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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2021
Submitted to Contest #99
“No Samuel,” I said as I caught his arm, “There’s too much glass in there. You might get hurt.” Samuel looked at me and then looked at the empty blue wading pool with numerous shattered bottles. The collection of glass would have been a beautiful semblance if the individual pieces hadn’t been so sharp and jagged. Samuel sighed his six-year-old disgust and then hurried off to the swing set. I was his age when we played on this park’s wooden merry-go-round, metal twisty slides, and metal monkey bars. Samuel r...
Submitted to Contest #98
I knew Simon was going to say something. I know when most people are going to tell me something important. It doesn’t have to be on the phone either. It can be in person, in an email, or even by text. I can sense the way words are going to be put together. My mom always thought my ability bordered on the creepy and absurd while no one else believed in my precognitive sense about communication. However, it served me well most of the time. I knew when pop quizzes were going to happen in school, when...
Submitted to Contest #97
The windows of our house were always locked and sealed shut. We never had access to a summer breeze and the air inside the house was always a little musty even during July and August.Our three-story house stood in the middle of a suburb in a smaller city in Ohio. However, the overgrowth of bushes and trees hid our house from the neighborhood and subsequently the modernization that went along with it. Six generations of the Abernathy family have lived in these walls and as I was nearing my eighteenth birthday, I would finally learn how t...
Submitted to Contest #96
I’m a guest in my own bedroom. Normally, a thought like that would make me chuckle, but the awkward sparseness of the room grounded me in reality. My queen bed with the dark blue comforter and two almost flat pillows had been replaced with a short twin bed with orange fleece bedding that did not go with the tan carpet. This room used to have so much more in it. The bed was now against the opposite wall and all of my furniture was sold after mom and dad died. I didn’t want to deal with anything in this house after my pa...
Submitted to Contest #95
Angry tears kept falling and wouldn’t stop. It was just supposed to be a day trip to a wedding reception of a former student. Now, I was hopelessly lost in my car in the hills of Kentucky. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue. I had a new car with GPS and a cell phone with Google maps, but some important little, expensive piece of the new car went out and I was in a rental car with no GPS. Then my phone crashed right as I crossed over the Ohio border, and I used the last 9% of my battery to locate a shady gas station to buy a charge...
Submitted to Contest #94
“NO!”“YES!”“I said NO!”“I don’t care!”The argument had been going on for at least five minutes now and there was no sign of it stopping. I was sitting at a booth in the middle of the McDonald’s watching these two relatively good-looking guys argue over the tray between them. It all started over whether or not they were going to put ketchup on the fries or make a pile on the side, and it had escalated to an all-out yelling match. They were sitting at a booth opposite me, but both were literally on the edge of their seats holding on to th...
Submitted to Contest #93
“You know prom is in two weeks, Darby?”My heart skipped a beat as I pulled my backpack from my locker. I didn’t want to make eye contact with Adam right away. It would look too eager.“Yeah. I saw the posters up by the cafeteria this morning.” I shut my locker and we started walking toward the main staircase. I could feel my lunch doing flips in my stomach as I tried to control my breathing and smiling.Adam and I had been dating for a few months and his casualness was one of his most attractive qualities. He never got stressed ...
Submitted to Contest #92
Mom said twenty minutes in and twenty minutes out. Put on your sunscreen every half an hour and do not forget your face. Honestly, she thinks I am allergic to the sun. It’s ridiculous. “Come on, Beth,” Bekka and Rita yelled from the shallow end of the CityDay pool. I had been waiting all summer for this Girl Scout outing. We were going to swim all day, buy food from the snack bar, and hang out witho...
Submitted to Contest #91
“This is the last and final warning,” the small elderly man grunted at us as we sat in the back corner of the library, “Have you no respect for the other patrons?” I slowly looked around as did Alma. We both shrugged. There was no one else in the library and we hadn’t been talking. We watched as the old man tottered off back behind his counter and computer. “What a grump,” Alma said under her breath and bi...
Submitted to Contest #90
“Grandpa? Are you really going to tear out that stump?” “Yes, Rowan. It is ruining the yard.” “No it’s not!” Rowan looked horrified, “It’s my stage and my reading place and my dinosaur mountain…” The tears were starting to well in his eyes. My dad looked over at me and all I could do was smile. That stump was more to me too. I continued to rock on the wooden glider and let my mind drift back to the mid-1980s. I could see my brother’s green short-shorts, knee-high tube socks, and skin-tight t-shirt. The ponytails on both si...
Submitted to Contest #89
It had been almost four minutes. It was not agony or ecstasy. It was one song, and dance can play funny tricks on the mind while an artist performs. Time speeds up when the music is slow and conversely takes forever even when the beat seems impossibly fast. Faith had only one week to pick the music, prepare the dance, and find something to wear. She had not felt this sort of excitement and anxiety in decades, especially not for herself. Faith had never been much for risk-taking and now was certainly not the time to change her mind. Her...
Submitted to Contest #88
“You can’t live without me!” My shout was not only ignored; it was absently regarded by all of the other seven. I was always left out. I was never understood or even acknowledged, even though I managed to cook and clean for those seven for eight years. Then that white snow chick showed up and now I am staring at the wood grain on a door. I backed away from the door and felt the heat within my chest begin to fade. They wanted her. She could do my job. I would walk away, and I did. I would also find my way in the world to ...
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