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Eleanor Grayson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2020

Stories (6)

Comments

Library

20 Followers

1 Following

6 Stories

105 karma pts

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In an Autumn Classroom

Eleanor Grayson

Submitted to Contest #63

Construction paper was everywhere – on the floor, on the desks, on the tables, in children’s hair, on their shirts. Red, orange, brown, yellow pieces were haphazardly strewn as chubby hands tried to maneuver safety scissors in curved lines and jagged, zig-zag patterns. There were uncapped markers and uncapped tubes of glue. There was glitter, there were sprinkles, there were plastic gemstones. There were brown hand turkeys and red apples and black bats and orange pumpkins with green pipe cleaners spiraling from the stems. On the windows were...

8 likes

How the World Ends

Eleanor Grayson

Submitted to Contest #60

Everyone who thought the world would end in fire was right. Red, gold, orange burned on the horizon everywhere in the beginning. From coast to coast, north to south, people wandered along abandoned and cracked highways littered with rusting cars and spoiling humans. Sometimes, if they were too close to the fires, the air would burn through their clothes, burning their flesh, and their blood would boil in their veins, liquifying them from the inside out. In the beginning, it was so hot that all lips were cracked and white with dead, atro...

6 likes

Watching. Always Watching

Eleanor Grayson

Submitted to Contest #59

I could feel their eyes – so many eyes – just staring at me. Watching. Judging. I pulled my cap a bit lower over my eyes and shoved my hands deep into my pockets, hoping that it would somehow make me blend into the bricked store walls while knowing that it only made me stand out more. These people were not like me and they did not like me; two verbs not mutually exclusive. While I tried to shrink away, shoulders curled, muscles tight, they walked and strutted and paraded with their heads high, their muscles loose and relaxed. We were two opp...

8 likes

A Letter on the Power of Secrets

Eleanor Grayson

Submitted to Contest #55

Can you keep a secret? Dear Cecilia, If you ever find yourself courageous enough to ask that question or one of its likeness (i.e. Can I tell you a secret?), it is in your best interest to banish it from your thoughts and perish it from your vocabulary. If you can. It may be a very difficult endeavor, but it will save you much heartbreak. They (your mother and her husband and all their friends in that social circle they call ‘enlightened’) cast me as a woman scorned because I hold this view, and yet they know not truly the pai...

5 likes

Baby Blizzard

Eleanor Grayson

Submitted to Contest #52

The world on the other side of the glass was white. Pure, unbroken white, growing thicker and heavier with every inch of snow that fell from the sky. Cara knew she should not have come to the supermarket today. The snowstorm – more accurately, a blizzard – had come out of the blue, leaving weather forecasters were a baffled. There had only been a flew flurries when she had gotten into her car, and, despite a pull in her gut, she pulled out of my driveway and headed down the road. Idiot, she chastised herself. She should have just told ...

4 likes

Summer Storms

Eleanor Grayson

Submitted to Contest #51

Summer thunderstorms, Like the ever ebbing tide, Constant but fleeting I was never a good poet – and that is something that has not gotten better with age – but I will never forget those three lines. It’s certainly not their quality that have impacted their permanence; they were the first words I wrote here, in this boarding school. It’s been years – decades – since I’ve stepped foot in this building, even longer since I wore that uniform, but it’s still the same. The staff humor this old woman and allow me to wonder the halls once the ...

13 likes