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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2024
You won’t find The Days of Yore Bookstore in any registry. You can’t walk in the front door and browse their selection. The storefront lacks signage and sits on a lonely London commercial road well away from the city center. To gain access requires high-end personal connections, a three month advance appointment, and a stringent proof of bank account: prospective customers wire the store five million Swiss francs, which will wire the money back in seven days. This is the highest-end bookstore the world has ever known. The lowest price tag on...
Submitted to Contest #305
He looked between us once more and said, “It’s either her or me…” He was right of course, one of these two: either my good friend Niles Curmudgeon, or my boss Sylvia Brightenite, was a monster in disguise, a doppelganger here to steal the company's secrets. In my hands I held a torch, a machine designed by our own company, appropriately named TorchCorp. I could roast one or both of them alive in an instant if I thought that the best option. But how could I torch my good friend Niles? We’d worked at Torchcorp together for five years. We’d des...
Submitted to Contest #299
In a dingy basement with cracked concrete walls, a CRT television sputters to life from atop a white plastic table. A large brown beetle, which had been hiding under a corner of the TV, skitters off to find a new shadow away from the light and hum of this new disturbance. The screen produces a hazy image that loops through the top back to the bottom, repeating a tumbling splay of colors like a clumsy waterfall. Eventually the picture settles.The first channel shows a sporting match, a gridiron contest, but with rusty earth replacing the trad...
Submitted to Contest #291
Phillip Galleazzo, the Duke of Milan, was dreaming of a glass cage when he woke to the sound of pounding upon his bedroom door. “Your grace! Your grace!” It was Vincento, his guard captain, who suddenly burst in. “What is this about?” The Duke demanded of his most trusted subordinate. “Intruders, your grace!” Vincento gasped between hurried breaths. “Found in your storerooms. We think they’ve all fled… I chased one of them back over the wall myself.”“Intruders! In my storerooms! Did they make off with anything?”“We haven’t made a t...
Submitted to Contest #287
Will the old woman realize I put something in her tea? She rests in the lounge, I work in the kitchen. She sits in her old leather chesterfield recliner. Quiet… listening? I’ve prepared tea for her many times. The lounge lies two doors down the hall, maybe ten feet separates the two of us. Art surrounds her: vases, sculptures, but just one painting, a lakeside view of mostly shades of purple, but punctuated by bright stabs of yellow representing fireflies. It’s the painting that hides her safe.She’s likely already opened a magazine, or, less...
Submitted to Contest #285
A dream first told me I would travel back in time. I was a newborn, in my mother’s arms, staring out into a cold, open, scary world of soft blue and white. I glanced over my father’s shoulder, caught the gaze of an orderly, a man with my hazel eyes like dirt scattered across the surface of an algae lake. He had muscular arms and a creased forehead, just like adult me. The only difference between that man and my mirror image were his wide eyes and slack jack, an expression of bewilderment I never wear. But of course he was bewildered, he’d ju...
Submitted to Contest #280
To a beige office building of twenty-five floors, on a quiet Saturday morning with maybe fifty people in the whole high-rise, approaches an electrician in a baseball cap. She hands her papers to the security guard at the front desk, who calls up to the 17th floor to confirm the contract. The security guard only briefly notes the name patch on her powder-blue coveralls: “Jen”. A name just common enough, and not her real name.For this electrician is really an industrial spy, coming to steal security data from an AI company specializing in heal...
Submitted to Contest #279
The mail carrier looked at me with fear, and I grew suspicious. The cashier at McDonald's hesitated for many moments when I mentioned my name, and I knew I was onto something. The teller at the bank counted my paycheck money five times before handing it to me, and my suspicion transformed into certainty.But before then, doubt filled every crevice of my mind. For years I tried to make sense of the world and my place in it, and came up empty. Have you ever looked at the world, really looked at it? It makes no sense. Zero. Take the English...
Submitted to Contest #272
They came to hurt us again. Not just me. They bring a machine specifically for this purpose. They came to hurt The Doctor and little Lulubelle, and the transient ghosts who sometimes occupy the cells. The first time they turned the machine on, I didn’t hear the screams of the others, only my own. The second time I heard them all, but mixed together. The third time I could hear each one, discreetly, distinctly.This is the fourth time they’ve come. The first time it was just one man, carrying the machine like a child carrying a watermelon, set...
Shortlisted for Contest #268 ⭐️
The Honorable Judge Harold Bribar strode to the bench bearing a coy smile. The court knew that smile well, as did millions watching on viewscreens all over Mars. As did tens of millions back on Earth who wouldn’t get the feed for another hour or so. They also knew the arch of his thick gray eyebrows, the well-trimmed salt-and-pepper hair he’d gracefully let recede, the petite spectacles he wore when reading, and the mild way he cleared his throat to bring the whole courtroom to attention. In offense to all known theories of jurisprudence, Ju...
Submitted to Contest #266
In a basement, in the dim light, in a home for hungry artists. Lies a painter, with a passion, and the will to spill her thoughts out.See the easel in the dim light. See the palette by her right side. A lack of blue upon the palette, a hue the artist chose to banish. No morning skies or crystal lakes for this aesthetic’s special tastes. No gray as well. No pale or silver in her sights. No shades between the starkest black and white. Instead, red. Red for blood, for vile streaks. Every hue of scarlett: ...
Submitted to Contest #265
The intercom system didn’t work, for a start. If it had, it would have broadcast a recorded message regarding the history of the Aztec Empire: what was known about Aztec culture, fashion, system of government, and cuisine. This message would have prepared the six passengers onboard for what they were about to see while their pod traversed the dark “time tunnel” bringing them to the distant past.But the system didn’t work, and so broadcast wailing static and jumbled speech. Only the occasional word proved decipherable through syllabic structu...
Submitted to Contest #262
To a field of juneberry and hawthorn bushes, between a dense forest and the beaches of the great water humans call Superior, the goldfinches return. They fly in groups, settling on the scrub bushes, taking in the home they’ve missed while wintering in warmer climes.As each flock trickles in, they join a rising chorus, one great song only paused for sunset. Let’s listen:Home home home!Home to love, to cool and safetyHome to seeds so tough yet tastyHome to song as day beginsHome to nests and warmth thereinEach arriving group brings their own m...
Submitted to Contest #260
Once upon a time, in a kingdom most absurd, lived a Princess named Unrelia who possessed the power of the fourth wall. So whenever her parents, the King and Queen Narrat, tried to betrothe her to some goodly prince, she would turn to an oblique angle and say something like “Can you believe this folks? My parents are positively medieval!” as if there was an audience just out of sight, invisible to everyone else. Such was her confidence in these pronunciations that no one ever challenged or interrupted her. And those good princes, and their fa...
Submitted to Contest #259
I'd like to thank your Reverend, the honorable Beau Smith, for inviting me to speak at your beautiful church. And I want to thank you, the good people of Quinwood, for allowing me into this house of the Lord. I will try to hold myself to half an hour, if you can stand me for that long. But I have been known to meander.As you likely know, we have a celebrity of far greater illustriousness than myself in attendance, right here in the front row, a state senator representing this district up in Atlanta. Senator William Weathers. Good day to you ...
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