Nicholas Andrew Clark

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2023

Stories (10)

10 Stories

292 karma pts

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“The Fog” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #288

The first people to descend into the valley claimed it was verdant green. Said there were red and yellow flowers sown into the hillside over Mayberry Marsh, and you could stand in the bushes in the sunshine and hear cuckoo bees flitting to and fro, or watch ibises fly in V-shaped skeins against the clouds. When the sky was still blue instead of bone white. Before the drizzle began and never ceased, maddeningly light and insubstantial, an eternal spritz that soaked the ground gray and turned the roads into soup. Before the...

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“Bars” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #283

Some days in here go by quick. I'm always up first, before roll call starts; by the time the sunrise hits those blue bars and the birds start chirping, I'm already elbow-deep in cornmeal and heating up the gravy. The type of day that disappears into stainless steel, lost in the balafon rhythm of banging pots and pans, scraping cutlery, men's voices gone hollow by the killing of their dreams.Others are painfully slow. The run-up to the holidays especially has been grinding me down with its monotony, one frozen gray day stitched...

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“Zen and the Art of Muscle Car Maintenance” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #243

AUGUST 30th, 2029 Dear Becca, I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Your Sweet Sixteen. Weren’t you just in pigtails and braces a second ago? I know every parent (or in my case, parental figure) says it goes by fast, but I swear to God, I can close my eyes and you are still in pigtails and braces, squealing happily as we explore the woods. You used to love to pretend to be the captain of a shipwrecked crew, corralling your brother and sister to scour the underbrush for sticks to be used as swords, and rocks shaped like th...

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“Tableau” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #234

He comes to her room after Charmed. At 9 PM, the grungy theme song floats up the stairs on a candela of liquid crystal light emitting from the new flat screen, the most expensive thing in the house. We’re not allowed to watch Charmed because it promotes witchcraft and demon worship. Neither can his wife. Only he can, because God told him to “study the lies of the secular world”. You know how that goes. Alyssa Milano says her final line, soft guitar outro, then the stairs are creaking under his weight, the smells of Man–starch, aftershave, wh...

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“Cooler Heads Prevail” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #227

tw: animal gore, gun violence“When’s the last time it snowed here?” Christine asks as she’s filling the food trough. I hold off on answering so I don’t have to compete with the pour of alfalfa pellets and the frantic scramble of the pronghorn to get to their meal.“In July? Never.” I hate discussing the past; it’s littered with landmines. “It’s supposed to be monsoon season. But even in the winter, it hasn’t snowed like this since…I don’t know…2024 or ‘25? Over a decade ago. I remember I uploaded a video of a golden eagle perched on the back ...

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“Every Last Drop” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #225

I enter Red Square from the south side. It's late; there's no one else around. My footfalls echo across the bricks. Then I spot him–a slender figure beneath one of the cherry trees outside Drake Hall. Silvery white hair pulled back in a ponytail. Black gloves, combat boots, a wool trench coat, the preferred attire of all psychopaths. I reach into my purse. In the next instant, he is standing right beside me. "Excuse me, Miss?" I pepper spray him in the face. He takes it stoically, with little more than a wince. I empty the entire can, but h...

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“The Avalanche” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #222

Most people think they’d hear it coming. They imagine it like the movies–a low rumble that grows into a roar, as of an awakening giant. In reality, once you pass the trigger point into the convexity, the slab makes almost no noise at all. It sloughs and sighs, a gruff whisper that builds at your back and pelts you with shards, its full magnitude only apparent when it’s too late to do anything. In the next breath, the mountain swallows you whole, using its thousand-pound jaw to crack your skis and snap your ribs and t...

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“Pick” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #217

“We don’t have time for this. Get to work.” What is it about young people that makes them demand validation at the worst possible moment?Her stare could drill a hole through a strike plate. “Time, time, time. That is all you are ever think of. Every day you say, ‘Faster, Tetyana, faster. An idiot child with a bump key would be done by now. Do you have any idea how quickly Arthur Buhl picked the Lips 8362C at the third annual Dutch Open?’”“Listen–”“‘Twenty seconds. Six pins, some of them mushrooms, with a paracentric keyhole made specifically...

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“Tight Spaces” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #215

I should never have agreed to this.Pale sunlight bleeds through the heavy cloud cover, turning the early 20th-century locomotives into the haunted bones of a disassembled mechanoid. Most of the station’s roof is caved in, revealing a frozen nerve branch of twisted support beams, but the building itself is intact, covered in bad-tattoo graffiti and standing sentry in the weeds. It overlooks a sinkhole in the center of the yard big as a football field. Tracks disappear into its open maw, dozens of rail cars piled together in the muddy gulch li...

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“The Cat and the King” by Nicholas Andrew Clark

Submitted to Contest #187

The rain was relentless. A thick sheet of it draped the lip of the bridge. Below, the metal boxes containing humans whizzed by, spraying fractals against the concrete slope, leaking fresh puddles out along the sidewalk like blood. The cat licked hard at the scabby head of her youngest, buttermilk like his father but for a diamond of black fur on his scalp, the only evidence he was hers. Something was not right about him—the skin hung loose from his twiggy frame in piles. If she let him wander, he’d rub against the wall and tear his flesh; it...

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Author bio

Nick graduated from the American Musical & Dramatic Academy of Los Angeles in 2006. When he's not busy massaging clients or tending to his garden, he likes to write off-beat solar punk stories and climate-centered sci fi screenplays.

Shortlisted 4 stories ⭐️

Contest #227

Cooler Heads Prevail – read story

Contest #225

Every Last Drop – read story

Contest #222

The Avalanche – read story

Contest #215

Tight Spaces – read story