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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2020
Submitted to Contest #220
Coffee skin and almond eyes, Rae had the most ferociously infectious laugh. I was in awe of her ability to stir up humor in the most dire of predicaments, her head often rearing back exposing a mouthful of cackling teeth. It never mattered what we did, I knew it would always be a deep dive into something that would fill my otherwise dreary little life with wonder and surprise. Once we found ourselves abandoned in the city, the bus leaving our seventh grade field trip without us. I had begun my meltdown, while Rae crafted us an unadulterat...
Submitted to Contest #145
My hands are on autopilot, cutting up one of those horseshoe shaped pepperoni tubes into small cubes for my famous, internationally-inspired, potluck dish, something I call Italian croissants. It’s one of those Women’s Day Magazine easy recipes I absconded and pretended to invent years ago.It’s afternoon, and the day is warm, so a glass of icy cold Sauvignon Blanc accompanies my chopping and assembling. Day drinking.I find myself mindlessly humming as I lay out the croissant dough—recently released from the cracked round cylinder that held i...
Submitted to Contest #144
I was a mere peanut-sized being, blossoming in utero, when Daniel the second (my grandfather) and Daniel the third (my dad) both died. Odd to me, their deaths came one right after the other and under what seemed to be very suspicious circumstances that no one could ever really explain in a way that made sense to me. As a child, I would while away the hours staring at the few photos my mother had of both she and my dad, and my dad and grandfather together. The photos told me nothing other than my mom had been gorgeous during that time, a fa...
Submitted to Contest #110
“What’ll you have handsome?" The waitress asking me smiles. She appears to be in her late sixties, blue eye shadow solidified into deep crevices making her eyelids look like a slightly schizophrenic map for some uncharted backcountry. I stare at her for a moment, wondering if I might recognize her before responding, “Something different. I’m in a rut, a holding pattern if you will, and I need to try new things. Typically, I would order the meatloaf so surprise me,” I say before adding, “oh, and a coke too please.” “Well, we don’t get t...
Submitted to Contest #87
Nathaniel Goodwin’s owl shaped alarm clock rings at 6:58am sharp. It has rung at the same time for the last 42 years, since he was five-years-old and his mother woke him for kindergarten. Even during days when no school or work beckons him, he sets the alarm, a sound he has come to rely on, an assurance that he can start his day and everything will go according to plan. He raises up in bed, flings his legs over the edge and puts his rather large feet into his red and white checkerboard slippers. Right foot first, followed by the left. Befo...
Submitted to Contest #68
Steven Becker had been thinking about it for a while. Actually, he’d been thinking about it for a really long time if he was being honest with himself. He had prepaid the $2,000 registration fee for the evening’s event and now here he was, exiting the taxi outside of U and 14th, one of the most crowded and recognized intersections in Washington DC. It’s not too late, to turn around and get the hell out of here, the half of his brain that was a little anxious and nervous to be there tells him. Just go, the other half tells him. He moves h...
Submitted to Contest #58
My shrink is on the fifth floor of this modern, medical high-rise, so I tell that number to the back of the guy’s head who is standing near the elevator buttons so he can push the number for me. The elevator is so crowded that I feel like a single fry in a super-sized carton of French-fried potatoes and I can’t move or see anything except backs of heads, and I can’t tell whether or not my floor has been rung. The elevator stops and I can hear the doors open and a scurry of people move out. I can now see that we’re on the third floor and I ...
Submitted to Contest #57
“Rita, I’m sorry to call you so late, but you’re the only person I knew I could phone who would answer this time of night,” my neighbor Alice says to my one-word question of hello?“It’s okay. I’m definitely up. I’m waiting for a pie I just made to bring to work tomorrow to finish cooking. What’s wrong?” I ask her.“I have to leave town, family emergency, and I need someone to take care of Jackson while I’m gone. Can you help me?” she asks.Jackson is Alice’s 13-year-old cat who will snuggle into your lap for a nap but will alternately bite you...
Submitted to Contest #56
Don Miguel de Soto is lying there, exposed to the grilling Sonoran sun; brown legs bent like crabs scuttling the desert sand below him. A blistering breeze puffs at strands of dark, sweat soaked hair tickling him into wakefulness. He’s got a bandana with four days of grime and perspiration tied at his throat. Not yet fully conscious, he fantasizes about cold things, like the frozen fruit sticks he ate as a boy in Jalisco, icy, slowly melting into every pore of his bone-dry mouth.Got to keep moving, he tells himself as he wakens. His muscles ...
Submitted to Contest #55
Harish knew who he was, though they were not friends. The rich guy with the good looks and a bank account vaster than the Grand Canyon. “I want you to design something magnificent for my girlfriend Gail,” the man said with a pretentious air. “I know you two used to work together so I’m confident you will know what she’d like.” “And your budget?” Harish inquired. “Money isn’t a problem; just make a ring that she will love.” And with that, the man left. Harish indeed knew what Gail would love. He knew her very well. Seventeen years p...
Submitted to Contest #47
Suitcase in hand, you’re headed to the downtown San Diego train station. The streetlamps flicker as you make your way down the side alleys that wind to the backside of platform B. You know the way by heart, as if a Volkswagon-sized magnet locked onto your chest and drug you there. You pull out your pack of Camels and tap out a single and light up. You take a long drag and think about Benji and what you’d like to say to him if only you had the chance. The prick still haunts you. What he did to you and your girl.---You’re fourteen and you’ve g...
Submitted to Contest #44
Ronnie always blamed Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper for his absolute fixation with California and the restless, and relentless, desire to experience the open road on a motorcycle in the style of Captain America. In 1969, when the movie Easy Rider came out in the theater, he was a sixteen-year-old, pimply and plump, sex-starved sophomore with the single prospect of working as a clerk in his dad’s midwestern paint shop. When he saw that film, his worldview changed. It brought about feelings of freedom, ease, thrills, being hip—which was clearly...
Submitted to Contest #43
My mom left so many years ago, abandoning Ernie and I, her two sons, to our grief and anger and simply to wonder. We never understood why. Growing older I settled for knowing that I probably never would understand but that never stopped the pain I always felt. My father, a prominent congressman in Texas, dismissed our inquiries so we asked them less and less often. Our mom simply disappeared. She evaporated into thin air and no one knew where she went. “End of story”, our Dad would say. Ernie took it the ...
Submitted to Contest #42
“Thank you dear.” My mom says as she endeavors to tame her disheveled silver hair with her quaking, timeworn hands. I pull the car to the curb as she presses her palms to her lap and says, “Now who are you again?” Her voice a pale, shaky version of what it was when she was really still with us. We’ve been through this a million times, my mom Char and I. You’d think I’d get used to it by now but it never ceases to be unsettling. I turn off the ignition and take a long breath. I get out and walk to the passenger side, open the sedan’s doo...
Submitted to Contest #41
It’s the biggest day of my life. The one I have been dreaming about and planning since I proposed to Jake at The Rusty Bucket—everyone whose anyone in our neighborhood’s favorite foosball, well-worn pool table, beer-scented kind of establishment put on the map by the reckless and the restless. Like all brides, I want my beachside wedding to be memorable and amazing. I’ve spent hours poring over every detail with surgical precision. Guest list: check. Food: check. Inexpensive flowers: check. Dress that doesn’t make me look like a ...
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