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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2024
Submitted to Contest #290
Articles of manifold topics were written in the newspaper. Most detailed the progress of society in Letum, championing how high humans had been rapt. “We have travelled,” stated a renowned scientist, “far from the primitive eras before us. Dissociated ourselves from the rudiments of friendship, religion, sympathy, empathy, family, and other inherent flaws besides. What we have built, instead, is a system of efficiency.” Maesus winced at having read such casuistry. Science, he believed, had segregated all from the most basic human...
Submitted to Contest #279
The Fallen GraceDo not judge my fall. If you had suffered as I have, you would sympathise with me. I daresay you have done the same. Desperation corrupts the purest grace, banishing them from their rightful place in paradise. When disaster first warred, my husband, son, and I were on a visit to my mother’s home, in Winchester. Having as yet enjoyed the day, we crowded around the television, so as to watch Courage The Cowardly Dog. The cartoon was interrupted, though, by the news. The broadcaster reported of mass bombings having rained d...
Submitted to Contest #278
The Court of ClownsIf Sir Duncelot had foreknown what awaited him, upon rousing from his sleep, he might have lain abed forever. Instead, a fateful knock thwacked at his door, jolting him awake from what had been bliss. Dressing in a silken gown, he descended to see who intruded. Opening the door, though keeping it latched, Sir Duncelot peeped at two knights armoured in thick breastplates, impermeable bascinets, and bulging gorgets. “Sir Duncelot,” said the brawnier of the two, “by orders of The High Court of Justice, you are to be take...
Submitted to Contest #276
The story I am to tell is one which inspired another of mine: Malheurs à Deux. They have numerous similarities and themes. Such occurrences sink to one’s profundis, like the isle of Atlantis, and are revealed through the unconscious when scribing. Having prefaced the context, let it be known as a dedication to whom I am grateful to.At the time of this event, I was no older than sixteen years of age. Troubled was my mind beneath the surface. People saw a muse for mirth - a jester who clowned for the pittance of laughter - but I knew myself to...
Submitted to Contest #275
When embarking upon our odyssey, none of us would, nor could have foreknown what forbiddance presided over the unpeopled outlands of the cosmos. Our safety was entrusted to the dependable Lucis, a prodigy of modern science, built for the sole intention of travelling into the extraneous. Through parsecs and parsecs we vagabonded, equating to years unreckonable, with not the merest sound or noise. To not be unhinged from the deafening silence, we overcompensated with frivolous conversation, melodies were played as nostalgia, and a general...
Submitted to Contest #274
Morbid InfatuationThere is a love that is born out of wedlock. It has one quails in reverie at its awful hypnotism, roiling a desire that is irrepressible and irremovable, beautiful and frightful, inalienable and ineluctable. Deathless is its imprint on the soul, and stultified is its fool whom it renders resistless. My tale all began when Eve fell, like forbidden fruit from the garden of Eden, and graced me with her delicious sin. I had been content with my life, till her fearsome presence dawned upon me, as of a foreboding, and had me...
Submitted to Contest #273
With his foot convulsing upon the floorboards, Raphael studied the wispy letter in full. Tranced, his eyes surveilled each word, sentence, and paragraph with the uttermost diligence. The writing itself was so corybantic that Raphael wrangled with decoding its hieroglyphical complexity, as if carved by a primordial dunce. A paragraph of particular significance went thus:“The police were incompetent. Fifteen years now, and still, they have left the case unsolved. How many died by their hand? Twenty? And yet the police decided to defer from per...
Submitted to Contest #271
Hearts in despair may shatter, though it takes but a gentle dove to repair the matter. Introspecting, with both arms on the ledge of Putney Bridge, Cicero evaluated his life. Shunned by his daughter of thirteen, from the slanderous enmity of her mother, what besides did he have on Earth? Not his métier, that was for certain. Imbursing him with wealth and financial security was insufficient recompense for what banes it inflicted upon Cicero. He loathed his métier for having entrapped him into sifting through cases upon cases of murder, s...
Submitted to Contest #270
Dancing with a DandyWhat an age to be alive! A time when swains can sway with the ballad of transposing their daily life upon romance. Modernity, having invented commercialism, offers a variety of means for one to pluck and choose what lover seems most desirable to them. If pondered over, dating applications are akin to pottering through aisles in a supermarket. The discrepancy being that the purchase here is what divertissement is gained, fire is eroticised, or love is blossomed. The genius of it all is how, sans leaving home, one can twidd...
Submitted to Contest #269
Benighted“Do you sleep with all of your muses?” asked Hybris, with blarney drooling. Sipping at his absinthe, Narcissus guffawed at length, till he gloated by smirking like a lewd Cheshire Cat. “How else would I replicate the intricacies of my womanly muses’ bodies?” Employing a tone of being affronted, Narcissus resumed: “One cannot paint something without plumbing its depths. As sailors rely on the North Star for divine guidance, I depend upon carnality to create my art.” Narcissus lolled in murdersome contempt at having debauche...
Submitted to Contest #268
Pollen from One's PastCleo gazed at her enormous garden, summoning an unsweet acidity of all the times she had spent in this palatial house. She could not help but see a lustreless frieze when staring at the greenery inhabiting her pristine garden. Was it the vodka, disguising as sinless water, of which Cleo imbibed, that dampened her perspective? Or, perhaps, it was her having to vacate this house for her husband’s want of an imperial mansion. O’ how troublesome living is for the rich! In Cleo’s backdrop, resounding throughout the cave...
Submitted to Contest #267
The ChaseSadness had always aspired to be as content as his brother - Happiness - so much so, in fact, that he envied the brutal severance rifting them apart. Alas, as with most aspirations, Sadness befell the usual disappointment of our meandering pursuit for something grander than what we have abreast. From when dawn first scintillated across the grassy verdure, Sadness awoke to a rheum encrusted around his whole aurora. When the sun guttered its candlelit flames atop the horizon, Sadness slumbered in turmoil of his irreversible reality. H...
The Nine of Diamonds“Atlas had always suffered from chronic sadness,” spoke his mother, in earnest commiseration for whom she had, and would forevermore love, “and if…I had but been a better mother, I could...have…steered him away from all those corruptive, addictive drugs that so doomed Atlas,” blaming herself for no reason save sickly heartache. She paused to observe the benign faces in her funebrial milieu, which her distraught mind hallucinated her into bethinking to be menacing, leering, and despiteful. Her tristesse beset her to parano...
Submitted to Contest #266
When Charles was a wee boy, in the midst of his youthful glory, he swore that naught would waylay him from achieving his paramount goal: being a fluent, recondite, whimsical, and comedical writer. “NO,” exclaimed John, after having his mind, body, soul, and - acutest of all - wrist ossified upon the weaving woes of wavering for hours. “No, Charles is such a common, hackneyed name. My protagonist must be elegant, suave though not pompous, and relatable.” In a trice, a miracle twinkled upon his derelict page where inked those insipid words, “A...
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