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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2024
Submitted to Contest #324
An old man, a young woman and a helmsman pulled up at the boat ramp, slick with East River slime. The short voyage had been a little rocky, this not really being a river but a saltwater estuary of conflicting tides.A crow’s mile from Manhattan, the ghost island was sedately fragmenting, brick-by-brick, frame-by-frame, beneath a kudzo canopy. They say it is now a bird sanctuary, a plumaged excuse for Parks and Recreation to sit on their backsides for rolling decades debating what to do with it. Few people were allowed there, but the old man w...
Submitted to Contest #323
‘Now I don’t mind having a chat, but you have to keep giving it that!’Chas and Dave, Rabbit (1980) The ProblemCaitlin’s broad arse was swaying in front of the stove. Geordie watched it in a state of detached mesmerism. The steady expansion of girth merely reminded him how much he loved her, like having a favourite cake and finding that it had doubled in size.He was in the middle of telling her about that night’s match; about how the new Austrian manager called everything 'sexy.' He told her about their placement in the tables and what the fo...
Submitted to Contest #322
I once knew a woman. A woman I thought I liked. I still know that woman, but I don’t like her anymore.Thinking you like someone is a game of exigencies, particularly when they live next door. You liked them because at a particular time in your life they seemed to cut the mustard. They seemed to appeal to whatever was clamorous in your nature, like knowing you were essentially a deadbeat but this one particular person might advance you to an upbeat.That’s not clear, is it? I could try this again, but I’m not Ernest Hemingway. I am not prepare...
Submitted to Contest #321
Bosie checked the appointment diary and noted that he was expecting a short consultation with a Mrs Pauline Harbour. He was rearranging his fuscia Holland Cooper tie when there came a peremptory rap on the door. Mrs Harbour, it would seem, had arrived at the wharf on time and was clearly keen to offload her cargo as quickly as possible.‘Dr Falcon?’ she enquired, as if he could be any other.‘That is me,’ he said, waving a manicured hand at the commodious faux leather chair set before him.‘Don’t you have a receptionist?’‘Indeed, but she’s off ...
Submitted to Contest #320
CW: Contains references to psychological abuse, cannibalism and implied domestic violence. Adalfuns had been taking the children into the forest with him of late. Never mind the lofty dangers of his occupation, or the aurochs and the wild boar. He told her the children would be safe with him. He knew exactly where they must stand when he felled a tree so they would not be crushed by the weight of them. He told her that animals were dumb and easily scared away by the thunder of a man’s lungs.He told her that it was good for Gransel to learn h...
Submitted to Contest #319
Caliban is not so readily evoked because of his low, feral nature, or to his pretensions as a would-be rapist. Characters such as these are common enough, a major motif without whom literature would barely exist. A part of the fabric, without which the tartan would have no plaid.No. Caliban is brought to mind so readily because he was ugly, and it is this singular deviation from physical form that so ensures his longevity.But was he a monster? Because if Caliban was a monster, then I, by definition, am the greatest monster of them all. If al...
Submitted to Contest #318
My desk is positioned across a bay window which looks out on the street. The segment left by the square and the curve will be full of dead flies, powdered moths and shredded dust, because I haven’t pulled it out in a while. I could hire a cleaner, but I have never enjoyed the idea of a woman on her knees before me.I shall live with the dust I cannot see. After all, beyond that which blows in through the open windows, the most of it is all mine. I was a published author before I lost my right leg to vascular degeneration. It irritates me that...
Submitted to Contest #317
She was several minutes late for her appointment with Bram Dallaglio, and the reason for it was stupid. It was raining, or at least mizzling. The climate rarely produced a satisfying downpour, but preferred to wet the little people with light and persistent moisture, like being smothered by a wet towel. Her hair, straightened that morning, was prone to frizz, and she was vain enough to know that Mr Dallaglio was quite uniquely handsome. She saw him immediately, sitting in a booth with a pint of Guinness, sporting a suit and tie. If he appear...
Submitted to Contest #316
We all wear a mask.You want to know who doesn’t? Every person of note, the saints and the sinners. That’s who - and that’s all. The rest of us feel the constriction of our disguise, but would rather die than take it off. Paula was a costume designer, a woman in network demand during her purple years. You have to have a feel for humanity, past and present, to set the tone of a piece; to live and breath it. You have to know what a fishwife would have worn in the soot of the 1880s, and what a middle-class mumsey wears now. You’ve got to feel it...
Submitted to Contest #314
In the early ‘50s I went for a walk with my mother. It was heatwave hot, and she wore a pastel blue tea dress. We lived in Vauxhall, and when we took that walk, and for many decades afterwards, the capital was hollowed out by the blitzkrieg. It’s fair to say the Germans made a mess. I remember that her hands were sweaty, and all those cockney sparrows scavenging in the rubble, sweating in their unseasonal winter rags, reminded me what a mummy’s boy I was. I remember trying to slip out of her grasp, but in the end, she just let me go. We were...
Submitted to Contest #313
The curtains were drawn against the mid-June light. The heat it brought to this London afternoon was uncomfortable, within and without. A woman in a nursing uniform sat near the window, knitting a baby’s layette and marking the rows on a cylindrical counter at the end of her needle. The other woman, on the other side of the bed which divided them, was reading a newspaper and tutting at its content. ‘I swear there’s going to be another war,’ she said to the nurse opposite. ‘And then there’s our erstwhile king living abroad with his American w...
Shortlisted for Contest #312 ⭐️
The woman on the bed was yellow, which sat all wrong against the pink sheets. She must look, she thought, like one of those rhubarb and custard sweets they used to sell in mason jars. How many? Six, please! Counting out coins, little paper bags twisted at the corners … Life used to be like that: emphatic. Now everyone was an algorithm. Childhood memories flickered like degraded celluloid. This was her room during her pink phase; pink ponies, pink hair clips, pink shoes if she could get them. Some quirk, when she finally came home, was to as...
Submitted to Contest #311
In the middle of London is a patch of ground which the locals call No Man’s Land. It lies between two fifteen-story residential blocks of graphite grey, and dislocated women often wave to the other dislocated women from across the breach, trying in their best of hearts to ignore the urban desolation that despoils their downward gaze. There is nothing to stop them crossing this land, visiting these other women, and yet there is everything to stop them. Ashantay, sipping her tea, looks down and wonders what it would be like to have a garden. S...
Submitted to Contest #310
Astronomers cannot always predict where a meteor might strike or when the sun will next hiccup a solar flare. An omniscient narrator, however, sees all things. It is simply a matter of focus. And so when a young woman is thrown into the path of C-list fame, we do not need any particular skills to guess where exactly things might land. Bella Noone was an ordinary child by most metrics. She was pretty, and her parents and brother loved and protected her. She went to ballet classes, (with no particular distinction), and that didn’t matter. Her ...
Submitted to Contest #309
The First InterviewI was on a cruise when I found out. On that first night in Juneau, my cleaner sent me a WhatsApp message, telling me that Claudie had ‘crossed over,’ as she put it. Is Alaska an unusual choice? Not for me, dear. I dislike hot countries. They always look unfinished. If I may, might I help myself to my wine and cigarettes? At eighty, I can’t help believing that to give them up now would kill me. Help yourself to the kitchen, and come and go as you please. If you want to leave your equipment here, it will be perfectly safe. I...
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