Nathaniel Miller

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2023

Stories (7)

7 Stories

234 karma pts

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“The Shopping” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #230

1. Set your work backpack down. On the meticulously clean table is a printed “Heavenly Halibut” recipe. Next to it is a piece of stationary that poorly-drawn, fair-skinned, hand-holding children obnoxiously smile out of. The grocery list. Groan when you see it. You were planning on watching the season fifteen finale of a badly-written soap and had forgotten you’d agreed to make dinner.2. The soap lets you forget about Katharine’s shrill voice, her perfectly-piled curls, her expensive taste, her uppity parents, her badgering: it’s only you an...

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“Redeemer” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #209

“The sun doesn’t rise anymore.” â€śWhat? No. It rises.” A brown chip bag and an empty can blow in the wind, pirouetting next to the car. “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.” Keila brushes a strand of her short, purplish-red hair behind her ear. It’s eerie, being driven through an empty city. No other cars are on the five-lane highway. The skyscrapers are jam-packed with people. But nobody goes out on the streets anymore. The altitude and the smoke mean that the city is always covered in a haze. A thick ha...

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“Timely” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #199

The professorial pulpit that I preach grammar from is more of an hourglass. I sit inside, lecturing my students, subtly pleading with them to forget what I’ve become famous for. The glass that surrounds me on all sides, though, is impenetrable. No matter how loud I lecture, no matter how much I prove that I am normal, I am the spectacle in my classes, not anything I say. The shock of seeing me in person is, apparently, too great not to snicker and mutter and whisper about.  I thought I would find camaraderie in the other professors too...

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“What You Would Do for an Audience” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #190

Painfully nostalgic paradise presses in on you from all sides; with the same thoughtless repetition as the waves, you ask why you’d even take the time to come here without her. The Jamaican sun beams from its high perch, warmly penetrating your skin that you know is in need of sun; the teal waves lap at your feet, cooling them with refreshing playfulness; the air is thick with the smell of salt, a beach hallmark you’ve long craved. But everything could just as well be a monotone, texture-absent gray. Your eyes—no, your whole body—remain cold...

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“Another Pretender” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #187

The finally finished Dartmouth application loomed as imminent as Satty imagined the buildings would in person. Pansy, her collectively-agreed-to-be-perfect mother, stood behind her, equally as nervous.“Go on, hun. I know you’ve done your best. You know it, too. This is what you want, you’ve worked for this, your father works there. There’s a million reasons you’ll make it. Also, your essays were killer.”“Takes one to know one.”Snickers broke the pungent silence that had fallen. The Fate of Aunt Rita’s Cat: an often-repeated story, one Satty ...

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“Four Crayons” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #186

FIRETRUCK REDeverything entranced, everything helpless firetrucks; nothing could stop the red.painful. not because it is bright, because it is dim. my eyes, not pained. my soul, my being, instead. the sun. dying. waving farewell. a ghost; no, an almost-ghost.my fate, too. not yet, i thought. will be, though, too soon. the sun, on the edge of what i knew. maybe the edge of what i knew. my fate, the sun’s; not the same, i realized. sun comes back. always. i wouldn’t, couldn’t.with its last rays, lights a burning fire. in me. kindling i di...

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“A Rebirth” by Nathaniel Miller

Submitted to Contest #182

I could hear it ringing. Gradually crescendoing, becoming deafening. While I sat solemnly in the attic in a circle with the people who had become my family.  It was the alarm. Alex had finished, then. Had begun to lure them out from their sleep. The owners woke and we could hear them running around downstairs. Like mice. It helped to dehumanize them. I could see the excitement building in my comrades’ eyes. They’d done this before—not this exactly, they liked to keep their ideas fresh. But this—the whole crime thing. It was my first ...

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Author bio

i’m told i talk too much.