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Liv Chocolate

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2022

Stories (19)
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235 Followers
146 Following

19 Stories

1471 karma pts

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Just Like Real Water

Submitted to Contest #308

cw: language, nudity, graphic skin-related injuries Nathaniel gets out of the water, and the sun blankets his bare back like a fluffy bath towel, still warm from the dryer, that Mother Nature has lovingly wrapped around his cold, trembling shoulders, as if he were her little boy. His wife Charlotte lies off in the sand, stomach up like a dead fish, in the strappy American flag bikini Nathaniel tried to sneak into their donation bin last winter. Her belly piercing glints in the sunlight, depending on which angle you look at her from. From whe...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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A Night Owl Proposal

Submitted to Contest #299

cw: reference to suicide, death, blood, violence I envy the dead because, unlike us, the dead get to sleep forever.Only I don’t know many dead people — other than a few distant relatives. Strangers tied to me by the smallest drop of blood, like my one Aunt Margaret who always wore capris and a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt and who, on the few occasions I did meet, either questioned my weight and degree choice or was in utter disbelief — and I’m talking, like, completely and genuinely dumbfounded — that I was once a baby, and then, twenty or wha...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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My Name Is Harper Torres

Submitted to Contest #294

In my first public speaking memory, I’m six and holding a teddy bear. His name is Roberto, I explain to the class, and I hold him whenever I feel scared.I pass him around the room, and each of my classmates examines him briefly, unimpressed. They were more impressed with last week’s show-and-tell, when Elijah brought in a fossilized fish, its scales still glimmering under the fluorescent classroom lights.What they don’t know is that if you hold down Roberto’s right paw and speak, he’ll record what you say and repeat it back to you. When Robe...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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Root Beer

Submitted to Contest #274

cw: drowning I drowned in a paper cup once. One of those free ones that fast food places give you when you ask for a cup of water but then secretly fill with root beer, or whichever drink you like best.Only this cup was filled with water. Just plain tasteless tap water and nothing else.In my previous form, as well as every other form before that one, I had never been the type to fill my free water cup with soda. For one, I wasn’t a thief. Apparently I wasn’t a good swimmer either. I learned this as soon as I hit the water and my many spider ...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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Candlestick Kingdom

Submitted to Contest #260

cw: greif, loss, deathI see my face in my mother’s. Her head, an oval-shaped mirror on a frail torso, shimmers in the moonlight and reflects my image back at me. I can see that I look just as despondent as I feel when I see my reflection in her. My eyes are swollen and my nose wet. I have been in denial for the last several years that my mother is reaching her end.When she first started showing signs of expiration, my father, the emperor of Candlestick Kingdom, took her to the appraiser, who examined her carefully under the light o...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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Your Call Has Been Forwarded to a Place You Can Never Return

Shortlisted for Contest #202 ⭐️

cw: mild graphic material and brief mention of physical violence If you were here right now, you’d tell me this is a bad idea. You’d take away my phone and remind me that you can’t make someone stay who doesn't want to. You’d have saved me from creating yet another shame-inducing memory I’d end up cringing at five years later—while I’m pumping gas into my car, slicing a tomato, skimming the dead leaves from the pool we used to swim in.While I’ve tried to forget, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that I can recite your number by heart. I’...

55 likes 56 comments 56
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Gate M41

Submitted to Contest #196

cw: mentions of suicide, murder, sex, and terminal illness  Balloons, apparently, are a weapon of mass destruction. Even the one that I’m fighting to get past security at this very moment—an 18” round one with the words GET WELL SOON printed above a cartoon sun wearing sunglasses. The more I look at it, the more it bothers me that the sun, in theory, is protecting himself against himself. Out of all the people in our lives, we hurt ourselves the most, my husband had warned me before I left. Are you sure you want to visit ...

42 likes 32 comments 32
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Not-Fine Print

Submitted to Contest #186

Background *This feeling, this dread, compressing your chest into a nervous, acidic pulp like putrid, century-old-squeezed orange juiceTM. Hereinafter referred to as “this anxiety.” Subscribers of "this anxiety" may feel worried, ill, and/or not fine. Subsidiaries of “this anxiety” include (but are not limited to) Generalized Anxiety Disorder®, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder® (“OCD”), Panic DisorderTM, and Social Anxiety DisorderTM. Services of this anxiety and its subsidiaries are operated and brought to you by the Overactive Amygdala of the...

45 likes 19 comments 19
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I'll Stay Up All Night With You

Submitted to Contest #184

cw: foul language I close my eyes to sleep, but the bright, flickering light of a Liberty Mutual commercial passes through my eyelids. Suddenly, I’m awake. My heart jumps to my throat, and my face flushes hot. Still half-asleep, I take a moment to collect myself, to gather what has happened.It turns out, my husband has done it again—turned on our bedroom TV after I’ve already gone to bed. I consider turning it off point blank, or at least changing the channel to something more palatable. It’s 1:06 in the morning, and he’s chosen&nb...

42 likes 20 comments 20
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Careful—You’ll Slip, Fall, and Die on Those Slippery Slopes

Winner of Contest #182 🏆

cw: references to sexual assault, kidnapping, and murderThe first time I crossed a street by myself—as in, without one or both of my parents present—I was seventeen. My parents warned me that the outside world was dangerous, and that, if something were to happen to me, I wouldn't know what to do. According to my parents, kidnappers, murderers, and kidnapper-murderers lurked on every corner of our small, suburban town where, statistically, my chances of becoming the victim of a violent crime were less than my chances of being allowed to ...

226 likes 198 comments 198
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Violet or Red

Shortlisted for Contest #181 ⭐️

You were born on National Maple Syrup Day. Your mother names you Alcyone (pronounced AL-SEE-OWN-EE) because Alcyone means calm. It’s a cruel, unfitting choice given your family’s history of anxiety. You wish your name were something simple and easy-to-say, like Hannah.By the time you turn nineteen, you've grown tired of constantly having to correct people. It’s Al-see-own-ee, you tell them on the days you have more confidence than usual, but they don’t hear you, and if they do hear you, they forget. As far as they’re concerned, you are Aliso...

66 likes 55 comments 55
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The Plastic Fragments of a Broken Sea Turtle Heart

Submitted to Contest #179

cw: references to near-death experiences 1. Sea turtles, like most reptiles, have three-chambered hearts.There's no sound more unsettling than your own heart beating inside your head. It reminds Cheryl of her mortality—every time she lays her head down on her pillow the wrong way, and her pulse pounds against her skull like the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on her door every Sunday to remind her that she won't live forever.Neither will turtles, but she’s never heard a Jehovah’s Witness talk about turtles. Turtle mortality was never a top...

30 likes 41 comments 41
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The Papercut

Submitted to Contest #177

When I wake up, the doctor gives me the facts. She delivers them to me gently—her voice like a warm cup of water you could steep a bag of tea in. Somehow, she’s made a car accident sound like a papercut, and so I decide that's what I'd like to call it from now on—a papercut. Can you feel your toes? she asks.I think so. It’s hard to tell. Hm. Can you tell me your name? John.Can you see anything, John? No. Is that normal?Typically. She excuses herself to check on another patient, and I anxiously wait for her to co...

46 likes 43 comments 43
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B+Z

Submitted to Contest #176

It’s a fact—if you and your lover carve your names into the northern red oak tree behind the gas station on Fifth Avenue, your relationship will last forever. Most people don’t think to try. The few who do are mostly driven by either curiosity or superstition. Compared to the curious ones, the superstitious ones are the more dangerous of the two. They flock to the tree with their utility knives and unhealthy attachment styles, desperate to do whatever it takes to make the object of their obsession stay.Beth sees this happen one summer w...

30 likes 32 comments 32
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Last Seen on the Corner of Melonbee and Fig

Submitted to Contest #174

Stop looking for me, Vivian. I command you. Your efforts are futile and beginning to border on idiotic. I can no longer stand it—watching you and your makeshift search crew of suburban moms pace up and down Melonbee and Fig Street, looking for the very being who terrorized you for years.With my omniscient feline eye, I'm aware of everything happening in this and every moment—the neon green LOST CAT signs stapled to the necks and torsos of the weeping cherry trees; your Lululemon-clad troop of PTA moms flooding every rosebush with t...

20 likes 7 comments 7
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