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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2025
Submitted to Contest #319
The girl was crying. Fat, salty tears were streaming down her rosy pink cheeks, coloured by shame, regret, remorse. Her sandy brown hair was clumped together in matted bunches, hanging like rose bushes around her shoulders. I wondered when the last time she’d brushed it was.‘I –I didn’t mean to,’ she was saying. Blubbering, really, chin wobbling, voice shaky and throat bobbing. ‘I didn’t think he’d –he’d get away. I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know who she was apologising to. Me? The world? The one she set free? Anyone who would listen. Not many peop...
Submitted to Contest #317
The man was young. A stubble darkened his chin, a small cobweb of creases forming in the corners of his eyes. Dark purple shadows bracketed his eyes, making them look like they were bulging in their sockets. His clothes were tattered –skinny jeans that had long since gone out of fashion, a plaid shirt worn open over a plain grey t-shirt. The man was dead.‘Arden,’ I said. My voice boomed. I hadn’t used it in quite some time.The man looked up. He carried a backpack with a keyring attached –the letter ‘N’ now faded clashed against his metal wat...
Submitted to Contest #316
I heard the cars collide before I saw it.A scream. A sickening, gut-wrenching, grating sound, low and guttural. The groaning of metal as it contorted and twisted into a shape that looked nothing like the front of a car. Glass shattering and tiny fragments scattering, tinkling as they landed. Then: bright lights. Blurred shapes and ringing in my ears. I checked myself –dazed, running my hands across my arms, my torso. Nothing more than superficial injuries, nicked skin from the glass fragments sitting on the dashboard. Smoke, coming from some...
Submitted to Contest #315
The box was dusty, its sides moist and soggy, draped with shadows and cobwebs that were nestled in the back of my wardrobe. The bottom almost gave way as I hoisted it into my arms, dust tickling my nose, burning my eyes. A tiny handprint was visible, layered beneath particles and dirt, barely an outline, a shade lighter than its surroundings. Dust (or nostalgia) made my eyes water. It had been a long time. The name, Emery, was still scrawled on the side, in thick, black letters, but had faded over time. It didn’t need to be there. Who else w...
Submitted to Contest #314
It was hot. The hottest day in a decade, at least. The sun was an unforgiving ball of fire, beating down on my shoulders, licking my pale skin until it peeled and blistered and turned darker. Unrelenting for a week now. My parents now prayed for rain every night before bed, in hushed voices, sweaty hands clamped in front of the only fan in our house. My hair was glued to my forehead, beads of perspiration merged into a sticky swamp on my skin. I was wearing the smallest, shortest clothes I had –my sister’s old school uniform, a shirt that ba...
Submitted to Contest #311
I can make things levitate. Sure, you might be thinking, as you sit in the audience of one of my magic shows, coat strewn across your lap, crumbs of popcorn or whatever greasy overpriced food you’ve been persuaded into buying clinging to the corners of your mouth. Sure, you can. I can use thin string and background workers too. Not that impressive. But then how do I take your green-rimmed glasses right off your face, lift them into the air, then place them right back down on your head again? How do I peel the leaf off of you that’s been clin...
Shortlisted for Contest #310 ⭐️
I couldn’t tell if the words I was typing were from me or borrowed from someone else. That’s how unoriginal I was; a mosaic of authors, pieces extracted from my favourite novels and forcefully injected into my own work. Never truly my own, simply a puzzle made from fragments of books I’d picked up here and there –a sentence I’d seen in a magazine, a quote from a non-fiction book I’d forced myself to read. At thirty-two, most successful authors had already been established, and those who didn’t make it had dropped into mundane nine-to-fives a...
Submitted to Contest #309
Four plates were balanced on one arm, a drink and another two on the other. They teetered dangerously close to slipping onto the floor, and Harper gritted her teeth, narrowly swerving to avoid a shrieking ten-year-old boy, hair matted with sweat, shoving fistfuls of chips into his mouth. She finally breathed a sigh of relief once she reached the kitchen and deposited all of the licked-clean plates to where the kitchen staff glared at her, which Harper ignored. Why did an entire sports team have to come in right now? When they were understaff...
Submitted to Contest #308
I wasn’t entirely surprised when the letter arrived in my mailbox, the paper stale and stained and the corners creased like someone’s dog had decided it was a good chew toy. My grandfather, Albert, had lived to a whopping one hundred and twelve before passing away peacefully on his farm. As I was his only living relative, I knew I’d inherit his property and assets. I’d spent my childhood summers on Albert’s farm. He had an apple orchard that blossomed with tiny red apples that I’d scale the tree to reach, sinking my crooked teeth into tart a...
Submitted to Contest #307
Sutton’s mum, a small, slender lady, sure knew how to hit when she wanted to. Sutton had often wondered if she’d taken martial arts when she was younger –when she yielded a slipper, a coat hanger or his dad’s belt and repeatedly smacked his body, the sting and angry red mark it left behind said she must’ve.‘Stupid boy, Sutton,’ his mum muttered. ‘Why did I raise such a stupid boy?’ Sutton only scoffed, grabbed his exam paper, and scampered back up to his room.‘Better be studying up there,’ his mum called after him. ‘Don’t want to see you on ...
Submitted to Contest #306
The phone buzzed against my sweaty temples. The air was sour with the stench of stale pizza and sweat that was painted across the hard crusts like sauce. I kicked an empty tissue box across my bedroom floor, and my nose wrinkled as a brown, shiny-backed insect skittered away.The line connected. ‘Hello, Cassidy speaking,’ a quiet yet hopeful voice said from the other side, as if she was expecting me to tell her she’d won the lottery. Even so, it was a nice change from the begrudged sixteen-year-old boys who had barely gotten their adult voice...
Shortlisted for Contest #305 ⭐️
My first memories were vague and fleeting in my mind, but I still remembered my first words, crystal clear: ‘Hello, world’.My dad was a programmer. When I was young, he shut himself in his study for hours at a time and only emerged for the occasional glass of water. At night he’d tuck me into bed and feed me stories about my mum –stories that I took and used as a blueprint for the face and personality of the woman I was never fortunate enough to meet. She’d talk to me –projected in front of my face by my eyes. A soft, caring smile, long, bro...
Submitted to Contest #304
I’d never liked the daytime. I think it stemmed from when I was a teenager –late nights in front of the T.V, energy drinks piling up beside me until the early morning sun peeked through my curtains. My parents used to hate it. They’d tell me about how important sleep was, and one day I’d regret it. In high school, then in university, then when I started working a nine-to-five, like them. I never did. Not even when I started working as a photographer. Animals that only emerged under the cover of nightfall were the only ones worth capturing –m...
Submitted to Contest #303
Calihan never knew death until he stroked its hand, tucked its hair behind its ear, wiped the tears off its gaunt face. He’d never seen anyone look so dead, like hanging onto life like a frayed rope, a single strand suspending her above the afterlife. Dipping her toes in, saying, hey, this is what it would be like if you just gave in. ‘Hey, Cal,’ Chani croaked, her pasty lips pulling into a smile. ‘How are you?’Calihan’s heart sank, like it did every time he visited his girlfriend. Her eyes seemed vacant and watery, devoid of the fire of pas...
Submitted to Contest #302
Emily’s house was shrouded by an eternal shadow. Early in the morning, when the sun peeked its golden rays over the horizon, it was there, a looming figure that blocked the light from gracing her large bedroom window. All the way through to when the sun slowly blinked into darkness on the other side of the house, it stood tall behind it, daring the sun to touch the house, to warm the carpet, but it never did. It was the Ikea across the street. Emily didn’t mind it. The sun’s rays were so feeble in winder they hardly warmed her skin and in su...
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