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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2024
Submitted to Contest #315
Pain and Penance While attending a convention in Washington, D.C., my wife and I planned a day to mingle with the other tourists. After all, there are dozens of impressive statues to visit—former presidents, venerable statesmen, and military heroes with somber faces—many in full uniform atop charging horses. However, there is one D.C. monument I didn’t want to see; the Vietnam Memorial, often called the Wall. Three years earlier, I had struggled for months to finish a book about my time in war. When I began, I was sure I could work through...
Submitted to Contest #313
Winter is Comingby John Britto Standing in his dusty closet, Corbin Beeson steadied himself on his cane with his right hand. With his free hand, he grabbed the hanger holding his wife’s red cashmere sweater and pressed its collar to his face. Mercifully, the faintest hint of her favorite perfume lingered. He swallowed hard as tears gathered in his eyes. That unmistakable fragrance — Chanel N° 5 — caused cherished images to surface from his collection of faded memories. A brilliant, momentary flash of light coming from behind him instantly i...
Submitted to Contest #311
Behind the ClothJohn Britto After two years in the Army, one of which spent in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam, thirty-year-old Isaiah Mason’s struggled to readjust to his rural hometown of Copper Creek, Texas. It was as if his return flight had landed on a different planet. Nothing looked or felt familiar. During the first forty days, Isaiah detested everything about living among civilians. He avoided making small talk with his former friends and neighbors. He had forgotten how to be a loving husband, and he rejected everything he heard on ...
Submitted to Contest #308
Moments and Memories As I drove home after working a double shift, the rhythm of the rain lulled me into a dream-like state. Unknowingly, I blinked myself into a hypnotic daze—then an SUV smashed into my car pushing it off the street into a guardrail. One instant I was driving. The next I was trapped in a dense fog of silent oblivion. I didn’t see, hear, or feel anything. Sometime later, there were brief periods of trance-like delusions. One moment I felt myself strapped in a gurney with only a ceiling to look at. The next, it felt like I w...
Submitted to Contest #297
Twenty-Nine Minutes of Terror 5:33 PM: Nine-year-old Alison McDermont danced around the small kitchen in her family’s duplex on Pinetree Lane as she hummed, She Loves You, by the Beatles in anticipation of her parents’ arrival home from work. She had just finished setting the dining room table and eagerly looked forward to the lemon pie her mother had promised for dessert. “Muffin? Where are you?” she shouted. She glanced around the kitchen looking for her cat. From the corner of her eye, she saw a ball of orange fur race around the refriger...
Submitted to Contest #294
The Shadow Man I looked up to admire a pale blue San Francisco sky, and quickly inhaled the crisp, cool air—but I might as well have been back in the humid jungles of war-torn Vietnam. A car had just backfired, shattering my fragile nerves. Almost daily, a sound or a scent could cause me to turn to stone—forcing me to recall the ugliness of the battles I’d survived. Over the many years, I’d conditioned myself to freeze, to breath...
Submitted to Contest #282
The Betrayal The door to the kitchen flew open and hit the side of the refrigerator with a loud thud. Cold air rushed in. “You rotten bitch. I trusted you.” Brock McCarthy stood in the doorway with his shoulders squared and fists clenched. “How could you do that to me?” His nostrils flared as he shook his head. Stunned, Clara Simmons gasped when she heard the commotion. After she regained her composure, she bristled at the hateful accusation. She placed the half-empty dinner plate she was holding in the sink. Staring into his brown eyes, s...
Submitted to Contest #273
Dreams That Fade In The Kitchen: Wednesday, September 19, 2023, Ames, Iowa, 8:26 AM Sitting at the kitchen table, Rachel Weber cradled her warm coffee cup with both hands, painfully aware she had mere minutes before leaving for work. The apartment was quiet—except for the soft hum of the electric clock above the refrigerator. She glanced out the window above the sink trying to gauge the early fall weather. The phone rang, shattering her rare solitude. She stood to answer the phone hanging of the wall and felt the chill as she walked past the...
Submitted to Contest #270
Somethings Never Change The ornate antique bell jingled when the heavy glass door to the Happy Family Café opened—just as it had for over forty years. Jane Griffen peered over her glasses to see who had entered. She glanced at the wall clock behind the counter and pursed her lips for the hundredth time that morning, then lowered her head and resumed reading the Brookville Village Gazette. Not to learn anything, but to stop people from wondering why she was sitting alone in the crowded dining room with no one to talk with or anything to do....
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