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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2025
Submitted to Contest #320
The village tells stories about me, some more true than others, from the time babes are young, wriggling, still wet from the womb, til they’re grown and their tongues are fleshed enough to tell lies and their breasts wide enough to hold secrets. The precipice between youth and adulthood. That’s when most come to me. Some are dared. I dare you to seek out the Wood Witch. I dare you to sit at her hearth. I dare you to spit on her and see if she melts. Some want wishes fulfilled. I want my parents to love me as if I were a son. I want my hus...
Submitted to Contest #319
The phone on the nightstand lights up and bzzzts, blaring ‘Bloodletting’ by Concrete Blonde.Sid’s idea of a joke he never reprogrammed.With a groan, Jed reaches over and swipes it silent. It’s 2 a.m. Time to get ready for work.He slips into his sweatpants and pads into the kitchen where he opens the fridge on rows and rows of bloodbags with DONOR in big, bold letters printed on the front. He nabs one at random, pokes it open with a metal straw, and sips it in four quick glugs on his way to the bathroom. He brushes his teeth, files them down ...
Submitted to Contest #318
I was sitting across from me in my living room, listening to the other me explain that she can’t be everywhere at once, she’s only one person. An assistant wouldn’t do, she continued, she needed an exact copy, someone who knew exactly what she would do in any given situation. And so she had me made. An autobot with synthetic skin pulled tight over lightweight alloys and a metal brain with human memories, her memories, uploaded to a microchip near the power button behind my left ear.I reach up to touch it. A soft bump that feels like a mole.“...
Submitted to Contest #302
I hadn’t wanted to raise the cat my roommate didn’t deserve. The free one she picked up on the side of the road from a box that read FREE kittens in black sharpie where she resigned its mewling siblings to God knows what fate. The one with the scraggly black hair and watery eyes in its smooshed face. When it breathed, it wheezed. In the middle of the night, it made hacking sounds and would claw at the carpet, back hunched, like it was about to upchuck a lung, but nothing ever came up. An abomination of evolution. A creature that shouldn’t e...
Submitted to Contest #292
Addie Fraust has a problem: she’s out of red paint and Claude refuses to change. Just change your shirt, she says, not for the first time. Blouses and sweaters and henleys are strewn over Addie’s floor and bed. Claude picks up a silk blouse he discarded approximately two minutes and thirty-six seconds ago with the same stank look in his eye. I don’t like any of these. I really want the portrait done with me in this shirt. Why can’t we just reschedule? I told you, Addie says calmly, her temple twitching, I’m on deadline. Cla...
Submitted to Contest #289
It’s dark and cold and raining. I don’t know where I am, or how I got here. My head hurts. I roll my eyes, heavy in their sockets, up to look at the lightning rods emitting a faint buzz and pulsing like the butts of dying fireflies where the glass walls meet the ceiling; a poor attempt to beat back the night. When I place my palms on the aluminum bench and lean forward to peer outside, I can see nothing but rain refracting the light. The bench is cold on my hands, not on my butt; I’ve been here awhile. Ah. A memory of sta...
Submitted to Contest #286
The koi fish in the pond is a splotchy yellow with whiskers the length of Nico’s pinky finger. Its round, black, beady eyes seem to stare at him in expectation. What? It opens its gaping mouth and the wail of a siren sounds. The sky darkens and clouds with smoke. More koi float to the surface, belly up. The portly yellow continues to wail. Nico startles awake atop his bed. The AC unit shoved into the window shoots out cold air. The remnants of a Pringles can dust his Metallica shirt in a crunchy constellation, his tongue th...
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