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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023
Submitted to Contest #231
I had such a hard time at the funeral. My mom, God rest her soul. Now I just feel so empty, wandering around this empty house with piles of old things waiting to be thrown out. You hardly know what to keep and what to ditch. I’m scared that I will throw out things that matter to me. Even though I have forgotten what they are!I hated school. But I saw this grade 3 assignment that I did with Ms. Woodrow before she went on sick leave so long ago. Was it twenty years ago? Ran into it at the bottom of a pile of elementary school things. By no mea...
“This Christmas I bought everything already! There’s nothing left to buy!” complained Avery Dulles, the II.“Truth be told! Yes! I think you hit the nail right on the head! That is your problem,” the wizard on vacation affirmed as he sipped from a hot mint tea served with a too small saucer. His eyes were downcast, staring at it. If I laugh or cry, this tea will not burn just my nether regions! He thought.“Problem? I never said I had a problem,” sniffed Avery. “What are you hitting on here?”“Oh, nothing! Nothing at all! I’m on vacation, mind!...
“I can never get it out of my head. The way that nurse treated me. So rude. I want the blinds open, but she is in a rush, putting me off and not doing what I asked!”“It’s a new nurse every three days. So, you try to get to know them, and “Uh huh” is all you hear. They never get to know you. Useless. I hate what I am becoming. The sort of person that puts everyone off.”“Maybe I need a working body to be good! A good person, whatever that is.”“Stop fretting, Mom!” sighed Mia. “I’m sure Olivia will come to see you!”#Mia was having trouble with ...
Submitted to Contest #230
“It isn’t Munch, so here, you can have it!”“Munch appreciated!” I exclaim as I take the bag.“He did until FOMO hit!” said the Prevost.I should have known better, but when you starve, your hands have a life of their own. I rummage through Munch’s beat-up travel bag. Burglary tools, identity papers with a picture that looks like me were thrown in with a stale half-eaten lunch! Such trash! Munch left a rotten apple in his bag. I’m so ravenous that I take a bite.Long ago, when I worked, I thought I was happy. I never missed out on anything. Now ...
Submitted to Contest #229
You have to hand it to them! Always trying. Those relatives.Here I am, waiting for whatever. Then the phone rings.“Jimmy! We have a place setting just for you. On the dining room table. Apple pie! Whaddya say?”Christmas, 2022. I was so not ready for this.“I dunno, Aunt Susan. Things are busy here lately. I don’t know if I must fill in for the boss. He said he would let me know…”Then it's yada yada. I start holding my phone away from me. Oliver is making a face. He’s writing a note. Then, he holds it up at an angle, making it hard to read.Emm...
Submitted to Contest #228
“I hate it when my pants make noises when I walk!”It wasn’t our kind of day. So, her look said it all.“Can you still return them?” I replied, helpful, sort of.She stopped walking. “I can’t hear them,” I said. “I swear! Get them wifi enabled? Then you could get some online help?”“Oh, you!”#Me. So I cooked up something. Anything. Not a foodie, obviously. Mac and cheese. Now, that is something.“Oh, yuck! What is this goop?”She did that exaggerated ladling with the wooden spoon thing. You know when you lift whatever you despise and slowly l...
Submitted to Contest #227
Aching feet crunch through that howling blast of wind, my endless pace defying the billowing snow clouds that soak what little dry cloth remains of my scarf, parka, and pants. It was my soggy attempt to bundle up through an endless car-strewn landscape. Just getting to the office bus stop was a story all its own. If I could make my lips move to tell it.But I was one of the fortunate few. Unlike many motorists, I would have a bus to transport me home. We would have bus lanes and priority access to whatever highway snow-clearing was available!...
Submitted to Contest #222
Discussion of suicide.Hugh Munn had a secret.An enigma wrapped up in a conundrum, encapsulated in a misunderstanding, giving birth to a phantasm? He called it his life, sort of.In other words, he was like anyone else.#Hugh! How do you do? Asked everything around him. Really! You can hear the voices in your head, can’t you? Most of us don’t listen that hard. But everything else does.That’s the thing about reality. Always listening. And we are the deaf and blind leading the…“What you need to know!” screams the headline as it takes us by t...
Submitted to Contest #219
It isn’t always so bad. Really. I can be entertaining. So perfectionistic. I make perfectionists nervous. I can laugh at myself, too.You aren’t the first to put two and two together. What a curious phrase that is. No one talks about putting one and one together. Connect the dots, make connections.You need others for that.So, I’ll be what you want me to be. That’s always the trick. I am guessing what others want before they are on to me. Or off to me. More off than on.I have to work on that.#She never paid that much attention. I’m that person...
Submitted to Contest #218
“Sorry, what did you say again?”It was my mother, dressed up, me in an itchy tie and starched dress shirt. This wasn’t going to be fun.“Why do you always bake bread before an open house?”A simple question, maybe she might answer. She would fill the house she wanted to sell with this fantastic smell of baking bread, then take the half-baked bread and discard it."Enough of that!" She would say, laughing, just before clients would arrive. "No need to feed people!"But today, no smiles, no joking. It was all about the brochures that I made and ho...
Submitted to Contest #217
Once upon a time, it was a dark and stormy night, and a fair maiden was looking for her prints. It would be like any other evening, except this evening was unlike any there had ever been. It was so disheartening to deal with such disturbance and utter disappointment.“It should have been by now!” she thought. “What death-defying happenstance could account for this malfeasance?Her one and only handsome prints were not to be found, such as they were, a figment of her imagination. For it was said that one day, the owner of everything would appea...
Submitted to Contest #216
There has to be more life in my life! That's it. Get out there...It was a social gathering for twenty-somethings, and everyone welcomed her, although those hi-how-are-yous were beginning to wear thin.She was a little heavy, yet dressed so nicely, her hopeful eyes scanning the room. Will I be happy here? It seemed so natural to let down her guard: Finally, I'm home; this is the place!It could have been a wonderful evening, but that was before she made losing weight her topic of conversation. People indulging in that light spirit and bonhomie ...
“Are you alright?”“Yeah, how long was I out for?”‘A minute or so. Do you think you should see a doctor?”“Nah! I’m fine.”January 12th 2018“Why are there so many Canadian flags around these days, eh?” I wondered aloud as we drove by Walmart one day.“It’s so the Americans could know they are in Canada,” answered my wife, tongue in cheek. “And certain other people…”“Yeah, but this one is huge!”“Well, you can’t bring guns into Canada. You can’t bring your police speed trap detectors. When you leave, you must leave your weed behind. Saves a lot of...
Submitted to Contest #215
“Some people start talking to themselves whenever I am around,” I observed one fine Saturday.“How so, Peter?” my wife replied while she checked the firmness of a Cucumis melo reticulatus, otherwise known as a muskmelon or cantaloupe. “Too firm, that one,” she said, rolling it over to grab the one that made her smile.“See what I mean?” I huffed.“I was talking to you, not to myself!” Into one of her numerous cloth bags that melon went.We should have gotten a cart. Goodness knows how heavy a load I would have at the grocery checkout. And I woul...
You’d think I would know better. Really. It was a simple thing: just be normal, like everyone else. Enter a crowded room and not wonder about everything.Oh, how I would try! Let’s see. Work hard at not working hard! Absurd enough? Absurdism had nothing on me. Master of Dissembling that I was! Or am, whatever!You wonder if there will ever be enough of me to go around. There wasn’t enough of me for myself. What a thought. Where was me for myself? Going gone done! Sold to the gentleman who had better things to do than think about these things!B...
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