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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2023
Submitted to Contest #295
The Plaza de Armas buzzed with tourists. They wandered like headless chickens between stalls where vendors sold everything from alpaca scarves to dried coca leaves.“Be careful about stealing dreams,” my grandmother cautioned. She stood in the high altitude cold; her llama jobonas bundled her shoulders in reds and stark yellows, the air smelled of roasted corn and burning copal. “In ancient times, people believed dream stealing was possible. But dreams need to arrive willingly, like a warm caress in the night when you’re sleeping comfortably....
Submitted to Contest #293
Congressman David Chen found himself where he never guessed he'd be: the dining car on The Express, a high-speed train humming through the Hungarian countryside. A patchwork of browns and gray-dirty snow flashed by. Abandoned Soviet-era factories passed surreal in skeletal frames, riddled with broken windows and crumbling walls. David’s head pounded. Nausea caused him to sweat. He hated trains, but loved his wife, and the Prague conference was over. Just one more meeting, and then he and his wife could take a river cruise out of Budapest.Stu...
Submitted to Contest #290
McKenzie’s eyes were sunken, shadows of exhaustion. His hands twitched where they gripped the table. Sweat streamed down his face, stinging his eyes. After three days of interrogation, he searched his mind and flung open door after door, only to find them all empty. Opposite him, a hulking man directed a spotlight (Thegor was his name). He rasped, “We’re running out of time. We can still help each other.” The man was deformed. His back revealed a grotesque formation of vertebrae creeping up his neck.After noticing McKenzie’s taking in his ve...
Submitted to Contest #287
"The big mountains are high. Understand, they don’t bury the dead, they climb past them,” said the old man. He spit in a white china cup. “There’s a code, and it’s hard to explain to a flatlander.”The young reporter’s back flexed in condemnation and judgement. He was taking notes and didn’t look up. "How do you justify ignoring a frozen body, someone’s loved one?”The old man lifted his gold tipped cane off the arm of his leather office chair. He limped to the window with the cane tapping and stared out with a voice so low the reporter set do...
Submitted to Contest #286
Jason was concentrating on his computer screen. He would type a sentence or two, and then stop, think a bit, then type a sentence more. The story he was writing unfolded in his mind and transposed to the page. It was a story about a boy, no more than ten. He began to type:****The boy sprawled on the living room floor, the snow blowing against the window. He was excited to be missing school. Earlier, his mother, haggard, with little sleep, black circles under her eyes, had taken his temperature.“It’s 101,” she said to the boy who was lay...
Submitted to Contest #285
"One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return?"— H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, An Invention, 1895•───────•∞•Ж•∞•───────•Chief Minister Cloe Martin stood at a floor to ceiling window in a conference room six floors up from the streets of London. Her spine tingled with a newfound fear that had struck her days before. She was overwelmed with gnawing thoughts telling her she was over her head; she couldn't sleep. The twisting grip deep in her stomach hadn’t waned. From this same window, on what had started as a city workday as any other, s...
Submitted to Contest #280
Should we order wine?Sure.Don’t be that way.What way? Order wine if you want.I will then.Go for it.…Waiter. Please bring me a wine menu.Yes madam.…See. You can do it.Now you’re just being difficult. Stop it.Or what?Or I’ll leave.Leave then.…What happened to us?Life. Life happened.Life happened? That’s it? A cliché?Life is a cliché.Did you ever love me?What is love?Don’t give me that. Did you?…Madam. Your wine list.Thank you. Leave it.…Did you?Did I what?Love me? Did you love me?Maybe not.…I could always tell when you were...
The man lay prone on the edge of thick woods sighting down the scope of a thirty-aught six hunting rifle. Snow flurries melted on the back of his neck. For an unknown reason, and mixed with the smell of pine and gun oil, the phrase ‘veil of an endless winter’ entered his mind. He shook his head. Poetry is the vice of fools, he scoffed. Through the compressed distance the telescopic lens thickened the falling snow, proving the chalk house a quarter kilometer away a miraged dream. A woman came out on the porch centered in the crosshairs. ...
Submitted to Contest #277
“Can you lose yourself? Why do I long, a lonely desperation, to find myself again?”“You’re not alone,” my father, Time, answered. “Many feel an emptiness, a search for meaning. Although within your heart you ache, you also aren’t the same as men.” I saw my father as heaven’s strength, but Time was running old. “It’s true, Father, I often lie awake in early hours, my memory’s fingers barely touch the thing. The hound slips its bounds and taunts me in a fog. I know it’s there, but when I grasp the thing firmly, only mist escapes my h...
Submitted to Contest #275
“You won’t have your internet or TV for three months,” Oscar said to his son.Emily exhaled from the passenger seat. “Can you leave the poor boy alone? He’s only seven.”John ignored his father and continued to stare out the back window of their silver SUV. After turned onto a jeep trail, they rumbled along over rocks for two-miles, the dust trailing behind. Finally, the SUV pulled in front of a falling down rusty sign, “Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch”. “The Idaho wilderness,” Oscar said. “This will be fun. Those hills over there? I remember ...
Submitted to Contest #272
May 25, 2024Lieutenant Michael DonavanHomicide DivisionHarrison Police Department465 Avenue AHarrison, Michigan 87078Lieutenant Donavan,Should this letter reach you in time, you will find me entombed within the Bartholomew family mausoleum at the Bayview Cemetery. Buried in the floor near the north wall is a crypt covered with a clear quartz-like stone which forms the lid. Depending on when this letter reaches you, I may still be alive.Now, before you judge Clarisa, know I loved her dearly. My wife enjoyed a generous trust and she gave back ...
Submitted to Contest #265
Adam Daedalus Rocket was not born with the middle name Daedalus, or the last name Rocket. He chose his own names. The kids in the orphanage taunted him relentlessly. “You’re a moron to dream you can go to the stars, the shortest kid in the class. Elton John’s Rocket Man is not even a real astronaut, but some character in a dumb song!” The jeering that stung the most? “Your parents didn’t even care enough to keep you. You were unloved.”There was no time for anything but school as far as he was concerned. He made no friends and kept ...
Submitted to Contest #263
New York City: 1955Lonnie White pulled up his collar at a Fifth Avenue bookstore window against the cold. Black patches from lack of sleep lay under his eyes. Snowflakes, each an unkindly tiny angel to his mind, descended in the night. But it wasn’t the crystals scurrying down his back that gave him the shudders. Nor was it the ice melting in the hollow of his back. It was the overwhelming thought the snow crystals gathered together purposely, of one mind, a sentient being. This is not possible, he told himself. But it feels, all the same, l...
Submitted to Contest #246
The eight of us gathered, lost souls one and all, at the recruiting station. We were waiting in a light rain. Every Sunday morning at 10:00 am our district had a drawing, but rumor said the number of groups to cover all the days, and even the hours of every day, were growing more and more.This morning, Adam had come down with me. He tilted his head back like he does, his eyes a little too wide open, so I could tell he was scared. The last time we'd both gotten notice our numbers came up '1' and '2'. Can you believe it, our numbers '1' and '2...
Submitted to Contest #243
Commander John Forebear re-enters the airlock to Novac 3 and takes his place at the bridge's command module. No sooner is he settled in than his headset sparks in static."It's a blue line here, John. Ice to every horizon, kind of mist-like, an artic blue, mythical. It's really something."The Commander smiles. Just like my science officer to admire the view. I love him, but it's another thing to keep him focused on the task at hand."I can see," the Commander replies. "Your visuals are coming in fine, but you're not on vacation, are you O...
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