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Marte Van Der Linden

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (51)
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513 Followers
18 Following

51 Stories

1761 karma pts

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On the ferry

Submitted to Contest #54

Sigrid hasn’t been back to the island for twelve years and she’s not sure why she’s going there now. The ferry chugs through the waves and she leans on the railing, watching the familiar shoreline grow closer. For a moment she feels like she’s stepped inside a memory. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of diesel and salt water. There’s something metallic too, and a faint whiff of rotting seaweed. It smells like all of her childhood summers rolled into one, like going for the same walk every day, swim...

63 likes 13 comments 13
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14:25 from the Middle of Nowhere

Submitted to Contest #49

It’s so hot even the cicadas have given up.The heat makes the air shimmer above the tracks. The sun beats down on the cracked concrete of the platform. There’s the faintest gust of a breeze - hardly worthy of the name, but just enough to set the dust dancing and send a faint smell of lavender and thyme down from the hills.A young woman sprawles in what passes for shade, with a backpack against her knees. Her hair is gathered in a messy bun from which sweaty strands are escaping. She checks her watch and then page seventy-four of her Thomas C...

35 likes 6 comments 6
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Perfectly adequate Agnes

Submitted to Contest #48

Agnes Wolfe was born at the stroke of midnight during the first thunderstorm of the year.(Of course she was. Wouldn’t be much of a story if she was born at a quarter past eight on a Thursday morning, would it, or if it was partly cloudy with a 40% chance of rain in the afternoon?)As she drew her first breath, lightning struck the pine tree outside the window. It went up in a crackle of flames.“That’s a lucky omen!” said the midwife, placing little Agnes in her mother’s arms. “She’ll grow up to be special, no doubt about it!”Mr Wolfe eyed the...

38 likes 8 comments 8
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Going home

Submitted to Contest #47

It’s one of those days.You check the weather forecast again. Not for the first time, you wonder how it’s possible that we can fly to the moon and split the atom but still somehow miss this. No matter how many times you force the website to reload, the little icon next to today still shows a cheerful yellow sun half hidden behind a white cloud. Outside, the rain that isn’t supposed to be here patters down on the roof of the bike shed. That roof leaks, so your bike seat is going to be wet. There’s no way it will clear up in time for you to go ...

29 likes 8 comments 8
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And yet we write

Submitted to Contest #46

She takes the dirty bandages off the day she is released. There will be scars. That is fine. She will always walk with a limp. That is fine, too. But her broken fingers haven’t mended, and that’s not something she can live with. So she finds an apothecary who owes her a favour and spends the first night of her newfound freedom biting down on a piece of wood, while he breaks her fingers again and sets them properly. “They’ll heal,” says the apothecary, once he has finished with splints and bandages. “But it’ll take time.” “How long?” “Four w...

20 likes 6 comments 6
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Horrors and wonders

Submitted to Contest #45

The cobblestones in the town square are waiting.Something will happen today. They know it. They have seen centuries go by, filled with horrors and wonders, and they recognise the signs. There’s a stillness in the air.*The square was paid for with blood. Some rich businessman, who lived a few centuries ago, had it built to show everyone how generous he was. He got his money by selling people. Men, women, children. Chained and beaten and starved. Bought and sold like cattle by the rich businessman, who was so convinced of his own superiority t...

24 likes 8 comments 8
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A small step

Submitted to Contest #44

I arrived at the job eight hours early, just in time to watch her say goodbye.I knew from the start it was a bad idea. Arrive on time, that’s one of my rules. In my line of work, breaking rules can lead to all sorts of problems. Don’t get involved. That’s another of my rules. But I had been involved in this from the start, and despite knowing the ending, I was curious to see how it would play out.There were dozens of men and women there, and they all wanted to be near her. She made her way through the crowd, shaking hands, patting shoulders,...

21 likes 9 comments 9
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In the moonlight

Submitted to Contest #43

There were four of them in the litter. Felix was the biggest. He could stagger about on unsteady legs when he was only two weeks old, and was sticking his nose out of the den just a few days later. The next pups were Thora and Varg, who were inseparable from birth. It was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began in the whirl of grey fur and wagging tails. And then there was Luna, the runt of the litter. She had small ears that were usually folded back against her head and dark fur that made her hard to spot in the thick undergr...

24 likes 10 comments 10
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A life in silence

Shortlisted for Contest #42 ⭐️

Only three people came to his funeral.One was the nurse who had looked after him during the last weeks of his life. She knew his name, or thought she did, but always referred to him as “the grumpy old dear in room 21A”. He had died alone while she was tending to Mrs Dahl in 13B, and she thought the least she could do was come to his funeral.The second person was one of his old neighbours, a tiny woman with grey hair pulled into a tight bun. Mr Halvorsen, as she knew him, had always kept himself to himself. She hadn’t known him, not really, b...

36 likes 15 comments 15
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A blessing and a curse

Submitted to Contest #41

“In hindsight, it was a bad idea.”“Ya think?” Inspector Dixon stubbed out his seventh cigarette and glared at the man sitting on the other side of the table in the dingy interview room. That man was Dr Hennessey, curator of the Museum of Archaeology. He was short and bald, with eyebrows that made him look like a particularly dispirited vulture and a moustache that just looked stupid. He was also the reason that Inspector Dixon was spending his Friday evening at the police station rather than at the theatre with his wife. Not that he particul...

25 likes 12 comments 12
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His Mandy and her Derek

Submitted to Contest #40

Sometimes you see a person and you just know. Half your mind is busy setting off fireworks while the other half is dancing around, shouting: “That there is your new best friend!”Sometimes you can even understand why. It might be the fact that they’re reading your favourite book on the train, or that they have green hair and don’t give a damn about the weird looks people give them.What drew Sir Fluff to his new best friend was not her pirate boots or the ray gun in her belt, but the fact that she looked as real to him as any of the twenty-nin...

18 likes 3 comments 3
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The end and the beginning

Submitted to Contest #39

In the grey nothingness between waking and sleeping, she sometimes remembers Before. It’s like falling into a swirling mass of colour and noise, with people milling about in crazy patterns. They’re laughing and shouting and singing in a hundred different languages. Machines thrum in the background to make everything go faster.Those are the bad days. When she remembers Before, she wakes with her heart pounding and the memory of flames behind her eyes. On those days her ears ring with the sound of screams that were silenced nearly two decades ...

20 likes 8 comments 8
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A quest for knowledge

Submitted to Contest #38

When Jack decided to set off on a Quest he had been fully prepared to walk for months, meeting mysterious witches and battling dragons along the way. He had not expected to find the Great Portal to the Mysterious Alternate Dimension at the back of his wardrobe while searching for his cloak.The portal was smaller than Jack had expected. It didn’t even take up the entire back wall of the wardrobe. Still, it was definitely the Great Portal to the Mysterious Alternate Dimension, capital letters and all. It shone with an eerie green light and the...

21 likes 6 comments 6
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The memory of lost things

Submitted to Contest #37

Everything I have ever loved fits inside an old shoe box that I keep under my bed.I haven’t looked at its contents for years, but tonight I find myself reaching for the box. With some difficulty, I pull it out from under the bed. Then I brush off the dust and open the lid to reveal a hoard of memories, glittering like gems. There’s rust too, and flaking paint and faded ink. I lift the items out one by one and set them on my desk. The carefully arranged row of knickknacks and trinkets mocks me.The oldest item is a paper airplane. It’s yellow ...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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In the shadow of the mountain

Submitted to Contest #37

The first time she saw him it was was raining, a cold drizzle that hung over the mountain and dripped down into the melting snow. He was standing stock-still on a rocky outcrop, staring at her. His features were blurred by rain and distance, but there was something familiar about him. His height, his build. The way he stood with his arms stiff at his sides. The scruffy grey coat. But she didn’t know him. She couldn’t. She knew no one. It should have scared her to see a strange man this far into the mountains, far from the settlements and far...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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