Masha Kurbatova

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2019

Stories (46)

46 Stories

2718 karma pts

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“my ugly little husband” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #65

I’m lying in bed, just me, next to my ugly little husband. Aw, I’m being mean, aren’t I? He’s not that bad, just hairy around the neck and soft in the belly, and his face isn’t too symmetrical. But I’ve seen worse. And I’m used to it all, the way his nose folds into his lip, his hair sticks out by the ears. It’s comfortable, comforting, like the horrible wallpaper at Grandma’s house. It’s just that tattoo that bothers me.  He sleeps shirtless, so when I’m awake at night, I always see it, a penguin on the left side of his ribcage. He w...

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“acrobat” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #64

Derek is an empirical, sciency person who listens to only facts. But I guess death makes believers of us all. I thought he never listened to me either, yet certainly some things have gone through. How else would he remember where to hire a paranormal investigator?  Paranormal Investigator: Where do you notice the greatest level of activity? Derek: By the closet, definitely. That’s where she kept all her paintings.   (What a smart, observant boy my husband is!)  PI: Are the paintings still in there?  D: Yeah.&...

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“come to atlanta! ” by Masha Kurbatova

🏆 Winner of Contest #63

   Irina lives alone now, which is ideal. Except last night, when she watched a psychological thriller, some dream-sequence cinema with melting wax heads and ants crawling from orifices and twisted whispering voices. She couldn’t tell you the plot. She couldn’t tell you what it all meant. But she couldn’t sleep after. The scary little movie scenes wormed into the backs of her eyelids. She regretted living so far from Jake then, but by morning, she doesn’t. It would have made her feel like a child, crying to him about a monster...

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“macaroni salad” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #62

The great thing about being successful: no one could question your actions anymore. Instead, every action became a tip for success. Before the book deals and the interviews, how many times had she been made a jester for liking cold, starchy salads drenched in mayonnaise and onions? But now, every sloppy forkful of macaroni salad seemed the mark of a great poetess. She’s feeding her muse. If paparazzi were around, she put on an extra little performance, picking up steak and spinach leaves between two fingers, eating with no fork. She’d learne...

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“russian sage” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #61

I hate Russian sage. Such an ugly little plant, faded purple, as if you’d taken something decent and put it through the wash too many times. I hate that planted so much of it around the house without asking me. The smell gives me a headache. The smell reminds me of the summer my mother was in love with Lenny. I told you about Lenny, I know I did, and I told you about the sage too, the beaming bushes around the hotel’s perimeter, crowding the lamb’s ear, the black-eyed susans, the knee-high grasses. I’d sit on the curb and pluck leaves and cr...

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“"naomi," or 1 million butterflies pinned to a wall” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #57

I don’t know much. That’s what college was supposed to fix. I read big books with big words, Susan Sontag, Karl Marx, Arendt, Foucalt, Nietzche, Sartre. Each flip of the page was a hand on my shoulder, twisting me in a new direction. I graduated dizzy and confused, uncertain what anything was, whether anything was real. Ask me what I read for my senior thesis and watch my eyes dim and fog. They only taught me to question the world, and they provided no answers.  I don’t know how to write a will either. I thought that would come later....

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“back in the pulse” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #55

The world is burning, and of course it’s only my ex-fiance that can save me. His knuckles grip white around the steering wheel. His eyes are a snake’s, focused and unblinking on the road ahead. It’s the first unclogged stretch of highway we’ve encountered, and he’s flying through. It’s bound to get worse the closer we get to Boston.  “Can I put some music on?” I ask.  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” He still hasn’t looked at me.  I turn around to grin at his son, a cherub strapped into a car seat too small for his pud...

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“dance like angels do” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #55

Smart people go one of two ways. Take my sister -- she was brilliant. All day, she would run around in her diapers, chasing butterflies in the backyard, putting caterpillars into mason jars with a few leaves of cabbage. She learned to read with butterfly field guides, went to college for biology, studied every night until her eyes nearly bled. She grew up to be a leading lepidopterist, a butterfly scientist, working at a prestigious university, bringing home accolades and publishing in every glossy-paged science magazine. She’s the kind of s...

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“somebody else's spit” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #54

He was not surprised or happy to see me. He looked weary, the skin thinning beneath his eyes and creasing on every corner. I told him, even in high school, that sunscreen wasn’t optional. He never listened, and now paid the price, looking as old and exhausted as he really was. That was partly my fault.  We met at Burger King. We were both overdressed. Our pride wouldn’t let us go otherwise. I slid into the booth opposite him and he winced, as if expecting a punch across the table. I smiled, big, bright, harmless. After Kyoto, I was a ...

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“write about love” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #54

My academic advisor wears reading glasses whose pearly lanyard wraps around her head. When she’s disappointed in me, she takes off her glasses, letting them hang dejected down her neck. Her skin glistens, toad-like, as I notice with many older women. My own has begun thinning recently, and I fear everyone sees.  But my academic advisor, she does not care about my skin. I doubt she cares about me either. But she does care about the reputation of her creative writing department. The entire university already looks down on the Master of ...

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“heat, july” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #53

Winston Churchill described his depression as a “black dog.” I imagine something big, hulking, and British, with jowls that sagged as low as his. My own is a pampered little chihuahua. It's a nasty lapdog that yaps all day, demands its fox-ears be cleaned with cotton swabs, its rotten teeth be sprayed with something minty. I lay down, close my eyes, just for a minute, and it jumps on my back. Hey, please calm down. It never does. It never shuts up.  I never owned dogs growing up, but friends did. I felt bad for those with embarrassing...

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“in the air again” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #53

Strings of ants crawled on the walls of my seventh-grade French classroom, really a trailer. Our middle school, like most in Georgia, had little money and too many kids. When the classrooms run out of space, they put up trailers. A cluster of them parked outside the gym. It was freezing in the wintertime, scorching in the spring, with bees and hornets visiting class daily, as if we were pioneer children educated on the Western frontier. The French teacher hated children. You could see this wasn’t what she wanted in life. She snuck cigarettes...

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“the earth looks better from a star” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #52

We met on a long bus ride. I sat next to him, and his feet turned toward me. His whole body was on a diagonal in my direction, and I thought who does that? Who rearranges themselves to pay so much attention to a stranger?  I had books and binders on my lap. An hour into our conversation, he put one wrist on top of the pile. It was still early morning, blue night light filling the bus, blurring shapes and faces into silhouettes, an occasional street lamp or the moon highlighting one feature when its glow entered through the window, like ...

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“angel in the snow” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #52

There is no “the one.” There’s only the one that’s perfect for you in the moment. Some people you choose again and again. Some you choose once and never again.  Carl and I, we chose each other. We kept choosing each other. I knew there was a limit. I knew the kids thing would eventually come up. We kept pushing that discussion back. But we also were both getting older, and nearing the relationship point of “do we make this official & permanent or quit while we’re ahead.” We loved each other, we really did, and it would have been a...

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“right angle cross of the vessel of love” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #52

I wasn’t mad. More so relieved. The worst had happened. I didn’t feel the pain yet -- the pipeline from my brain to my heart had long sprung a leak. I’d process everything later.  I couldn’t think. Not because of outrage, I just hadn’t drunk coffee that morning for the first time in 22 years. My breath would smell bad no matter how much gum I chewed, and I was a clumsy liability. Knowing my shaky hands, there’d be little brown coffee spots all over my wedding dress.  I wasn’t anxious like everyone said I’d be. Just calm, placat...

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Author bio

masha! 23! she/her! my instagram is @dogenthusiast if you want to connect more!

Winning 2 stories 🏆

Contest #63
come to atlanta! – read story
Contest #39
sole mate – read story

Shortlisted 2 stories ⭐️

Contest #46
dead cat – read story
Contest #44
the end of the tour – read story