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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019
Submitted to Contest #54
“Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready to play Second Chances with your host, Larry Loveheart!” The voiceover sounds as huge screens slide apart to reveal a set dressed as a bar. The six contestants sit on stools facing the cameras, drinks in hands, while the assembled throng dutifully applaud. From behind the counter, Larry Loveheart – yes, it’s his real name: he changed it by deed-poll – strolls out to greet the audience, his gleaming white teeth unnaturally perfect. He gives a huge wink to camera and begins his introduction. “How many peopl...
I’m someone who has made clumsiness an art form. Dance was never really a part of my life. Despite growing up in the 1970s, disco passed me by. My parents were God-fearing Methodists who attended a tiny church with a congregation that barely made it into double figures and consisted mainly of old ladies in hats. Due to the advanced age of the latter, strenuous social activities were out – with the result that my weekends were spent not at dances but at Beetle drives. Even someone with my total lack of co-ordination could manage to shake a...
The crowd outside the classroom looked less than enthused. Delilah Fayle regarded the motley crew and sighed. Going back to school to try to pass her Ordinary Wizarding Level in Basic Magic had seemed like a good idea at the time, but most of these squibs looked as if they would be even more hopeless than she was herself. She hoped the teacher would be patient. She had already picked out the class troublemaker – a flamboyantly dressed would-be wizard with a raucous laugh and an apparently limitless supply of stories. “So what I was trying t...
Past: Everyone at school called us The Golden Couple – not because he was the star quarterback and I was the head cheerleader, but because everyone who saw us instantly said that here were two people in love. Our yearbook marked us out as the ‘Couple most likely to get married’ and, at the age of eighteen, that’s what Todd and I thought too. When we said goodbye as we left for our separate universities, both of us meant it as an ‘au revoir’ and not an ‘adieu’: we were full of promises to write and call and to visit as soon as possible. We m...
Submitted to Contest #53
College is a time for new beginnings, for reinventing yourself and being the person you couldn’t be in Middle School or High School. Even if you change your image when you hit 15 or 16, in everyone else’s eyes, you’re still the shy girl with glasses and skinny legs or the fat kid who sits by himself in the lunch hall every day because he has no friends. But no one else at college knows who you used to be and that’s what I was looking forward to – until a long-forgotten book made me change my mind. * “Jen! Can you clean your room out for me...
Trigger warning: depictions of rape “Do you like it?” Tim asked as they pulled up outside the cottage. Rose stared at the surprise her husband had planned for her, noting the honeysuckle round the door and the way the late afternoon sunlight caught the windows, and smiled. “It’s beautiful,” she said. It really was a picture-perfect place to spend the weekend. “What time do the others arrive?” she wanted to know. Tim consulted his phone. “The last message I had from Mark said they’d be here by six. That gives us plenty of time to chris...
Submitted to Contest #52
Violet was only fifteen when she first met Ruby’s brother, Jack, but she fell for him on that first evening. Of course, she didn’t tell Ruby that she was in love with him: although her best friend felt proud of her brother for enlisting in the RAF, just because he was now eighteen and about to go off to serve his king and country in the war against Hitler didn’t mean she’d forgiven him for any of their childhood squabbles. So Violet kept her feelings a secret; but from time to time, she casually asked how Jack was getting on, hoping that he ...
Submitted to Contest #51
It was gone six when Marie finally finished her shift at the homeless centre. Wrapping her scarf around her neck for protection against the chill November air, she left the building, longing for the warmth of her tiny flat and the companionship of her cat. She loved what she did at the centre, but it wore her down sometimes. It was good to know she was providing a service for people who needed it, but it could be a thankless task – lots of rough sleepers would far rather be given a bottle of whisky than a mug of hot soup. Nevertheless, she t...
Above my head, thousands of stars wink and twink, clustering together in the familiar constellations I’ve known since I was small. Beside me, my mother points them out, telling me the same stories she always has done, her voice calming and hypnotic against the sound of the ocean in the background. “See that large star over there? And the three smaller ones that form a diagonal line running down to another larger one? That’s The Hare – see? His head... and his back... and his haunches. He was a trickster, but he was also the cleverest anima...
I gazed at the fridge in disbelief. A week ago, I had emptied the kitchen of food before my husband and I went on vacation, but the fridge was definitely not empty now. Upon the previously bare shelves sat a packet of butter (we only ever buy sunflower spread), a block of lard (ditto, olive oil) and what looked like enough bacon to set up a truck stop. “Did you buy any soya milk?” My husband joined me at the open fridge door and peered inside. “What the hell is that?” he asked...
Tigger warning: depictions of sexual assault I was fifteen when I fell for the lead singer in Bad Romance. Lots of people said they were just a group of Duran Duran wannabes, but I didn’t care. Jake Phipps, their frontman, was beautiful: with finely chiselled cheekbones, hair that flopped over his eyes, and trousers so tight you wondered if they were his natural skin, he was every girl’s daydream and every mother’s nightmare. I think it was partly the overt sexuality of the songs that had our parents worried. Sceptics claimed that ‘Love You ...
Submitted to Contest #50
“So, Mr and Mrs Jenkins, let’s talk about why you’re here.” The counsellor’s voice is calm and soothing, but Lily’s mind is already made up. “I’ve told my husband I’m leaving him – I want a divorce. But he’s not listening to me. He keeps saying I’m confused and that I don’t know what I’m talking about.” “Okay, first things first.” The counsellor looks from one spouse to the other. By now she’s used to the way the reconciliation process works: there’s always one partner who wants to separate and one who can’t understand what’s gone wrong. I...
Submitted to Contest #49
He arrived on the platform with time to spare, patting his pocket to make sure that the little box was still there. As he climbed aboard the train and made his way to a vacant seat, his mind returned to the heady moment when he’d decided to ask Violet to marry him. He’d felt giddy enough to want to blurt out his secret there and then, but a proposal needed to be perfect and so he’d resolved to do things properly: buy a ring, find a romantic little picnic spot, then go down on one knee and ask the most important question of his life. The car...
Submitted to Contest #48
I once had to fill in a job application form that asked, “If you had a superpower, what would it be?” and I wrote down, “photoshopper”. Now, I realise most of you will probably tell me that’s NOT a superpower – I mean, we’ve all tweaked stuff on our phones, haven’t we? (I have a particularly fetching photo of myself with a friend where she is surrounded by stars and I am sporting reindeer’s antlers and a little black button nose.) But I want you to try reading that word again: it’s not photo shopper but photos hopper. For some reason I can’t...
Submitted to Contest #47
Suitcase in hand, you head to the station. Your lover is waiting for you on the platform. Despite the years since you have seen each other, you recognise him instantly: it’s as if your heart never let go of him so long ago. You drop the suitcase and run towards him, not caring who sees as your lips meet his. Taking your hand, he walks with you to retrieve your case and then the two of you step onto the train and begin the rest of your life. That’s the dream, the plan. There might possibly be the sound of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no 2 i...
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