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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2025
Submitted to Contest #319
They saw her first in the side mirror of a pickup truck. A smear of green and bone, stepping from the treeline like fog with a pulse. Seven years gone, and Wren came back barefoot—moss trailing behind her like the hem of a wedding dress gone to ruin. No one moved. Not at the gas station. Not in the diner. Not even in church. Word passed quiet as wildfire: Wren’s back. Wren’s walking. Wren’s alive. Except—she wasn’t. Not the way they understood it. Her skin gleamed damp and soft, all bark-brown and bruised-green. Tiny mushrooms bloomed from ...
Submitted to Contest #318
Neptune’s trailer smelled like burnt sugar and the last page of a library book. She was elbow-deep in cosmic frosting, dyed eclipse-blue and glittering with edible stardust, spinning cupcakes like small planets for someone else’s big moment. Outside, the 29 Palms sky simmered in pink and rust, the sun leaking over rusted car parts and prayer flags, casting long shadows that twitched like they had secrets. The desert had been whispering all morning. Neptune heard it in the hum of the generator, in the way the wind kept flipping her tarot deck...
The couch was the last thing. Everything else had been picked apart, packed, or posted. She’d left the tarot deck, taken the blender, and ghosted the houseplant with a sticky note that read “You deserve better.” But the couch — crushed red velvet with cigarette burns in the armrest — had stayed. Like it was waiting. She listed it on Craigslist with no caption, just: free. you haul it. She expected no one. Maybe a flaky reply, maybe her ex in a new hoodie, pretending they were still friends. Instead, he showed up. Not early, not late. Just th...
Most people only find the Moonlight Motel after they’ve already lost something important — time, a memory, someone they loved, or a version of themselves they can’t seem to properly grieve. It doesn’t show up on GPS. The road that leads to it isn’t paved, or even named. One moment you’re driving across the Mojave with sweat on your upper lip and static on the radio... and next thing you know, you blink and it’s there: a glowing oasis off the shoulder of nowhere, pulsing faintly under the weight of starlight. The air around it tastes like ozo...
PART I: THE CARNIVAL Los Angeles doesn’t breathe. It buzzes. From power-lines to parking lots, the whole city is one massive, tangled audio cable: hot with signal, high with tension. On the day Camp Flog Gnaw opened its glitter-drenched gates at Dodger Stadium, LA felt like a speaker turned up just past safe. Missy stood at the edge of the Astral Stage, fingers curled around her headset, black band tee knotted at the hip, ready to go full throttle. She wasn’t just here to run sound. She was here to win a war. Because across the field, at the...
Everyone wants to be Tier 1 until they get the welcome kit. Mine arrived in a champagne-scented box shaped like a pill. When I opened it, a voice that sounded like my old guidance counselor chirped: “Congratulations! Your Value Has Been Updated.” Inside: bone-white contact lenses with auto-shimmer, a MoodRegulator™ chip to “balance emotions for optimal likeability,” and a printed Tier 1 schedule. No weekends. No privacy. No time to think. By noon, my wardrobe had been reprogrammed to “Celestial Chic.” By 3PM, I’d been assigned a stylist, a l...
Submitted to Contest #317
The first time I saw her again, the heat was already splitting my skull. West Hollywood at noon felt like standing under a blowtorch — the kind of heat that makes the air hum, where palm trees look plastic and the asphalt ripples like it’s trying to swallow itself whole. I’d just finished a double shift at the treatment center, three admissions back-to-back, and my scrubs smelled like bleach and stale withdrawal. My body was buzzing, hollow and electric, like I’d been poured out and left behind. I stopped at the self-serve car wash on Fairfa...
The taco truck on Santa Monica Boulevard was a living thing. Its fryer hissed like it was whispering secrets, and the air around it shimmered with grease heat and gasoline fumes. I’d been on my feet for twelve hours at the treatment center, scrubs wrinkled, badge half flipped, hair barely holding on under a headband. I’d told myself I wasn’t hungry, but the truck’s pull was gravitational, like gravity itself smelled like carne asada and cilantro. El Grito was painted in screaming reds and sunburned yellows, a skeletal calavera grinning wide ...
The first time I saw her was outside the El Rey, under a half-dead neon sign buzzing like it was choking on its own light. She leaned against the ticket booth, one boot braced on the wall, her perfectly frayed jeans slashed open at the knee like they’d survived a hundred nights just like this one. A necklace of raw crystals dangled from her throat, catching stray flashes of red and violet from the flickering sign above. She looked like someone you were supposed to know — or someone who already knew everything about you. When her gaze found m...
The last thing the nurse said before I signed myself out of treatment was,“You won’t make it to morning.” She was wrong. It’s 2:17 AM, and I’m still breathing. Union Station looks like it was built to outlive everyone who passes through it — all marble ribs and echoing bones. At this hour, it’s hollow, fluorescent, humming with that low electric anxiety only LA manages to hold after midnight. A single pigeon stutters overhead like it doesn’t belong here either. The Metro B Line doors sigh open, and I step inside, hoodie up, head down, trying...
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