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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020
My husband, Sinclair, looked like a black lumberjack. He bounced into our room and took out my yellow suitcase and dragged it across the hardwood floor leaving stuff marks along the way. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him piling his clothes inside. I knew that he was going to ask me if I wanted to go to the convention with him and he knew that my answer was going to be the same as it had been the ten hundred o...
Calla couldn’t believe what she was seeing out of her telescope. This couldn’t be right. She gasped and looked again. But, it was right. Right across from her building she saw a man tied up in a house gagged and blindfolded. He was alone in the room. The only furniture in the room was the chair he was tied up on and a small lamp on the floor. There were open green curtains on the one window in the room. The man's hair w...
Are you there God? It's me, Hortece. It’s been a while since we have actually had a sit down conversation. You know I rarely go to church anymore and my grandma, Nana, is probably rolling in her grave on that one. She took us to church, me and my sister every Sunday that she could and sometimes even my bad cousins who couldn’t keep still to save their necks. She was always pinching one of them to sit still and of course ...
The phone rang, waking up Iris from a sound sleep and a nice dream. She knew it could only be one person at that hour of the morning. She glanced at the cell phone near her bed on her nightstand and it was 3 am and the caller ID said “Willie Calling.” Willie was Iris’s younger brother and the troublemaker of the family. He was the youngest of 8 kids and the shortest and the one with the infuriating personality. He nev...
Rosa stood with her back straight and eyes forward behind the old brown wooden desk at the inn she owned and ran. She kept her eyes glued to the glass doors at the entrance. Her small frame wouldn’t move until she saw her much anticipated guest. Rosa had been waiting for this moment all year long. Her best friend, Elosie would come once a year to visit her. They would laugh, sip coffee by the fireplace, and eat good hom...
A small mahogany table with sturdy legs sat in Lucy’s kitchen. Sitting on the top of it was the perfect setting for a tea party for two. Lucy, a small, petite woman with black hair that could rival the color of darkest night, stood at the stove in her old blue bathrobe with the tear at the sleeve. She couldn’t bear to part with the robe which her beloved husband, Oliver, had given her on their 56th anniversary. That wa...
The sting of the Mango Habanero sauce from the chicken wings Altenda just demolished in twenty minutes flat was still evident in her mouth. She poured herself a glass of chilled Pinot Noir wine. As she sipped it and looked around her apartment, the Jacob Lawerence, Kara Walker and Alma Thomas paintings which adorned her walls she felt blessed. She would not have acquired these things if it hadn’t been for her job. She...
Oliver sat in wait. His head turned in the direction it should be. His body laid low to the ground and he barely breathed. He was waiting. His New Year’s Resolution was to finally get that pesky mouse that had run control of the house for the whole year. Oliver felt that he was not doing his mousley duty letting that mouse run past him every night and not catching him for his humans. He longed for the day he could put th...
Someone told me a long time ago that you don’t live life that life lives you and you are the dancer of your own life. Some people dance fast, some slow, some not at all and some come to the dance late. I have always come to the dance late, the dance of life and all the dances in between. I was even born late so my mama told me. That was the first dance I was late to. And there were many, many, many more.
My mom laid there on the hideous hospital bed that had taken up space in the living room for the past two months. She hated that bed. If she could have talked she probably would have said that it was the most uncomfortable bed in the world. Her head was propped up on two pillows, one over sized and one undersized. Her comforter was covering her now tiny body which was always cold. She laid there eyes open and looked up t...
I was always brought up to say please and thank you as a form of being polite, having manners. Did I always mean the many times I said please, thank you, your welcome, bless you or any of the numerous polite sayings I was taught, not always. I went along as a child saying thank you when someone gave me something whether I wanted it or not. Once one of my grandmother’s gave me a clam. I knew that I would not like the tast...
All of her life Mrs. Fletcher had an almost pathological fear of missing the train to work. She had worked in the same office doing the same thing for over 20 years. She could not be late today of all days, her final day. Each day before work she would wake up four hours early and get out of bed and summon the butler, Charles, who would in turn summon the cook, Julie, who would rush into the kitchen to cook Mrs. Fletcher...
The old weathered bench in the backyard of my grandmother had been there as long as I can remember. I remember playing hide and seek with my sister and cousins with me hiding under the bench curled up in a ball thinking I had become invisible and nobody could see me. I imagine that is the feeling that my mom feels now, invisible. I sat down on the bench and gazed up at the tall plum tree that was right in front of the be...
He felt it raging throughout his body. He knew that he was going to have to fight again. Fight for the one thing that he treasured more than anything his soul. He knew that he was coming again. He comes every year and only once a year. He glanced at the calendar and the date was circled in red marker. He knew that he had to get ready for war which would rage inside of him. People called him many names...
The box was small and dark. I hated going in there.I hated the darkness but every Friday I didn’t have a choice. I made it to the front of the line and waited my turn. In my head I was thinking of the things that I was required to say when the door opened to the box and the person before me stepped out. I really didn’t have anything to say but that would not do. You were expected to say something once you entered the box...
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