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Nicholas Andrew Clark

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2023

Stories (10)
Comments
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34 Followers
21 Following

10 Stories

358 karma pts

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O.peration P.rovidence U.nified S.ystems

Submitted to Contest #312

Seldon stares at the blinking cursor. It is the eye of the Devil, he thinks, and writer's block is its favorite form of torment. The save file for last week's sermon (a total flop called "Tackling Spiritual Doubts") taunts him atop a stack of other pressures, including an e-mail from church leadership flagged with a red exclamation point for urgency. This is why the ashtray on his desk overflows with butts. He turns to the Devil's second favorite instrument: an Internet search engine. Types How to write a sermon that doesn't bore people to t...

15 likes 1 comment 1
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Transference

Shortlisted for Contest #291 ⭐️

Shea butter. Hibiscus perfume. Smells distinct from the chemical staleness of the group home, signaling Miss Greenwood's arrival. Lenny looks up from his sketchbook as her dragonfly eyelashes carry her into the room. Heels today, pearl earrings, a navy pantsuit that clings to her form. "I'm told there's a boy here that puts Picasso to shame...is that you?"She's always making him blush. As they walk together, he wishes she would take his hand in hers and he could experience the smoothness of her palm again. She never does. Something to do wit...

28 likes 10 comments 10
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The Fog

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...

15 likes 4 comments 4
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Zen and the Art of Muscle Car Maintenance

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...

8 likes 4 comments 4
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Cooler Heads Prevail

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 ...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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Every Last Drop

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...

34 likes 13 comments 13
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The Avalanche

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...

20 likes 7 comments 7
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Pick

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...

9 likes 0 comments 0
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Tight Spaces

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...

24 likes 7 comments 7
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The Cat and the King

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...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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