to the police last night… they thought I was insane… which is about par for the course. I told them everything - every grisly detail. How he dragged her inside the laundromat, screaming. How he lifted her up and choked her against the machines… and then how he threw her to the ground as she sputtered. She tried to crawl away - he grabbed her unkempt blond hair and smashed her head with the door of a washing machine. She was crying, and everytime she sobbed he’d hit her again. I told them how he finally got bored and slammed her to t...
Submitted to Contest #65
The wind blew eerily through the skeletal trees as they lugged their packs through the empty field. The moon shone hazily amongst thin clouds, casting a milky light on the rocks which lay amongst the grass. Jonathan shivered. “Gettin’ cold out here, eh?” he said, trying to maintain levity despite their grim task.“Shut up.”“Oh c’mon, this wasn’t my-”“I said shut up.” Michael spoke in urgent whispers, though the wind carried his words to the far reaches of the field, where a line of woods stood guard like petrified soldiers, frozen in sol...
Submitted to Contest #64
Dale Morton let out a long stream of curses as his old Ford F-150 seemed to choke on its fuel, sputtering to a halt on the old dirt road. He wasn’t one to swear, so he gave an apologetic glance to the cross hanging from his rearview mirror as he hefted himself out of his truck to go take a look under the hood. Upon opening it, Dale was met with a rush of dark smoke and a blast of heat which nearly singed his eyebrows. Though he knew it was a lost cause before he even propped up his hood and got his tools, he tinkered around with the mechanic...
Submitted to Contest #63
With each fold into the heavy brown, orange, and red paper, a minute of Jamie Colston’s was avenged, though this narrative seemed to be trapped in her own mind. She sat on the floor of her dingy apartment, sick yellow light leering at her through disheveled drapes, making paper turkeys and maple leaves. Her skeletal frame was topped with ragged clothes, so thin her backbone showed through her shirt. However, the most troubling aspect of her appearance was her face, on which was plastered a tight, toothy smile which was painful to look at. He...
Submitted to Contest #58
I would like to apologize for any mistakes in my writing - it’s dark in here and I have to write this on my phone. I suppose I should give you an idea of where I am, though you may have heard the news already. At 12:23pm today there was a magnitude 6.1 earthquake not far from where I work… Consequently, at the same moment I was in an elevator headed down to the second floor break room to grab my lunch - a pathetic and yet oddly tantalizing tuna salad sandwich. A wiser man than I may have taken the stairs, perhaps only to burn a few extra cal...
Submitted to Contest #56
As the warm pinkish glow from the sun setting cast a sparkling light on the kaleidoscope of leaves still clinging to their trees in the last throes of life, a family’s laughter could be heard from within a small, wooden cottage, bereft of any grandeur save its enviable location. The people within were likewise without renown. Two brothers, normally cynical and driven by a weary angst of their situation, had decided to shed their brash and sharp natures for the night, and smiled as their father, a rotund and jovial man, detailed the killing o...
Submitted to Contest #54
There was pain in his eyes as he descended the mountain, so sharply divergent from his ecclesiastical nature that it was shared by all who looked on him. The crowd had gathered. For fifteen weeks they sat under the grim peak which pierced the steely clouds and waited for him, the herd thinning as time marched on and the weather worsened. Finally, three days into the New Year, he emerged as a black speck upon the snowy mountainside, and the onlookers rejoiced at his meager form making its way down out of the clouds. Yet when they saw him more...
Submitted to Contest #53
He caressed the piano so lovingly that it may have forgotten the years of neglect it had suffered from him, but the memories proved deeper than forgiveness. Though his touch was tender, it fell on keys out of tune and yellowed, and while he breathed softly so as to not perturb it, dust still flew off on every exhale. He got up off of the stiff bench after a few minutes, putting his fingers once more on middle C, the way his old teacher had taught him when he was a child. He remembered the years of lectures from, and shouting matches with, hi...
Submitted to Contest #52
The snow melted off of my parka as I walked deliberately into the Market Basket, anxious from the tinny voices on my car’s radio telling me about the impending storm. Procrastination seemed to be a dragon which I could not slay. News of the “once in a lifetime superstorm” had been capturing headlines for a week, and yet my run for supplies coincided with the first heavy flakes of snow from an ominous steely sky, as the clouds churned rapidly, choking out the sun. I quickly grabbed the nearest cart to me and noticed that there was no dearth o...
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