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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2021
Submitted to Contest #252
Life PathsMeeting and becoming involved with Ariel Simmons was life-changing on many different levels. But let’s be straight with each other from the start: I am nobody’s idea of an innocent, nor am I a shrinking violet. Ariel lay down a cleverly hidden path for me to pursue until her dark world enveloped and subjugated mine. For the greater part of that journey, I was a more than willing supplicant before belatedly finding myself trapped in her morass too deeply and unable or unwilling to claw my way out. Ariel was twenty-seven when we firs...
Submitted to Contest #247
The year was eighteen-fifty-two, and at twenty-six years of age, my long-planned odyssey to the Dark Continent was about to begin. I, James Havelock, was about to follow in my dear Papa’s footsteps and spend twelve weeks hunting for unknown plant species on the African continent. I am an only child of doting parents. Our family name is renowned in Kent, England and beyond. My patriarchal grandfather Benjamin Havelock had amassed our family fortune from woollen mills where he employed hundreds of workers on slave wages ten hours a day, six an...
Submitted to Contest #207
The Window There wasn’t a window. We, George and Justin La Croix, the owners of the restaurant, couldn’t allow our affluent customers to see or hear the chaotic scenes that went into the prepping of their pricey meals. While our front-of-house staff worked in a calm and measured atmosphere, the kitchens were entirely different. Our restaurant in New York was named La Maison Du George. We served upmarket, traditional French cuisine in an intimately formal setting. Diners ate to the accompaniment of background classical music. The customer's...
Submitted to Contest #204
The Half BreedShe was tall and moved in such a way that those watching her approach understood she was to not be meddled with. Part Cherokee Indian and part Mexican, she walked with catlike assuredness. Our small outpost of Graham’s Gulch was not a place that attracted many outsiders since the gold seam was mined out a dozen or so years ago. Strangers, especially lone young females, were greeted with a mixture of fear and curiosity. Fear held the upper hand as curiosity could lead one to a freshly dug plot in Boot Hill on the edge of town. B...
Submitted to Contest #139
Grow up” my dad, John, snarled down at me. “Grow up and try being a man and stop behaving like a snivelling cowardly little excuse for one.” John Hardaker, my dad, was a tall brute of a man and that was the only piece of paternal advice I ever got from him. But I was only ten years old at the time and all I wanted to do was run to my mum’s comforting embrace and cry. In my father’s world “only sissies and poofters cried.” I guess it would be fair to say my dad was old school in his thinking on the order of things like gender and role modelli...
Submitted to Contest #115
Broken At last, I had found it. My quest had been to find a working telephone, so I could call my best friend Tony and try to tell him about all of the strange shit that had been happening in the last few hours. My cell phone was fully charged, but I couldn't get a signal no matter what I tried. Now I had found a phone kiosk, and it was empty, so I dialed Tony's number and impatiently waited for him to pick it up. After what seemed like an age, he answered, and I heard his sweet tones over the whine of the long-distance call. We had been f...
Submitted to Contest #113
A Dreaming of BeyondI am not sure when it started for me, or perhaps it was just I became more aware of the phenomenon. I had begun to travel in my nightly dreams. My father, a phycologist, told me, “Emma, you have always possessed an extremely fertile imagination, and you recently suffered a couple of quite traumatic experiences.”I always hated when dear old papa attempted to psychoanalyze me as if a mere male could ever fully understand the totality of femaleness. I was aged sixteen and just starting to come to terms with how intensely sex...
Submitted to Contest #110
A Greasy Spoon Interlude Georgia tucked into her mixed grill with gusto; I had always envied her appetite. It was mid-July and hot as hell. The diner was by the roadside of interstate 55, a lot of miles from everywhere. I had met Georgia in college, where she was taking a master’s in veterinary studies, and I was majoring in biology. I loved her from the moment I set eyes on her. She walked straight up to me, introduced herself, and asked me my name. From that day forward, she insisted on calling me Abi-normal instead of the usual “Gale-f...
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