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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2024
Submitted to Contest #307
“You’re not even going to ask who she is?” I said as Dr. Dearborne studied the photograph I slid across the desk to him. His office was in the basement of the natural sciences building, which I had thought would be gloomy and perhaps even soggy. But the professor kept a homey space, lush with exotic plants in glass containers and leather-bound books in languages I did not recognize. “It’s not in my business to ask,” he replied, pushing his round spectacles up his nose as he studied the photo of Gemma. It was the one I took of her on our beac...
Submitted to Contest #306
Fresh Start CakeServes 6-8 I discovered this recipe by accident when I was in my early-30s. I’ve since tweaked the ingredients and steps now that I know what I’m doing. Enjoy! Ingredients:- A repressed queer identity. Store bought is fine, but it’s best if it is sourced from a religious upbringing.- A husband. Doesn’t matter where you found him, his quality is irrelevant to the final product.- A new living space. Must be as fresh as possible.- Friends. Best if sourced from the queer community.- A new life goal, preferably one you previously...
Submitted to Contest #305
I stared the goddess down, knowing that she could ruin my fragile mortal self with a flick of her finger and spat, “You know what? I quit.” “You, what?” she asked, aghast. It was clear she did not expect this from me. How could she? She’d given me more power and privilege than any humble human ever expected to receive and here I was, turning my back on her. “I’m done,” I reiterated, crossing my arms over my chest. I could feel the big sweeping wings adorning my back, the one’s she’d given me, ruffle in the breeze. They were keeping me afloat...
Submitted to Contest #304
In the liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s, Juni experienced the first of what she would later describe as “visions”. She’d just gotten off of work and arrived home after dark. She fell into her usual post-work routine, and then it hit her. A character. A place. A murder. She whipped out her phone and opened up a blank page and began frantically writing it all down. She didn’t consider herself a writer in any form, yet whatever it was that popped into her head compelled her to commit the vision to text. So she did. The first story...
Submitted to Contest #303
Lucy shrieked and brandished her spoon as a mouse scurried across the cabin floor. The meat in the pot on the woodstove needed tending and her cutting board was full of half-chopped parsnips and leeks. “Violet is going to be here at dusk!” she called to the black cat sleeping on the heavily clawed armchair. “Get up you lazy bones, and do something about that mouse!” She returned to cooking, trying to avoid a late dinner. She wanted to impress Violet and having a mouse scampering around the cabin was unacceptable. But making their meal was ru...
Submitted to Contest #302
“Hi Janie, it’s Rachel. I just left ballet class and I was hoping to catch you before your shift started. I wanted to let you know how much I love you. You’re so thoughtful, kind, and smart. I am so lucky to be your girlfriend. Can’t wait to see you tonight! Love ya.” The voicemail arrived in Felicity’s inbox mid-morning on a Tuesday from a number she did not recognize. Felicity was busy and gave the voicemail a single courtesy listen before carrying on with her day. She didn’t delete it, though. Perhaps she planned to text the number that h...
Submitted to Contest #301
Melanie ran as hard as she could into the woods. She would have run farther had a tree root not tripped her, sending her flying face first into the dirt. As she laid on the sun-dappled ground, spitting out evergreen needles and moss, a voice greeted her. It was a strange voice, like the ones Melanie’s grandmother had told her not to listen to the forest at dusk. “What are you running from?” the voice asked. Melanie knew she ought not to reply, but instead to run back the way she came. But the fear of what lingered for her at home was far wor...
Submitted to Contest #300
Blood dripped into moonlit snow as I trudged towards either life or death. The healer inside the cottage was my only hope. But as I wrapped my cloak tighter around my body, knowing what I had just done, I feared she would turn me away. Or worse. Murder wasn’t typically in a healer’s wheelhouse, but I knew what she thought of me. Or at least what I imagined she thought of me. Or maybe just what my terrible, self-hating inner monologue assumed she thought about me. Maybe I deserved death.Or maybe, just maybe, she would spare the dying.Though I...
Submitted to Contest #299
Martha donned her black cape with the red velvet lining and packed her bag of essentials. There was no doubt that this would be a make-or-break career opportunity. She’d landed this gig by pure luck and she wasn’t about to mess it up. She checked herself in the mirror before she left her house, making sure there wasn’t any spinach in her teeth. The crowd tonight would be discerning and scrutinous. The event was a dry one, and without alcohol to smooth over any rough edges within the audience, she had to be perfect. She arrived a few minutes ...
Submitted to Contest #298
Both forearms broken, the crimson water rushing over my face and filling my lungs, I was supposed to die. This was how it was supposed to end. I closed my eyes and accepted my fate. But fate would not have me. She shook me by the shoulders and whispered in my ear that it was not my time to die. My time to live, in fact, was only just beginning. “Get up,” she said. A disembodied voice that I was certain did not belong to a mortal. Was it a god? I somehow mustered the strength to push my face out of the water, choking and sputtering as I did. ...
Submitted to Contest #297
In the middle of my morning pep talk to myself on the drive to work, I hit a deer with my car. Or maybe the deer hit my car with its body. I just needed to make it through the day and already things were off to a rotten start.I pulled to the side of the highway to survey the damage. The front of my beat up Toyota was even more beat up than usual, but still drivable. The deer however, was a goner. Well, almost a goner. It twitched as its intestines spilled out of it like tubes of red spaghetti. Steam rose off its body in the sun dappled fog. ...
Submitted to Contest #296
“Turn back,” I whispered, my voice nothing but a breath of wind on the rugged mountainside. But she did not listen. She did not care. She was oblivious to my watching. Sara trudged forward, her snowshoes crunching in the snow as it piled higher and higher around her. The water in her hydropack began to freeze in the tube between her sips, the reservoir still liquid only because it was pressed against her body in the pack she wore. As the white-out conditions intensified, she pulled out a compass to check her bearings. She was already fifty m...
Submitted to Contest #295
I was in 7th grade, trying to comb through my tangled mess of hair, when I stumbled across a claw clip hidden in the back of a bathroom drawer. It was made of white, opalescent plastic, and the tabs you squeeze together to open it were formed into butterfly wings. It looked like something that came from the Claire’s store in the mall, but for the life of me I could not remember where it was from or how it had gotten into my cluttered collection of hair accessories. My hair was not only tangled, but quite greasy. Rushing to get ready for scho...
Submitted to Contest #294
I parked my car outside of Mystic Maggie’s Hair Salon, wondering if the ad I saw claiming “Heartbreak healed or your money back!” was true. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall joint sandwiched between a Greek restaurant and an insurance agent’s office in a strip mall that had its heyday a decade or two ago. The parking lot was nearly empty on a Tuesday morning, which I felt didn’t bode well for the efficacy of Maggie’s services. Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and sighed, willing to try anything to erase my pain. Mystic Maggie’s Hair Salon was ...
Submitted to Contest #293
I boarded a flight in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 16th and immediately put on my noise-cancelling headphones and played “Fourth of July” by Sufjan Stevens. Gratefully, the two and a half hour flight to Portland was sparse, so there was no one else seated in my row. When the song ended, I played it again. And then again. Soon we were in the still-dark sky as it turned from black to blue with the sunrise. I set Spotify to repeat that single track as a cumulation of tears that I’d been holding in since mid-afternoon the previ...
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