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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2020
Submitted to Contest #66
“Okay, so if I’m getting this correctly, it’s like a game,” the boy said, spinning absentmindedly in his chair, hands folded tightly against an anxiety-riddled stomach. “Exactly! You,” the man replied, pinning an imaginary name-tag to the former’s breast, “are Kevin. You will be playing an 6 pound baby born to Tom and Christine Jones. They live on Walnut Street in North Dakota and…. ooh, someone’s going to have a dog! They’re a nice enough family. Now, don’t do anything too stupid when you get out there. Remember, your life depends on...
Submitted to Contest #55
“Can you keep a secret?” “Nope. Not at all. Why would you even ask me?” “Okay, so- wait, what? You can’t keep a secret? Dude, that’s sad.” “Hey, it’s not sad. I just…. I don’t know. They make me…. itchy.” “As your friend, I have to help you with this. You have to be able to keep a secret. That’s part of life. You keep secrets. You tell little, white lies. You know, that kind of stuff.” “I don’t do that. I don’t like secrets. Lying makes me kinda nauseous. I would rather live a life that didn’t have any secrets or anything in it. I...
Submitted to Contest #54
It was moving day. That was the way that her kids had put it, the day that she would leave behind her whole life, everything that she had worked for, the house that she had lived in, loved in, lost in, and go find herself in a sterile room. Of course, the house looked nothing like she remembered it now. It was all boxes, all her memories packed up into tidy little boxes. They were labeled, of course, but her old eyes had a hard time piecing together what those cramped fonts said from so far away. Part of it may have been that she just didn’t...
Submitted to Contest #52
Something was pretty obviously wrong. The clouds hanging in the sky were too heavy. The cars were driving fast, oh so fast. They clearly had never read all of the manuals about driving in bad weather, Kevin thought to himself, tucking his pinkened nose further into his scarf. His hat drew down low over his face, all but obscuring his eyes. He was violently thrown back into the memories of his childhood, his mother leering over him, chiding him on his temperature and dress, because he’d be “too cold dressed like that, look at all that skin ex...
Submitted to Contest #51
The night was cold, and amongst the tall grasses, in a folding lawn chair, sat an old man looking up at the night sky. How the chill must have nipped at his ancient bones, how his stiffening joints must have ached as he sat, neck craned back, counting quietly in a voice hushed by the softly moaning wind. His memory played scenes of fireflies, of crickets, of dancing beneath those sky- bound patterns. His memory played scenes of fireflies, of crickets, of dancing beneath sky- bound patterns. Content creased the multitude of folds on his face,...
Submitted to Contest #50
He didn’t like the shoes. They were too small in some places and too big in others. He wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but there he was with shoes that were somehow both too big and too small. Glaring at them, he ran his hand down the sole, right leg propped on his left knee. It was mocking him. No shoe should be that uncomfortable. It was like being tortured, but slowly and so cunningly, in a way that the world couldn’t see. “So, what do you think?” she asked. She had this way of entering rooms that was all but silent. With h...
Submitted to Contest #49
He paced back and forth on a track that only he could see. Up three tiles, left one, down three tiles, left one, up three tiles, and so on. The brand new loafers that pinched his feet (pain was beauty, yes, but more importantly, pain was success) tapped angrily on the linoleum as he paced, letting the rest of the passersby in the vacant, little airport know that he, Paul T Calhoun, was upset. The watch face gleamed on his right wrist, catching the fake sunlight that was pumped through the wide, white halls, periodically blinding those poor, ...
Nothing. That’s what he was getting. Nothing. The screen was mocking him. The room was hot. No, it was stifling. There was a difference. Everything was going wrong and it was a personal affront. The clock was loud- why was it so loud? An incessant ticking (just ticking and ticking and ticking- was keeping time really so necessary that the noise was required so constantly?) that interrupted his workspace. His silence. His peace. It cut through the heat. It cut through the nothing, the white space that he was drifting in. Everything was...
Submitted to Contest #47
“Today’s forecast holds rain,” the weatherman said in his usual, chipper tone of voice, but you could see that he was beginning to crack. That was a secret that he held in his eyes- you could see it in the way that they didn’t shimmer in the artificial television light. “Just like yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before tha-” The camera angle abruptly shifted to a primly dressed news anchor still in the middle of whipping her hand back and forth across her throat, desperately trying to signal to someone, anyone, to get him off...
Suitcase in hand, you walked to the station, head tipped firmly down. The rain ran off the brim of your hat, a sheet across the front of your face. You stared at the ground, pretending that you didn’t see it, pretending that you couldn’t hear her voice in the back of your head scolding you for ruining your nice new shoes in all this wet. A gentle, bittersweet smile found its way to your lips as you could hear the concern in her voice- not for you, you’d made your mistake, but for the floors that she’d just cleaned and the work that she would...
You never did mind going out to get the mail- it was the bringing it in that was the problem. Going outside, that was fine. Taking a stroll, getting some sun (sometimes for the first time that day), that was all well and fine. Ambling up the long winding driveway, perfect. It was the old rusty mailbox on the corner, right next to that dangerous road that people took way to fast- that was the issue. It was the way that that hinge needed to be fixed. It squeaked horribly, needed to be yanked open, nearly pulling the rotting mailbox peg out of ...
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