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Mary Stanley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2023

Stories (5)

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5 Stories

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The Stepmother

Mary Stanley

Submitted to Contest #215

The children — twins, a boy and a girl — knew they had to be be patient and quiet. And so they sat for long hours before the fire, playing with the little doll they’d made for the new baby. The twins had kept the doll a secret even from their parents, snatching scraps from their mother’s sewing box when she was out of the room. It had black buttons for eyes, strands of spun wool for hair, and a pretty nightdress made of white fabric. Day turned to night, and the night wore on, and the boy and the girl with the doll in her arms sat slumped ...

4 likes

The Confession

Mary Stanley

Submitted to Contest #213

She wanted me to hug her. And next thing I know — I swear I didn’t plan it — I’m feeling the blade cut through her T-shirt, and the skin and flesh of her back, and then slip between her ribs, and, this might sound crazy, but I could sense when the tip of the blade pierced the membrane of her heart. That satisfying tension-tension-pop you get like when a salmon egg bursts between your teeth. I held her by the shoulders so I could watch those eyes go from shocked to scared to pleading to drifting to empty. All in a few seconds. I checked in wi...

7 likes

Day 24

Mary Stanley

Submitted to Contest #212

Day 24. Today will not be the day, Delinda thought as she filled the grey pot with water. Not today, and not tonight. Nope. Even though it was one of those exquisite May evenings, the setting sun’s rays streaming through the window in a way that only a drink could make one fully appreciate. Even though she’d opened that sickening envelope that came in the mail this afternoon. No ma’am. No cocktail, no chianti. Twenty-four days. “Let’s not think about 25,” she said under her breath as she opened the preheated oven and slid in a lo...

3 likes

Your Personal Savior

Mary Stanley

Submitted to Contest #211

I figured out where Jesus lived. I was walking home from SuperFresh and made him out through the shaded wilderness of the yard that turned out to be his. He was wearing basketball shorts, his light brown hair falling down his bare back. It was the middle of a muggy Long Island heat wave, and I could feel humid sweat dripping down my own back. It sounded like Jesus was cracking nuts — acorns or something? — into a big plastic garbage bag. The bag was already more than half full. I kept walking, wishing there was someone I could tell about my ...

7 likes

Masters of the Universe

Mary Stanley

Submitted to Contest #210

Has this ever happened to you? You’re going about your humdrum day, nothing special — and all of a sudden, it’s like the channel changes. No, not changes. More like it becomes clear in a way you hadn’t noticed before was out of focus.The first time this happens to me, I’m in high school. Hollywood, Florida. Probably 11th grade. I’m sitting in my high-school lunch room. I’m by myself on a plastic chair against the wall; I don’t know why I’m not at the table with my friends. I can see them now, laughing with a kid I don’t recognize. I do remem...

3 likes