Madeleine Foster

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019

Stories (4)

4 Stories

58 karma pts

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“Bless the Telephone ” by Madeleine Foster

Submitted to Contest #285

“What time is it there?”“Almost 5pm,” he says, voice of glinting ash. I can almost taste it down the phone. Bitter, deep-toned. Outside, brash New York hurtles, clanking towards midnight. “It’s late here,” I say, my forehead pressed against the hotel window, my hand crumpled between my shoulder and the receiver.“How is it?” He asks. “New York at night?”I hesitate. I am in Manhattan - skyless, clamorous. Below, people tear through the streets, each figure a peal of laughter, obscure and covetous. Sirens blare and lights throb and everyon...

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“Foam” by Madeleine Foster

Submitted to Contest #273

I’d never seen the beach sunlit. Even at the height of noon, the whole expanse was a kaleidoscope of grey. The shingle was pallid and seemingly skyless, overlooked as it was by cliffs. The water was lightless, always roiling. There was character to it all, though. A sense of changelessness - as though the beach has been this way for millions of years. It made me dream. It was why I’d made such a generous offer on the house, despite everything. The garden, though small, was wildly overgrown, billowing with creeping thistle ground-ivy. The win...

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“Et moi, et moi, et moi” by Madeleine Foster

Submitted to Contest #260

She looked just like me. Well, she had black beehive hair, dark lips, winged eyes - all framed by a patchwork headscarf - but everything else was the same. The chubby face, the slim eyes, the toothless smile. Even the long, freckled neck - a paint-smatter of brown across the clavicle. More a collage than a photo - a crude cut-out of my face plastered sixty years into the past. I didn’t read the caption at first. The visit so far had passed like a daydream - wispy and insubstantial. Art galleries often feel like that. Photography galleries es...

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“The Rover” by Madeleine Foster

Submitted to Contest #259

When she was five years old, Aisha drew a picture of Mars and gifted it to her Mum. She had used her reddest crayon. A gorgeous red - unspoiled, its tip still pointed. An unworldly declaration of love. Thirty years later, with the red planet crumbling under her boots, the drawing struck her as a little naive. The vista that unravelled before her - its arid undulations, its butterscotch sky - were all brown. She held out her gloved hand and watched the alien dust land in the palm. It looked like soil. Like gravel. It brought to mind the...

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Author bio

26 years old, Manchester, UK.