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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2023
Submitted to Contest #294
Ms. Carter says Abigail has voices in her head, pressing their palms against the window of her eyes, trying to get out. I never knew exactly what that meant, but that’s how Ms. Carter explained Abigail to me the day she saw me bouncing my rubber ball on the sidewalk in front of Abigail's house.I guess Ms. Carter was worried I might cross the line by accident, ‘cause up until today, I sure weren't planning to do it on purpose, no sir. I knew better than to wade through that fence—the one that staggered along the edge of the Rutherford propert...
Submitted to Contest #293
The elderly man has folds in his coat and folds in his skin and tightens a scarf around his throat. He would smile but he’s German. His words are curt and brisk and hard. I stare at him. More words come out. Loud now; and curt and brisk and hard. I suppose he thinks volume and comprehension are the same. He expects I should understand. He doesn’t know that I don’t. He points to his throat. “He wants you to close the window Grandma. He doesn’t want a sore froat” Elijah is three. He likes yogurt and eggs that are cooked unt...
Submitted to Contest #292
“A man walks into a bar...” Limping Jimmy began. “Oh Lordy, yer not startin' again, are ya?” Fiona reached under the bar, fishing around for her purse. “I’ve heard so many of them jokes. Sure enough, got me own endin' now.” Jimmy looked up at Fiona, expectantly, his pint half full on a soaked Coors Light coaster reused so many times it only lays flat when his glass is on it. Coors is visible in blue ink, the ‘Light’ is between Jimmy’s thumb and forefinger being rolled into a paper ball he’d peeled off the cardboard by fingers ...
Submitted to Contest #286
You were staring at me with those eyes again. It was the look you got when you were working out a puzzle, searching for the piece that would fit, finding it, turning it, flipping it, and when it wasn’t fitting in, that wave of confusion that drifted across your face like a vapour. You looked at me that way through my whole life. All I wanted you to do was to look at me like you looked at David. I didn’t know I was missing something before David existed. It was good then. You cooked me breakfasts and read me books like Milly Mo...
Submitted to Contest #258
I suppose I should be shocked that he killed himself. Usually there are signs, well, so they say. I should have seen it coming. He should have been dropping little clues and I sit here trying to recall if he did. I conclude that perhaps I was too self absorbed to notice, too busy, too involved with life to know that death was just around the corner. How is it possible to be married to someone for over twenty years and have absolutely no indication that he was planning to die? Yet there I was, standing in front of my dead husband who was...
Submitted to Contest #255
What I might have done yesterday, and who I might have been may be different today as I sit in my leather chair in the trailer I call home thinking on these things, but those decisions are gone. They are made like the bed I lay in. I must let them go or for sure they will strangle me in the sheets my mind rolls around in. I don’t want to think of him, but I can’t help it, and sometimes my brain beats so fast I need to drink beer or wine or something to deaden the thoughts that will otherwise rip right out of my mind if not pushed into a...
Submitted to Contest #253
Every muscle was taut and the sweat that had formed four hours before dripped, like melting icicles. Her shirt soaked through, the sheets soaked through, she began to shake. Knees knocked together, teeth chattered, her heart pulsed in her ears, a hundred horses running on a cobblestone street thundered past her eardrums. Lungs that had been panting moments before gave way to gasps as her heart wretched in her chest. Panic covered her like a cold pillow pushed against her face, she fought for breath under it as her mind reached up. Her though...
Submitted to Contest #250
I knew the sound vibrating from your throat would pour like sand down mine. I knew my stomach would squeeze hunger when you closed the curtains on the day. I knew the walls would shriek when I saw you staring into your palm. I knew Henry would never fix it. The TV was on, and Barney was singing. The moan was back, and you stared deep into it. It was pressed in the middle of your palm, a red dot punched into skin by the tip of the knife you use to carve turkey on Christmas day. You were master of the blade and you stopped before the we...
Submitted to Contest #240
If the wind would have whispered, ‘Give it to me’- and had whipped that page of my life from my hand and carried it to the clouds, I would not have chased after it. Invisible enmity, created by ill-spoken words, affixed themselves deep into my mind from that day forward. It become apparent that one, whose only sin was to be born beautiful, and the other, who would one day write about it, were loved differently by the world. The sharp tang of those blunt words, snapped against my skin. Its icy breeze bent me backward, and shackled who I was b...
Submitted to Contest #216
“L’habituel?” The usual?“Mais bien sur.” But of course.“Tout de suite.” Right away.Victor settles himself and waits.On this side of the window pane, Voltaire and Diderot still hum. It is as if they pass through the century without moving a muscle. The dead leave thought. Here it still whispers from the walls.A tinkling of glass is heard from the far room. Laughter from the room beside that one. Each compartment within the building had a history. La Fontaine has coughed in this one. Napoleon Bonaparte in that one. Voices of both are etched in...
Submitted to Contest #202
(Author note; While I listed this as fiction, do know that it is fiction based on real events. Because the fictional aspect outweighed the non-fiction, I felt compelled to put it in that category.)Sebastian stretched like a cat. A big cat. A cougar cat. He scratched his stubble absentmindedly. Tattoos and veins juddered over his forearm as he did so. The sun streamed through the window calling the day new. It was Friday, but a holiday Friday. He remembered the day and eased his mind back into his pillow. “Ah, no rush.” The digital clock on t...
Shortlisted for Contest #200 ⭐️
“I tink I saw one in the attic, Da.” Bobby said.“Aye, go on up dare, and have a look will yer? One more should do it then.” Patrick instructed his eldest son. A chair pushed against the linoleum scratched black beneath the feet, freeing Bobby to the attic for a suitcase hidden under a hundred years of dust. They were packing for America.“Da, are we going to leave everyting else?” Mikey asked. His eyes wandered around the sitting room. The ratted carpet he and Bobby rolled around on, bare in the spot where some feet, shoved in shoes and other...
Submitted to Contest #193
Sandwiched between Robson and Alberni streets two buildings keep company. The twenty-two-story skyscraper, a dark green prism pulled from the minds of architects at MCM sits on the corner of Thurlow and Alberni. In its shadow, on the corner of Thurlow and Robson, a rich two-story in red brick.The brick oozes finery dipped in an age of old when men removed themselves from the world to smoking rooms where they would sit in burgundy leather wing backs sipping port and chew the end of a puro while discussing world affairs. An arched mutton windo...
Submitted to Contest #191
(Warning; Adult Content. This fictional story is based on real events. The real events were difficult for this author to write and may be difficult for the reader to read.“ я куплю цветы. I’ll buy the flowers.” He cracked his gum and tucked his sunglasses into the neck of his fitted tee. He smelled good. Expensive cologne fused with aniline leather, it smelled like money, a lot of money. He knew it. He did it intentionally.He was an eight dressed up as a ten. Ten was power and power was what he inhaled. Controlled. Calculated. Clever.They ca...
Submitted to Contest #190
There he sat, back to the black-bellied stove that once burned coal a little too hot. A cup filled with coffee rested on the wooden table beside a notepad. There he sat. There he wrote.It was a time before the time of computers and laptops and cell phones. An age when the tip of a pen met paper and the mind was squeezed out in ink. Thought flowed with the sweep of the hand, pushed into tails and curls, and its sentence finished in a puddle of blue. An ink dot. The stop of the thought. The start of another.He sat doing this, lifting his pen n...
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