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Martha Kowalski

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2024

Stories (24)
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24 Stories

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Kye

Submitted to Contest #309

The smell of wet earth seeps in through my nose. I’m very aware I’m faceplanted into something cold and wet but I can’t even move. Every bone feels broken, every muscle mauled at each tired tendon.I’m exhausted.I feel like an eternity has passed and I’ve spent all of it trying to wake up from a bad dream. My memories are blurry and scattered but they leave a sour taste in my mouth.Or maybe I just swallowed a mouthful of mud, as I realize what I’m lying in.My eyes crack open and I’m instantly surrounded by brown, mud covering everything in my...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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Another Crack

Submitted to Contest #303

** contains witchcraft involving a little blood ** Kye only looks at peace when he sleeps. He seems younger when those off-hue amber eyes are closed, when his hair sweeps over his forehead and over his eyelids, when his tired body can finally get some rest. We at last convinced him to sleep on the bed instead of balled up in the corner. I sit in a chair beside him, not wanting to spook him. He still gets nervous around us, but he seems to trust us by now. Then again, under the compulsion spell, he may not have a choice. Curled up with a bla...

25 likes 10 comments 10
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Licho Nie Śpi

Submitted to Contest #302

** pronounce: Lee-ho **Generations living near the Polish woods would heed the warning. Perhaps it was just folk legend, but nobody would risk going into the forest past nightfall. Some very superstitious villagers would not risk going into the forest at all, lest they come back yellow-eyed and crazed with the devil in their veins. They claimed some dogs that ventured into the woods in chase of a squirrel came back rabid and demonic. Of course, it was most likely the squirrel had rabies, though in the villagers’ minds, it was all the Licho’s...

12 likes 11 comments 11
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What's In A Name

Submitted to Contest #302

** Kye’s POV between “Brown Eyes” and “Charmed” ** “Kye?”A strange sound wakes me. It sounds like a voice but I do not understand what it says.“Kye.”Cold. Cold, I am so cold. My body shivers.Something soft and warm touches my face. It smells like peaches and like something more like a forest.“Kye.”There is that strange sound again. It is close, right above me.“Open your eyes, Kye. Let me see your eyes.”I obey.A girl sits next to me. She has long curly hair and big eyes. She is frowning. Why is she frowning? I did what she asked. Did I do it ...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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Charmed

Submitted to Contest #301

The slender, shaking figure sits huddled in a blanket, knees tucked up to his chest, brown hair falling like a curtain into his amber-brown eyes. Eyes that are finally kind of the right color but so what?Mentally and physically drained from the last 48 hours, I slump against the wall. Aiden, Crystal, and I had managed to subdue the monster invading Kye’s body but at the cost of suppressing all his emotions and memories. And I was the one who did this to him; Crystal and Aiden may have done the spell, but I hung the charm around his neck. He ...

19 likes 12 comments 12
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Brown Eyes

Submitted to Contest #296

The ends justify the means, right? I mean, that’s what they say so it’s got to be true, right? So this should make me feel better, right? It’s for the best, right?So why does this still make me want to skin myself?“You know it has to be done,” Crystal says. She tries to sound firm and convinced as she hands me the charmed necklace but her trembling hands and Aiden’s grim expression give it away: they know as well as I do that this is wrong.“Kye would hate this,” I whisper, glancing at the heavy closed door leading downstairs where Kye sits l...

35 likes 38 comments 38
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Until the End of Time

Submitted to Contest #291

It started innocently, like most obsessions tend to. After all, after you’ve lived for centuries already, it’s only a matter of time before you get bored. Caspian became immortal by accident; he didn’t really remember how it happened – I remind you, he has been alive for quite a while. He does remember Archimedes running through the streets shouting “Eureka!” though, if that gives you some context. He remembers being one of the few surviving members of his community after a rat-borne disease swept through the continent. It was around th...

28 likes 16 comments 16
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Antitrust

Submitted to Contest #289

“So, tell me, Ed,” I touch his hand lightly from across the table, “how on Earth did you find the time for this? I expected you at the head of a high-powered round table closing out your latest buy-out, not taking little ole me to lunch.”“Your company is worth more than a seven-million-dollar merger, my dear,” Ed clinks his wineglass against mine and I daintily take a sip to distract myself from rolling my eyes. God, where do these guys get off? If it were me, I’d take the seven mil. Seriously, anybody would take the seven mil. “Ho...

30 likes 15 comments 15
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Checkmate

Submitted to Contest #288

“Here are the rules,” Onyx folds her hands calmly behind her row of black chess pieces lined up on the board separating us.Against the lightning shattering through the cracked window behind her, illuminating her jet black hair and pale features while veiling her in the shadow from the blackout, punctured only by the flickering candlelight on our game table –  she looks absolutely sinister, demonic, wicked. I’m not sure if her appearance unnerves me more or the fact that she looks exactly like me. It’s like staring into a mirror. A ...

24 likes 22 comments 22
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The Garden of Edens

Submitted to Contest #287

“Please come in, Professor Eden,” Dean Taverts gestures for me to sit down in an oversized leather chair across from his imposing mahogany desk. “Shall I make us some tea?”“Eh, sure – thank you,” I adjust my tie and glance at him curiously as he sets to work steeping the tea in an ornate, silver teapot. “I must say, Dean Taverts, I was quite surprised that you invited me here. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never heard of your university before.” Though his office is certainly one of the most impressive I’ve ever set foo...

27 likes 22 comments 22
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My Monster, My Ghost, My Love

Submitted to Contest #274

I’ve heard it said, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”My monster, my ghost, my love – it hurts and haunts and breaks my heart how you manage to be all three to me at the same time. How you manage to be my everything to something to nothing, all before the leaves on our tree change from green to yellow to red – to gone. Gone, I see you but you may as well see through me, whenever you even can meet my eyes anymore without the tears you fight not to show me as if that would make you ...

27 likes 14 comments 14
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From the Field Notes of Henry Rhanalrik

Submitted to Contest #273

**contains excerpts from my “Books of Destinies” duology** for best experience, read with “Rewritten” and “Books of Destinies – Vol. #1.5” [cover: dark green leather Book with scalloped edges]October 6th, 1604: No significant event to report.October 7th, 1604: No significant event to report.October 8th, 1604: Why do I bother keeping this journal? The view of the cosmos sky changes little from night to night that tracking the incremental differences seems trivial. Surely these differences are far from trivial when expanded...

25 likes 10 comments 10
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Every Type of Cabbage

Submitted to Contest #270

“They hate me, don’t they?” The burn of the kimchi jigae still coats my tongue in fire despite the ginseng tea I try to douse it with. I feel a similar burn in my cheeks as Minjun’s parents patter around in the kitchen but the tea doesn’t help much in extinguishing that. My Korean skills are minimal but even I pick up the occasional, “isanghan” – strange. As in, the isanghan blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl their son somehow, inexplicably fell in love with. As in, the isanghan way he lets her call him MJ instead of his full name. As i...

37 likes 28 comments 28
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Rewritten

Submitted to Contest #260

       I can’t sleep tonight. Tossing and turning out of my half-dream, I eventually become aware that Dimitri’s not beside me. I sigh: I told him to try to get some sleep. Then again, I can’t really blame him. Kicking my feet into slippers in the dark, I fumble downstairs. I find him sitting at the kitchen table in the dark: eyes closed, chin propped up in his hands, face buried under flat bangs that drape limply over his cheekbones.            “H...

26 likes 17 comments 17
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Books of Destinies - Vol. #1.5

Submitted to Contest #251

Somewhere in this village is a Library – hidden, out of sight. No one knows where to find it because no one searches for it; no one have ever even heard of it. But in this Secret Library, hundreds of thousands of Books live. Their pages magically pulse with life – a heart beating in the chest of a hardcover – while their words speak volumes to those who wish to listen. Nobody listens; nobody hears them; nobody even knows they exist.Except.A man led his six-year-old son into an office-type building that looked inconspicuous to the rest of the...

17 likes 13 comments 13
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