Maria Avisal

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2021

Stories (36)

36 Stories

790 karma pts

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“The Apartment” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #126

        As she stood next to the impressive charcuterie board nibbling on a cube of smoked gouda, Davina tried to focus on the positive aspects of her situation. The food options far exceeded her expectations for a party hosted by a college senior.  The punch was likely just sparkling wine and pomegranate liquor, but it was actually decent wine (at least now, in the early part of the evening). Her drinks were free, and she had a free sober ride home. She didn’t know anyone there bes...

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“DIA, March 15 2020” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #125

         The combination of adrenaline and euphoria Chloe felt clearing the packed jet bridge at the Denver airport was remarkably similar how she had felt at the summit of Lone Mountain three days before, preparing to point her snowboard nose over the edge of the first bowl of the day. Zigzagging through travelers, she reached the main thoroughfare and opened up into a running pace one notch below a full-on sprint.  Settling into this pace for what she estimated would be a 600-meter dis...

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“Postoperative Day Three” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #124

         Dalia, completely ignored by the nurse sitting at the computer outside of room 314, knocked inaudibly before easing the door open. The sky outside of Mr. Leary’s room was completely black, and the flickering lights of the city only barely visible through the fog.  Eyes shifting from the window to the bed, she wrinkled her forehead in confusion upon seeing it empty. She would never admit it to the resident team, but she had been guilty of silently checking the drainage tubes and ...

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“The Good Dog” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #122

        In an effort to overcome her extreme impatience and frustration with the completely stopped traffic, Emilia was reading a sign out email about the patients she would be responsible for over the next week, provided she didn’t miss her flight home. She had been in this Central American country, her father’s homeland, for six days. Most of her time here had been spent meeting with local physicians and nonprofit board members to discuss the next steps in formalizing a partnership between thei...

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“Gabriel” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #121

          As soon as I felt the chill of the hard orange plastic seat through my paper-thin scrub pants, I wished I had changed back into my crumpled khaki pants and blouse, which were now squeezed in my backpack in front of the massive pathology textbook I hadn’t had a single free minute to study. It was my second year of medical school, our exam on dermatology was in three days, and I still had dozens of rashes to memorize, but I was too exhaust to wiggle the book out of my bag and open it.&nbsp...

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“A Leaf Snowballs” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #118

        Nadine wouldn’t have even noticed the giant leaf, yellow with brown spots like a gracefully aging banana, if her three-year-old son hadn’t recently become obsessed with the leaves on the ground during the walk home from her mother’s apartment when she picked him up in the evening. Yesterday he had spent ten minutes comparing shapes and relative sizes of yellow triangular ginkgo leaves and mastering the pronunciation of “gingko”. She wasn’t sure what type of tree this huge leaf had com...

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“Snowpark” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #116

         Slightly after the agreed-upon meeting time of 6:15am, their three snowboards were secured in the roof rack Shawna’s Jeep Cherokee. Shawna, the only one with a four-wheel drive car, lived in north Portland close to the highway entrance and developed intractable nausea if she was in the car but not driving, making her the de-facto mountain driver. Unfortunately for her friends Miya and Jamie, who had brought their coffee in thermoses, this also meant they were at the mercy of Shawna d...

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“Home Call” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #115

When the first page came blaring through in the early morning hours of Monday morning, Gabriella’s exhausted brain integrated the noise into the dream she was having about being lost in the underbelly of a cargo ship. The blaring in the dream represented an alarm, which sounded with increasing urgency while dream Gabriella wove between the hulking metal shipping containers before finally waking with a start in her bed at home, drenched in sweat.  Her arm darted to her nightstand to silence the pager, while her brain tried to catch ...

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“Away Message” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #108

“Hold on, let me read this email,” Ray said, which was irritating since he had called me and I didn’t particularly feel like talking to him at all. “Whoa, Nina, remember Scott?” My empty stomach flipped into my chest. Yes, I remembered Scott. I remembered his green-gray eyes, and wavy hair, and cool nonchalance that masked a quiet intensity. I remembered the exact moment he had noticed me at the party, and how quickly and deftly I had dissociated myself from Ray, who had brought me to the party. I remembere...

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“Elizabeth Highbridge Escapes” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #107

     As usual, Aimee’s most bothersome hangover manifestation was the sensation of a vice tightening across her forehead. Shaky and nauseous, she gritted her teeth, praying to the god of bad decisions to guide her to the gate so she could nap before her quick flight back to Cleveland.  After passing through the metal detector at the security checkpoint, her backpack glided out of the x-ray scanner. She fumbled to pick it up before turning back to grab her beaten up sneakers from the next bin, except th...

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“Eastern White Pine” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #106

     “Ugh, this chicken again?! Seriously? You always make the same two things, I’m so sick of them,” I whined as I strolled into the dining room, late for dinner. My mother sighed but didn’t respond, dropping a piece of baked chicken on her own plate.            “So when are you going to try to tell us about Seattle?” my father asked, showing a rare awareness of where I had been recently. He didn’t irritate me nearly as much as my mother, pro...

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“Tres Mujeres” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #105

Dr. Chang – 6:18pm, Wednesday evening The click of my office door opening startled me, although not as much as I startled the kind-eyed man who had come to empty my trash and turn my light off.  “Hey doc I’m sorry, didn’t think anyone was in here,” he purred while backing out of the doorway. “Oh no, it’s ok, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I answered, smiling. After a moment of basking in the warm glow of automatically being called “doc” after years of being called “the nurse” or, worse, “the Asian girl”, or worse still by one m...

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“Friday Night” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #104

The dizzying chirping of her cell phone ringing jolted Miya out of the spreadsheet that had been blurring in front of her eyes. Her hand darted off the keyboard and silenced the ringer, shoulders relaxing when she saw Kali’s familiar name and grinning face on the screen. “Hey,” she whispered, conscious of her place in a cubicle among other cubicles, even though by 6:30pm on Friday most of the other research assistants had left. “Hi! What are you doing tonight? Want to come to Jelly Bar with me and Lea and a few of her frien...

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“Surfacing” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #99

        Don scrunched his wide shoulders through the hatch, carrying the daily briefings and the three trays of our pre-ordered breakfasts. Ray and I thanked him, and settled into an amiable silence of chewing and reviewing the plan for the day, our final day at 400ft below sea level in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the final work day of our eighteen day assignment, and the three of us had settled into a comfortable routine with each other. We alternated shifts with another three-man team, ...

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“Salvation” by Maria Avisal

Submitted to Contest #98

“The Messiah himself speaks through me, you must believe the end is coming. We must all be ready, for he is ready to receive us,” my father’s voice boomed from the living room, waking me up two hours before I had to be up for school on the day of my physics final. He was actually right in a way. I have been waiting for enough time to pass to be able to tell this story. As the years have gone on and I have aged, I have spent more and more time worrying about any of my father’s followers who might still be alive, and how they w...

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Author bio

I welcome comments and constructive criticism and appreciate you taking the time to read my stories! I'm trying to get back into writing fiction with the goal of eventually finishing my first novel despite having another day job (in a field that finds its way into some of my stories).

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #145
The Cats of Mount Washington – read story