Emily Hemmings

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2019

Stories (6)

6 Stories

758 karma pts

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“I-10 to Tucson ” by Emily Hemmings

Submitted to Contest #110

Up along the side of the road there was a figure, standing, waiting patiently as if in a lineup for a movie ticket. Carol Massey had already made up her mind to pull over in order to pick up this person who was waiting oh-so patiently for two reasons: one, had some tired long-haul driver not picked her up on the side of the road so many years ago, where would she be? Not in Phoenix, that’s for sure. Not happy. She’d still be in Tucson, haunted by her gruff father and the ghost of the child she had failed. The second reason is that she kept a...

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“The Department of Afterlife Training” by Emily Hemmings

Submitted to Contest #75

I had been working for the Department of Afterlife Training and Reassignment for nine-thousand, four-hundred years, ever since dying in northern Mesopotamia at the age of seventeen. I do not remember my real name from that time - when spoken to, I was now called Uri - but I do remember how I died. I was one of the first human beings to ever drink themselves to death from the newly discovered drink of the gods: beer. It was not my choice to die, but the same could be said for most people. And like most people, upon my death I had bee...

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“Life in the Trees” by Emily Hemmings

🏆 Winner of Contest #50

“What did you want to do? Like, in general I mean.” This is the first thing either boy had said in about an hour and a half. Approximately forty-five minutes had been taken up sharing a cold can of beans in the Dulchet’s tree fort. Both the treehouse and the beans were free for the taking, now that Mr. and Mrs. Dulchet had passed away. Waylon and Matthew passed back and forth the can of beans between them in complete silence, in the kind quiet contemplation something as utilitarian as beans usually demands. Matthew had been the first to bre...

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“One Man Show” by Emily Hemmings

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #50

When I first saw her, I assumed that she was an anxious mirage, a type of unkind specter here to haunt my play. After all, Clarissa coming to my show, my first show, mind you, would be such an incredible cruelty to me that I was obviously skeptical about the authenticity of the person in the audience, three rows in, four from the left, reading the program. She had moved to New Jersey, hadn’t she, to be with that big man, the one who was always wearing a rotating universe of different hats? Gun to my head, I couldn’t have picked him out of a ...

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“Astrid” by Emily Hemmings

Submitted to Contest #49

Originally designed in Japan in 2029, the initial spirit of the Tomodatchi-Bot was simple and noble: to provide comfort and companionship. The boxy units included an LED screen that would simulate emotions and basic conversation, and each and every one would conform its behaviors to the person who owned it, taking on a life of its own with enough socialization. The Tomodatchi was designed to alleviate some of the overpowering isolation some of their older citizens were experiencing, and it was a complete failure, both commercially and cultur...

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“Pagliacci on the Q Train” by Emily Hemmings

🏆 Winner of Contest #22

It is 4:06 PM on December 31st, and my mother is sobbing at the kitchen table. She is wearing a peculiar type of party hat, one with a hidden button underneath the brim. When this button is activated, a string of lights declares the year, 1993, above her head in a semi-circle. While my mother cries, the sprigs of tinsel on the hat bob comically. I do not laugh, although I want to, just a little bit. Instead, I watch her, studying her ruddy cheeks with a detached fascination and chewing on my cuticles. I am not even sure if she is completely ...

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Author bio

My name is Emily Hemmings. I wrote my first short story when I was nine years old, and it was so inconceivably bad that I openly wept onto the loose leaf paper I had written it on, which was very dramatic and writerly of me. I did not start writing fiction again until my 30s after taking a science fiction course during my belated attempt at a university degree, a course I mostly skipped to write my first novel, which I self-published, printed and immediately took off the market. I reside in Toronto with two cats and an adult human man.

Winning 2 stories 🏆

Contest #50

Life in the Trees – read story

Contest #22

Pagliacci on the Q Train – read story

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #50

One Man Show – read story