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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020
Submitted to Contest #55
Before we leave, one of us will die here tonight. I just wanted to let you know before you read any further: this is the kind of story that will unfold. So you have no misconceptions about the night you are about to witness. So don’t make any emotional attachments here—you’ll only break your own heart at the end. Got it? Good. Here we go. I stride through th...
Submitted to Contest #54
Are there second chances at true love? I’ve carried that question with me for so long I’ve forgotten what it felt like to not question it. At every failed date, every time I texted: “Really, it’s not you, it’s me,” and every time I wondered: what would I do if I could go back? If I could stop myself from making that one mistake? I’d rationalized the scene a million times in my head. There was me, upset at my parents’ divorce—my father’s choice, because ...
Submitted to Contest #51
I’ve always wanted a sibling. Someone who, when you say, “Oh, yeah. Dad just blew up half of the coastline again,” could answer, “Ugh. He’s the worst.” But, no. Dad only wanted one kid, one experiment, one—what’s the pet name he always calls me? Oh, yes—apprentice. Basically, he wanted a glorified sidekick and free child labor. “I’ve got them this time, Gravitas.” Dad sat in his plotting chair, which was nothing...
Submitted to Contest #50
Trigger warning: depictions of self-harm and attempted suicide There was about to be a rocket launch inside the living room of my tiny apartment. Breathe in. Breathe out. Be a good wife. No regrets. “Answer the question. Why. Are. You. Going?” I licked my teeth to keep from spewing out anything else that might throw gasoline on the fire. I am a good wife. I am not a wife-zilla. Don’t slip up. Just breathe. &n...
Submitted to Contest #40
I stare at the phone in my quaking hands. It isn’t a device today; it’s the devil. “You lied to me. Again.” That’s the message I have typed out on the screen. There’s a ball of anxiety in my stomach, making it hard to breathe, and I can’t stop shaking. If I send it, there’s bound to be another argument. That’s all we seem to do anymore is argue. Even simple little questions are met with acerbic responses, as if we’...
Submitted to Contest #32
“Arthur, I need to show you something.” I peeked open one eye and saw a familiar freckled face right before me. That wasn’t unusual in itself, but the fact that she was in my room in the middle of the night was. I let out a wild squawk and thrashed about for a moment. The covers tightened around me until they created a cocoon. The harder I tried to kick them off, the more they fought back. The battle raged on until I thudded off the bed and onto my hardwood floor, the cover the clear victor. “Beatrix!” I hissed. “W...
Submitted to Contest #30
Do you ever just— I don’t know how to finish that sentence. That thought. That feeling. I would open my mouth to say something to people if I knew how to explain it, if I thought they cared. But my friends, my family—no matter where I go, I always see the same thing. Their phones. The back of their phones. Do you ever just want to talk? No. That’s not what I’m feeling whatsoever. Because when...
“Okay, Minerva.” Jupiter sprawled out on her stomach, legs in the air, dress bunched around her bottom. If her aunt saw her, Jupiter was sure to be scolded about how “unladylike” her position was and how she was showing her underwear to all of Cocatrali Island—but why everyone on the island would bother looking at her underwear, Jupiter couldn’t say. Minerva—who’d recently celebrated her fourth birthday—looked at her sister with serious eyes as well. “Jupey!” &...
Submitted to Contest #28
I have only ever had one broken heart. I was eighteen. The age where adolescents everywhere are straddling the line between the hormonal teenage years and the equally hormonal young adult years. I had made it through my teen years relatively unscathed. I’d had a handful of crushes—all of which didn’t even know I existed—and gathered a handful of friends around me. I don’t have those crushes anymore. I have very few of those friends. He was one of my best friends. Even now, as I go through old m...
Winner of Contest #26 🏆
I sit, frozen and rigid, on a cold bench as I stare at the stringed instrument that taunts me with its very existence. So you are a prodigy, the voices whisper in my head. No, of course not, I tell them right back. I am not a prodigy. I am just Lara. The voices are relentless, whispering that dreaded word in my ear, mocking me with its weighty meaning. Fame and exploits, wealth and power: all of these things come with being a prodigy. Lara is not a prodigy. She is just a dabbler, a little girl playing pretend in a world fu...
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