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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2024
Submitted to Contest #287
“I knew it! You prick!” The coffee mug missed my dodging head by about six inches, but the stream of steaming liquid hit my face, burning my skin and causing me to instinctively close my eyes. I could smell the whiskey in the coffee.The sugar bowl that followed hit me square on the nose and upper lip. When I opened my eyes, and pulled my hands down from my mouth, my palms were dripping with fresh blood.“Bleed out, you bastard,” she screamed to the ceiling. “Bleed out!”I turned my back on her and walked towards the downstairs bathroom. I...
Henry cringed, shoulders to ears, head turned, eyes closed, as Ruth banged baking sheets and cake pans around under the counter. She continued to talk as if there were any chance Henry could hear her soft soprano over the racket. "Babe!" Ruth paused her frantic search, but remained on her hands and knees. "Yes?" "I can't hear anything you're saying," Henry said, smiling through mild irritation at her antics. He heard a soft scoff. "What else is new," she answered and kicked her search into a higher gear, causing Henry to place his index fin...
Submitted to Contest #253
I glanced at my watch, hoping for good news. But it was already 2:15 p.m., and I would need to leave in the next five minutes if I was going to catch my flight. "I wish we could stop time," I said, holding Taryn's hand, smoothing her hair, smiling into blue eyes that were the color of arctic sea ice. "What should we do? I mean, if you could stop time?" Those eyes were smiling back but her mouth was serious, as if time manipulation were possible and she wanted to know. "Everything," I said. "Nothing. Whatever we wanted." I kissed her, just a ...
Bruce knew he was about to do something stupid. And he didn't care. He marveled at that. Why would he put himself at risk like this? He was normally a safe rider. He never took unnecessary risks. Yet he knew that was about to change, as if yesterday and tomorrow meant -- nothing. He focused on the rear bumper of the slow moving panel truck in front of him and decided it was time. There was no way to explain what he was about to do. He wasn't late for anything. He had no place to be. Nobody was waiting for him. He had nothing special to get ...
Submitted to Contest #250
John just would not fall asleep. Maggie had worn a path between the laundry room and their bedroom, up and down the stairs, carrying the same bundle of clothes back and forth, talking quietly to herself, silently cursing every time she found him awake as she passed. She’d planned the morning so carefully. She’d placed the digital recorder in his truck at four, before he’d woken up. She’d been careful to turn the beeping feature off, made sure it was fully charged, and hidden it in the back of the center console. She’d tested it to be s...
Submitted to Contest #249
“Hey Leesa,” I said into my helmet mic while starting up my Harley. “I’m running late.” I had been behind my calendar all day. “How late, Mitch? You have a 3:45.” Leesa, our office manager, was amazing at her job. Unfortunately her job description did not include being nice to me. I exited the parking lot in Berkeley and headed for the freeway. “I don’t know yet. You know traffic this time of day.” “Yeah,” she chuffed. “So do you. You should have planned for it.” “Is she there, yet?” “Who?” She damn well knew who. She was being e...
Submitted to Contest #248
Jeremiah Willow’s head hit something sharp and hard. “Oww!” He shouted, as his fingertips found a half-inch long wound and matted sticky hair. Combined with the vinegary stench of the coop, he thought for a moment he might be sick. But there wasn’t as much blood as he feared, which calmed his heartbeat and brought him back to his senses. His son, Isaiah, had replaced the chicken coop roofing last month, but the sixteen-year-old had his mind on baseball and PlayStation, not safety. The boy had not bent the nails. His daughter, Mary...
Submitted to Contest #247
The seven members of the executive council aboard the Amazonian were all but touching shoulders around the grey rectangular conference table. Deputy Governor Hunter Bryant, his tunic unbuttoned at the top, wiped sweat from his temples with his sleeve. Climate control was a major issue on the 923 year-old ship. Cleo el Masry, the vessel’s operations chief paused for effect, wrapping up her report on the impending deceleration decision. She sat back, her legs crossed at the knees, her hands smoothing the wrinkles out of a precisely tailor...
Submitted to Contest #246
"It was supposed to be a stupid April Fools' Day joke. That's it," I told the two cops in the fortieth minute or so of what they called an 'interview'."Two people are dead," Detective Hughes said, scratching behind his ear. We'd just left the house and walked out onto the deck, and he seemed to be taking in the view of the Pacific behind me. The waves crashing on the rocks below the decking forced us to speak up. "Not my kind of joke," he said."Yeah, well, it didn't go as planned," I replied, and knocked back the rest of my whiskey, clacking...
Submitted to Contest #245
Kane’ Hezna shivered in the open doorway and sipped the strong, steaming zoombi. Her wrinkled, spotted hands held the warm drinking bowl close to her chest. Not even the oldest farmer in the Golden Marshes could remember such frigid sunrises this early in the harvest season. The change in weather concerned Hezna so much that she had taken to staying up late with her young daughter, Zenzi, teaching her to read the wisdom scrolls that were under Hezna’s care. She hoped that, perhaps, together, they could discover what might be happening.&...
Submitted to Contest #244
"Dude," I said, starting to giggle a little. "What are you doing?"Benji, my compadre since forever - so high on an edible that he couldn't stand still, with his pants and boxers down to his ankles - was taking a selfie at the urinal beside me.We had stopped at a random Safeway, somewhere south of Fresno, at 2am, to grab Takis hot chips for Benji. We'd both been pounding Diet Mountain Dew. And I needed to get the blood pumping. It had been a long day of music festival."Look, look," he was excited and snickering, like he was four and had just ...
“What’s this?” Bram asked, holding up a beautifully framed eight by ten photo he had picked off the sofa table. He had never seen it before. Juni looked up from her spot at the kitchen counter, seemingly thrown by the question, and squinting. Bram loved that his wife routinely surprised him by rotating the pictures and art in the house. It wasn't unusual for him to find pieces he had not previously seen. It took Juni a moment to answer. “You don’t remember,” she asked, now smiling, wiping her hands on the kitchen towel and swinging it back o...
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