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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2022
Submitted to Contest #222
Twenty years it took me. Twenty long, hard years. Twenty years to discern the meaning of just a few small words. But then, that’s living and living is all we’ve got. “You’ve got this,” my Mother said these words whilst wearing a pained smile and then she let go of her very last breath, letting go of my hand and her mortal coil as that warm air wheezed out of her. The transformation was shocking. I saw the life seep away from her and I wondered where it went. This wasn’t my Mum. Not anymore it wasn’t. She’d left me and she’d left me...
School was completely shit. I need to get that straight from the very start. Filled with a bunch of tossers and the worst of them were the teachers. Sanctimonious know- it-alls spouting crap that was neither use nor ornament. Surviving was all it was about. What a waste of time. Good job I had a good bunch of mates. We had a laugh. That was all there was. It was a case of getting through it and nothing more than that. The day I left school was the best day of my life. I’d arrived. End of the bullshit. I was going to earn and a man ...
There are moments in life where everything narrows to one point. For a heart-stopping moment, it’s as though the air itself solidifies and either side of you there are walls and the walls are closing in. They close in so much that you’re trapped in a tunnel. A spec of data travelling down the wire. Then, as the transition makes itself fully known to you, it all makes sense and the surging tide of fear settles. The fear has not dissipated, but somehow it has turned, becoming an ally in the endeavour that beckons. I step up onto the stage an...
Submitted to Contest #221
“It just doesn’t feel right…” Sally gave John The Look. The Look was actually a suite of looks, but John lumped them all together because one way or another he was in trouble when she looked at him like that. Maybe it was more nuanced than he supposed, but John played it safe all the same, and so far he’d kept the fallout restricted to the initiating trouble and held off most escalations. As far as was possible anyway. He wasn’t dull and limited, he understood things well enough to know that sometimes the initial trouble was an openi...
I read a funny quote once. The problem with stupid people is that they don’t know they are stupid. The joke is a paradox. Stupid people read it and they laugh. The problem is we’re all stupid. That’s the joke. And it’s not funny. It’s not funny and I’m certainly not laughing. If I’m honest, I doubt I’ll ever laugh. Another oft used quote is something along the lines of we all make it up as we go along. We’re all muddling along and trying to make the most of things. Making the best of a bad situation, and grinning and beari...
Submitted to Contest #220
“Are you hungry?” Words dropped into my dream state. Swirling me around in a blur of confusion. I push up into consciousness and my eyes open of their own accord, not yet mine. They relay visual information to my brain, but my brain coughs, splutters then hiccups. “Very,” I say it because that is the only thing that makes sense right now. My stomach growls as though to punctuate the one fact that I can hold onto. I smile and she returns the smile. I watch her turn and leave the room. She closes the door behind her. I lay ...
Shortlisted for Contest #220 ⭐️
It was a promise I made. We’re only as good as the promises we keep, even if those promises are made to ourselves and only ourselves. This promise I made to my best friend. The sort of promise you make when you’re young, never thinking you’ll ever have to do anything about it. Wendy and John once promised each other that if they hadn’t settled down and married by the time they turned thirty then they’d marry each other. I treated my promise like theirs, but of course mine wasn’t a half arsed rejection. My promise was not about maki...
The cymbal crash echoed across the sky and told me all I needed to know about my near future. It was cold enough as it was. The wind driving that cold into and through me. Pushing against me and finding its way through gaps and seams. I huddled up, feeling like a little washer woman. Humiliated by the persistent elemental force. Upping my step I bent further into that cruel wind and drove myself forward. A single player against the scrumming team, but making ground all the same. A crack of light illuminated the gloom and heralded the...
All it takes is one slip. Gaps are to be avoided. Gaps are where important things fall. That’s why Mind The Gap resonates like a cattle prod to the temple. There are gaps everywhere and the devil uses details to his advantage and what is to his advantage is to our disadvantage. He’s pretty tricksy like that. It was a buggered detail that led to Thruk struggling his way across a dessert. There was something utterly wrong about this from the get-go, but Thruk was not a thinker, he was a doer and so he trudged and splotched across...
Granddad was an OK cook. I think at some point the cooking duties were shared more fully and I recall Mum telling me about the fluffy Victoria sponges Gran used to make. Somewhere along the way Gran withdrew. She withdrew in a way that I could never quite square. The way she was crept up on everyone. She became larger than life and yet she became less than she was. She wasn’t quite herself and she didn’t do some of the things she used to do. As it is in many families and in particular marriages, the spaces left by one party were fill...
Submitted to Contest #219
“I think someone’s watching.” Matthew had mustered what he thought was enough courage to admit this to his own mother, but in the instant the words escaped out into the world he saw what they really were. It was only then that he could see them for what they were. They’d lied and tricked their way out, intent on his destruction. Judas words, betraying him. He had had the temerity to consider his words his own, but as he saw these words and their true nature he understood his own nature a little more. After the words fell from his mouth u...
Being paid for this had seemed like a good idea at the time. They still joked about it down the social club, but it was a well-rehearsed quip that not only bored Dave, it hurt him. Getting paid to watch TV! That’s a cushy number, innit Dave! Jammy bastard! You landed on yer feet, or should I say arse! He’d heard it all before and so many times he’d smiled his way through it, because time was that he’d thought the same and that was why he was sat in front of a bank of TVs on a chair grown increasingly uncomfortable in tune with ...
“What is this place?!” It was a question in name only. Really, it was Vince showing his exasperation at the situation he found himself in. “A prison of the mind!” said Don theatrically. “Shut up you wanker!” hissed Vince. Don looked like he’d been slapped hard in the face, but Vince did not regret his words. Not one bit. They’d been a long time coming. Don could be bloody annoying when he tried, and he could be just as annoying when he didn’t try. “It was just a bit of bants,” Don chided him. “Does it look like we should be...
Submitted to Contest #218
It’s the smell that hits you. That’s the thing that gets you first. You know you’ve found it when that smell comes from out of nowhere and batters you with an eye watering, full frontal assault. I’d found my way to the coast and I was transported back to my childhood as I spotted the sea. I saw it first. That was the game. Whoever saw it first was the winner. My memory-journey to happier times was complete as the aroma of the sea gently teased my nose, urging me to smile in the exact same way that I had when I was a little boy. There...
You could see it from a glorious, sunlit mile off. Poetry was set in motion and destiny manifested, or something of that ilk, nature and reckoning happened on that sunny Summer afternoon anyway. Ade crossed an inch perfect ball to Toyoh. The intelligence and insight that Ade displayed in that moment was a true delight to behold. He put the ball right where Toyoh was going to be. It was in the exact spot it needed to be. There was telepathy between the two players and magic as well. The ball was in space, and that space gave...
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