Rachel Ryan

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2020

Stories (6)

6 Stories

160 karma pts

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“We Were The Children ” by Rachel Ryan

Submitted to Contest #61

It arrived in a box on a cold Tuesday morning. Amelia's sock-clad feet padded quickly down the stairs and she pulled her cardigan more tightly around her as she went to open the door. The frigid winter breeze tickled the base of her neck and she watched in dismay as the delivery driver made off in his van down the street. She had wanted to ask him about the mysterious sender of this parcel; not that she had expected any sort of clarity, of course. But it wouldn't have hurt. The whole thing was an enigma surrounded in a thick clo...

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“Between the Stars and Waves ” by Rachel Ryan

Submitted to Contest #59

I don't want them to find me here. To my left there is a half-eaten carton of Chinese food I've suddenly lost my appetite for. On my lap, my fingers are still curled around the glowing screen of my shitty smartphone, the one Gerry had managed to pick up from the pawn shop two blocks north. My lungs have forgotten how to breathe and I sit still, quiet as the night, as if that would change the words of the text message still glaring up at me. My eyes find the water of the bay, which shifts and moves with the tide yet somehow manag...

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“Of Paint, and Cherry Pie ” by Rachel Ryan

Submitted to Contest #58

I hate the way my brain works. It’s a crisp October morning, bright but frigid enough to remind you that winter is just around the corner. Iridescent leaves of brilliant reds and oranges (like fire, she used to say) are dancing around my feet along with the eastern breeze that carries them. Off in the distance, clouds swirl with the promise of coming rain and if you close your eyes long enough and just wait, you can smell it. The lightning in the air, the change of the bright sunshine to something wet, something chilling, something utterly ...

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“Hide and Seek ” by Rachel Ryan

Submitted to Contest #57

Charles Brambury had lived on 621 East Oak Street for thirty-three years. Within the span of that time, he had fathered three marvelous children, changed his career once, and painted the kitchen three different shades of blue. Many joys, and much sadness, had transpired within those four walls; a half-lifetime (as he was still certain he would live another thirty years) of heartache and triumph and all of the mundane in-between that life is comprised of. He had worked primarily as a banker: a job that had offered security, a fairly comfortab...

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“Geminus ” by Rachel Ryan

Submitted to Contest #50

I cannot hear anything save the furious pounding of my heart, perfectly in sync with every footfall upon the muddied path. The trees flash by me in a blur of greens and moss-covered trunks; my lungs struggle to inhale the wet, musty air as I push them far beyond their limit. If I were to think too hard on it, the pain would be overwhelming; the fire in my muscles and chest, the damp seeping into my bones. Yet the blur of my panic is overridden by instinct, and my adrenaline, and I somehow find the strength to press on, to keep moving, becaus...

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“In the Quiet of the Night ” by Rachel Ryan

Submitted to Contest #36

December 16th, 20111:48 AMThere is no rest for me tonight. Outside, the wind howls with yet another winter storm; here, in this remote cabin the university has so graciously afforded me, I find the gale closely resembles the sound of a woman screaming. It is maddening to toss and turn like I have, so preoccupied with falling asleep that the effort itself is what is keeping me awake. So I return to these pages once more, a man half-crazed with exhaustion – yet the impulse to record these musings jolts the energy to my bones that is so strange...

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Author bio

All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. ~ Edgar Allan Poe