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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2022
Submitted to Contest #182
“Let’s take a walk, shall we? And you can tell me why you wanted to disappear.” He offers his arm, like a gallant knight, and inexplicably, Kate takes it, because she doesn’t know what else to do. The devil doesn’t look like she expected him to. There are no horns, no teeth glistening with drops of blood, no maniacal laughter. True, he is shrouded in black, cloaks and hair and even his very skin seems shadowed. He—Kate is not even sure it is a he—looks more like a middle-aged emo-wanna-be than the devil. “Tell me,” he urges, and Kate rem...
Submitted to Contest #178
The was once a time that Christmas felt magical. When December was full of early dusk dotted with lights and Silent Night playing softly on the radio. When eagerness built through weekends that were punctuated with snowflakes that never amounted to anything, only there for the ambiance. Christmas Eve was a whole vibe of its own: cookie baking and grown-ups off work early and evening gatherings to get ready for, all in anticipation of the main event, Christmas Day. These days, I walk the aisles of the mall in search of that magical feeling...
Submitted to Contest #177
Teenage boys are like rough, unfinished works of art. They are paint on the canvas, nothing yet blended together with a brush, the final picture imagined but unknown. Clay on the wheel, unspun and uncreated, only glistening with possibility. They are everything their mothers saw in them when they were little boys and everything they’ll one day become, waiting to be born. But when you’re a teenage girl, you don’t know this. Adult Grace would study the past and say, there was more to Alexander Laurent than met her eye. There was more to hi...
Submitted to Contest #176
My mother likes to tell the story of the magical woman with the hands of God who saved the life of a baby on Christmas Eve. She will tell this tale to anyone, anytime, but she especially loves reliving it on Christmas Eve. Gathered at her house, the holiday energy funnels through the eyes of my children and their cousins, still young enough that the magic of Santa is breathtakingly real, every strange noise a reason to pause and listen, wide-eyed, in case it’s reindeer on the roof. They run rampant through the house, high on sugar and hope...
Submitted to Contest #175
It was a severance that unraveled everything. What I mean by that is, it wasn’t a firing (according to Brad) and it wasn’t exactly a retirement, which is what I called it. It was more of a mutual parting between two parties who had outgrown each other—severance. Except one of those parties was a company I had dedicated my life to. The other was the version of myself I gave to everyone—Janice, the charismatic, efficacious businesswoman. “We’re just going different ways, Janice,” they told me, sitting in an office with placid, robotic face...
Submitted to Contest #174
You’re raking leaves in your yard, like it’s any old Sunday. Like you’re living any old storyline, one that omits the chapter where you abandon your family, and along with it, mine. The funny thing is, I was going to do this next week. After ten years, I finally asked Roarke where you lived. I knew he knew. But in our world it’s almost as if you never existed, in which case I guess you got what you wanted, huh? So, in ten years I haven’t asked. Imagine how floored I was to learn you live just an hour away. A lifetime together, a decade apa...
Submitted to Contest #173
The snow was the type you weren’t supposed to drive in, period. Especially not during the heaviest part of the storm, when white fluff was dumping at an astonishing rate. Meg was at the wheel, navigating in her minivan, which was the absolute worst type of vehicle to be in at this point. I listened to her chatter, looked over my shoulder at Beth, wondering why neither of my cousins seemed to be frightened beyond belief like I was. I was half-wishing I had gone with my father instead, safe inside his four-wheel drive SUV, confident in his win...
Submitted to Contest #172
It was times like this when Danielle would let her mind wander, inching its way back to an evening that had been ripe with possibility, with chances. Actually, it wasn’t just times like this. It wasn’t just on days when Alec was drunk and maudlin, or the nights when he didn’t come home and she lay awake, her bleary eyes trained to the window, waiting for his headlights. It wasn’t only in the scary moments, when he reminded her that every aspect of her cushy lifestyle was because of him. It wasn’t just the moments when she found hotel key c...
Submitted to Contest #171
From the top of the mountain, the valley below was stunning. Everything was painted fire colors, the peak of autumn arriving as predicted in the second week of October. Stella felt a lump in her throat—how appropriate that they were here on Jaz’s birthday. Stella could still hear her throaty voice, every year, reminding them that the pinnacle of fall color always fell near her birthday.Ash-spreading was a strange custom, Stella thought, glancing down at her portion of Jaz, nestled in plastic inside a tiny gift bag, purple of course. The gift...
Winner of Contest #169 🏆
The storm had felt like a rumor all day, but now, the sky was delivering. For a second, like a knife catching a glint of light and refracting it in multitude, everything gleamed white. The lightning split the whole sky in half, and in that moment, it was brighter than daylight. The tops of the gravestones seemed to pulse like strobe lights in a night club before blackness settled them down again.She was kneeling in front of her sister’s grave. She came here often—after all, that’s what a mourning sister did—but she felt better coming at nigh...
Submitted to Contest #168
The train derailed in Joplin, Montana. Out of nowhere, and in middle of nowhere. The cause was still being investigated, a year later. People were angry and filing lawsuits against Amtrak, but Cara didn’t see what the point was. It wasn’t going to change the consequences of the derailment. Derailment. That word. It had been in her head for eleven months, two weeks and three days. Derailment. She had thought it, said it, slept with it so heavily the word had become warped, both in meaning and cadence. It sounded so benign, a placid deviatio...
Submitted to Contest #167
“Your mother was nineteen, you know,” Aunt Melissa says, “when we started noticing.” Her declaration pulls me out of myself. Its not the first time she’s said this, and it won’t be the last. Today its particularly annoying, because its Thanksgiving, and I’m doing that thing where I imagine how life might have been different. You know. If my mom hadn’t gone crazy. I do this a lot, living a parallel life in my head. For example, instead of my father and Wren sitting on Melissa’s couch, staring blankly at the television and their phones, we’d...
Shortlisted for Contest #166 ⭐️
I always imagined, when it came down to it, that I would be forced out for some physical reason. Arthritis in my hands seemed to be a popular choice, followed closely by a herniated disk, or dementia. We actually used to joke about that sometimes, me and my young staff members, because for all of my diligence and dedication, I am well-known for being scatterbrained. The irony, of course, does not escape me. It actually makes me a little bit sad, and no one jokes about me having dementia anymore. No one jokes with me much at all, not since...
Winner of Contest #164 🏆
Carmen invades my mind a lot, even years after her astonishing death. Life is strange like that, sometimes. How people who didn’t necessarily have a starring role in your life sometimes have the greatest impact. As an adult, I think of Carmen as the mom I want to be. She’s the mom I try to be, even though I will never be as carefree and full of joy as she was. I parent with law and order, Carmen did it with wildness and magic. As a kid, though, Carmen was the mom we all wished was our own. It was the way of preteen girls then and now; your o...
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