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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2022
Submitted to Contest #311
Some things are a long time coming. Jane clung onto those words as she clung onto all the truths. She needed them. They were her strength and her shield. In a way, she was building herself with these truths. Rebuilding having been demolished from the inside out. Life was tough, she knew that. She’d felt it’s abrasions often enough. This wasn’t life that had done this to her though and it certainly wasn’t self-inflicted, however much her rebellious thoughts told her this. If not you, then who? Angry wasp questions assailed her. Their stings ...
Submitted to Contest #310
Her name was Cassandra. He’d seen it on her name badge as she’d asked him to place his chin on the rest and his forehead against the bar. The apparatus looked like a medieval torture device. Jim could well imagine a rusty spike being driven into each eye, more for sport than to illicit his confession to crimes and treachery he had not perpetrated, but was readily capable of. He could see her beyond the bizarre machine. Obscured. Blurred. More real for the partial sight of her. He could smell her perfume and another aroma that may have been f...
Submitted to Contest #309
The ice cracks and jangles as he makes the G&T. She watches the simple ritual that has been played out between them a thousand times and she smiles. Neither of them are hungry. The Summer heat has put paid to that. The glasses are already sweating as he hands her the drink. He leads the way, out into the garden and the cosy seating in the shade. A light aircraft clambers noisily through the baking sky. Calling back to them over its shoulder in a last ditch attempt to be noticed. He hears the men calling to each other on the nearby cricke...
Submitted to Contest #308
Summer came along in fits and starts. Uncertain as to its place in this world, as so many of us are. There were days of promise, only for that promise to be glibly broken or gently wasted. Tears of rain darkening spirits with yet another rude betrayal. The deceit was wholesale. When Summer finally arrived, there were myriad complaints of the stifling heat and lack of respite from the intensity of the smiling assassin sun. Anticipation building, a triumphal moment of climax followed by guilt and regret. One of life’s many cycles and patterns....
Submitted to Contest #307
My life spiralled downwards like a wayward strand of corrupt DNA. My genes were flawed, and try as I might, I never found a place that would accept me. Acceptance was foreign currency to me. I could never allow myself to be. I was lazy in my ambition. Forever moving on so that I could not be found out. Somehow I found myself here. More accident than design. I was in a place of ancient stone. Tired old wood. And books that knew more than I ever could. This was a city of learning. Built in contrast with another city intent on the same pursuit....
Submitted to Contest #306
Day OneAt last! A date that was a date. Not a strange interview where I get the distinct impression no one has ever been up to the job, or ever will be for that matter. For once, this wasn’t an exercise in disappointment. Or a strange act of vengeance. A poison arrow of an interaction that misses the mark and hits my heart instead of the stone cold heart of the intended victim. Even then, it isn’t the ex who conspicuously hurt her. It’s one or both parents. That’s where all this begins for us. Even then, it pre-dates our parents by a generat...
Submitted to Contest #305
I love my home. All of it, including how it is embedded in the midst of sprawling fields and verdant woods. I live at the foot of a sweeping hill. There are several ways into the village. The best approaches are from the top of the hill and afford a view of the entire hamlet nuzzling in the bosom of a countryside that breathes life into my tired soul. I cannot capture that view. I may grab a hint of it, but it is a living thing that defies description, let alone being rendered into a mere two dimensions. Besides, the view is constantly chang...
Submitted to Contest #304
I start the day with good intentions. I carry them with me for the whole of that day and if I manage to find a way of making something stick. I deploy those good intentions in a last ditch attempt at living my life the way I think I always intended to. My life is a fucking overdraft. I’m in debt. The kicker is that I don’t know who I’m indebted to, only that it’s all going wrong and there’s a gang of consequences who will take a look at the ledger and come and collect. Mobsters. Confidence tricksters. Sharks circling as they sniff out the bl...
Submitted to Contest #303
Today is a good day. The sun is shining and I can feel its warmth even before I leave my flat. Some days are better than others and this is one of those days. My bones tell me this and I never disagree with my bones. The decision has been made. I am on a course that has already been set. I love Alice too much to turn back now. A man needs a plan. My mother would tell me this over and over. Pay attention to the detail. It’s all in the preparation. And I have spent my sweet time preparing. I have my bag and I have everything worked out. I leav...
Submitted to Contest #302
The man that has introduced himself as Gary smiles. The smile is warm and loving. It radiates a gentle heat. He is a sun. He brings life. There is calm here. She looks around her. Her eyes are searching. Searching for something that will allow her confusion and anxiety to abate. Trying to make sense of her surroundings. Trying to make sense of herself in the context of these surroundings.Thoughts assail her, as they do us all. But these thoughts are dark ruffians stalking a Victorian landscape in her mind. There is no safety in these interna...
Submitted to Contest #301
I found myself feeling sorry for Micky. He’d backed the wrong horse. His were the values of a bygone era. I questioned whether those values had ever seen action. Ceremonial swords made to represent something better than the truth of the barbarity and shame of war. That was the wrong question. We’re trapped in Russian dolls of false paradigms waving our opinions around at whoever will listen, when no one is listening. Why would they listen when we ourselves are deaf to the reality of our situation? Micky’s problem was that he was fiercely lo...
Submitted to Contest #300
I’ve heard too many stories of the death of loved ones. That is enough for me. More than enough. Far too much. I’ve had gutfuls of that cold buffet and then some. And so I have retreated here. Where it’s safe. This is where I have always retreated when the fabric of my life has been torn asunder. This, my original home. The place that I now call home is not a patch on this. This is the blue print, but I am no artisan. I cannot discern this plan and I don’t have a clue as to how you would go about making a home such as this. My place is a con...
Submitted to Contest #299
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Ben was looking in the mirror right now and wishing that he wasn’t. Thom’s words were, he knew, being taken out of context. He knew this because he was the one wilfully taking them out of that context. He could be quite contrary like that and if accused of such an attribute would deploy his contrariness on the denial of this mildly disagreeable nature of his. He was having a moment. This particular moment stalked Ben and would not let him go. He’d made a mistake and he’d been haunted by it ever s...
Submitted to Contest #298
The Spring sun lights the world beyond the window, and she sees it afresh. Where there were drab greys there is now the promise of vibrancy that will be fulfilled as the day itself progresses. There are no empty words here. There is a pending reality to the sun’s commitment to the Spring and Mother Nature is eagerly underwriting this union.She looks upon this scene and there is fear in her. There is no discerning the cause of that fear, only the source. She has been afraid all her life but became adept at drowning out the sounds of her fear ...
Submitted to Contest #297
The bedroom is the dressing up room. The changing room. The chrysalis state at the end of each day. An end, blissful, restful or otherwise. The illusory promise of a new beginning. The prelude of an awakening that never quite delivers. Not when you want it to. Not when you pin your hopes to its flag and expect those winds of hope to raise it to a fertile erection with life as its only objective. But there is nowhere else. This is the only cave of refuge. It is not safe. It is as safe as it gets. Of all the rooms in my house and my home, this...
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