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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories (278)

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278 Stories

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The Fire Beneath the Hero

THE HERO’S SHADOW I wasn’t always the villain.There was a time when Pat Crowley and I trained together, brothers in arms at the Academy, both born into a city that never gave anything without a fight. We were the same, at first. Eager. Hungry. Full of fire. He just happened to point his fire upward, toward justice, while mine went inward, burning me hollow from the inside.We graduated top of our class — Pat first, me second, by half a point. That half-point ruined everything.He got the Sector 5 commendation. The Commander’s sigil. A hands...

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The Override

Andrew Kavovit had one rule- never override a security protocol. Not even for the President. It was the kind of principle that kept him alive through seventeen years as a systems engineer at Harlow SecureTech — the world’s most advanced private security firm.But tonight, as rain needled the glass dome above his desk and the lights of the city glowed like warning signs, he hovered his fingers over the console, one tap away from obliterating that rule.It was 2:46 a.m., and he had exactly seven minutes before the system’s watchdog A.I. would re...

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Balance, or Blood

Lisa had imagined this moment so many times it was almost dull now.Three years in courtrooms. Three years watching Tim Talley’s face — stone cold, never a tear. Three years waiting for a justice system that chewed Michael up and spat Tim out with a slap on the wrist.Three years, and then he walked free.Fifteen-year sentence, served three.Michael was still in the ground.Tim? He was breathing, walking, working nights at a low-rent grocery store off Crenshaw. He had a second chance. A quiet life.Lisa didn’t want that life. She wanted balance. O...

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The Third Reflection

The first time Lori heard the footsteps above her apartment, she assumed it was just someone moving in. Cardboard boxes dragged across hardwood, a few thumps, muffled voices. She didn’t think twice about it — until she remembered something strange.There was no third floor.The building was old, brick and creaky, barely holding together on two levels. She lived on the top floor. Above her should be the roof, nothing else.She asked her landlord, Mr. Krasniansky, about it the next day.“There’s nobody up there,” he said, sipping coffee through ye...

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The Wrong Hands

The Message On a foggy Wednesday morning, Erica Barrett hit send on an email that was supposed to change everything. Subject: ProofTo: rcarpenter@leylaw.com Attached was a PDF labeled “WHISTLEBLOWER_EVIDENCE.” It contained documents pulled from the dark corners of LeyLaw’s internal servers — redacted memos, shell company transfers, falsified court filings. She had collected them over months, quietly piecing together a corruption scandal implicating the firm’s top partners, including the managing director, Ryan Carpenter.Her actual t...

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What the Fog Carries

The Last Exit The gas light had been on for twenty minutes, and Tiffany was driving blind through the backroads of Tennessee. Her GPS cut out three miles ago, swallowed by a dead zone she hadn’t expected this close to I-40. Trees lined the two-lane highway like a wall, and there wasn’t a house or gas station in sight. Her phone battery blinked at 3%.She hadn’t planned to be driving at night. She was supposed to be at her friend Joan's cabin by sunset, sipping boxed wine and laughing about old high school memories. Instead, thanks to a wro...

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The Daryl Protocol

Berry wasn’t expecting a delivery that morning. He barely remembered ordering anything, but when the knock came at 8:03 a.m., sharp and impatient, he opened the door in his socks and took the brown package from a courier who didn’t speak, just handed it off and left.It wasn’t addressed to him.The name on the label read “DARYL STEVENETT.” Same building, same floor, but a different unit — apartment 12B. Berry lived in 12A.He thought about doing the right thing — walking next door, knocking, maybe meeting Daryl Stevenett and making a small joke...

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Echoes in Translation

When Michael shipped his homemade translation device to his pen pal in rural Montana, he didn’t expect it to talk back.He'd built it in his cramped Tokyo apartment — two years of tinkering with open-source AI models, speech synthesis modules, and custom-built firmware. The device looked like an old tape recorder, but with a retrofitted LCD screen and an AI chip soldered to its heart. It didn’t just translate languages — it tried to understand intent.Lauren, his American pen pal, had agreed to test it. Their correspondence had started five ye...

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To Forget, To Hear

For most of her life, Julie Whiteman feared going mad. Not in the flamboyant, cinematic way — no voices, no sudden violence, no descent into delusions. What haunted her was the slow kind. The kind where you lose things- a word here, a time there. The kind where you start to forget that you’ve forgotten. Her grandmother had died that way. Her mother was following the same path. And Julie was thirty-eight, single, and well aware of the ticking clock in her own brain.That’s why she bought the house. It was old, silent, nestled at the edge of a ...

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Low Tide

The Apology Plan Morri Chowalki had never been good at apologies. At thirty-two, he still broke out in a nervous sweat if he had to admit fault, which was unfortunate because he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.It started with a birthday. Marina's birthday.They’d been dating for eight months, a cautious dance of intimacy and restraint. Marina was quiet, thoughtful. She remembered little things — how Morri took his coffee, what books he liked, that he hated olives. And he forgot her birthday.Not just forgot. He ghosted the entir...

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The Off-Ramp

Al had it all mapped out.One more job. Clean, quick, no blood. Then Costa Rica. A quiet house near the jungle with his girlfriend Britney, a mango tree in the yard, no more burner phones or aliases. He'd run cons since he was sixteen. It had been glamorous for about five minutes. Now he was thirty-seven and exhausted.The target was Chase Hamilton, a semi-retired hedge fund shark with a known appetite for collectible watches and very little sense of digital security. Al's plan was simple- Britney would get close, plant a malware-laced USB in ...

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The Fast Way Down

The Shortcut Joe was always in a hurry. Not in a caffeine-jittery way, but in a constant, quietly burning urgency. He walked fast, drove fast, thought fast, and more than once, made decisions faster than he should have. He blamed it on the city — New York taught you to keep moving or get run over.So when a man in a gray hoodie tapped his shoulder at 2:43 a.m. on the A-train platform and said, “Hey, you tryin’ to get downtown? I know a faster way,” Joe didn’t hesitate long.He looked up from his phone. The platform was almost empty, the nig...

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West is Tricky This Time of Year

When Soloman Falls quit his job, sold off his things, and loaded his dented Honda Civic with everything he had left, he knew one thing for sure- he was going west.The plan was simple. California. Beaches. Maybe find work on a fishing boat or in some sleepy surf town. Find new people who didn’t know him, didn’t care about who he’d been before. The GPS said two and a half days, but Soloman wasn’t racing a clock. He pointed the car to the sunset and started driving.The first day felt right. Podcasts kept him company. The flat Midwestern fields ...

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The Moment Between

The Vanishing Act Every evening, as the sun dropped behind the skyline of Chicago, the sidewalks of Wicker Park came alive. Musicians fought saxophones with guitars. Painters slapped canvas on folding chairs. Food trucks hissed and steamed. But just past the Damen Blue Line station, under the rusted metal awning, stood Jason with a deck of cards and a thin smile.He didn’t yell. He didn’t wear a costume. Just a faded blazer, black jeans, and a single ring on his left hand. He let the crowd come to him, and they always did.Jason wasn’t flas...

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The Beast in Tray Two

*Note* I wanted to put this in the category of office horror comedy but I don’t know how so it's under horror. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. *Note* I work in IT support. Which means I’m either a wizard or a scapegoat, depending on the day.Tuesday started like any other- coffee, a passive-aggressive Slack from Marketing about their “urgent” design needs, and me pretending to be busy while watching a YouTube video titled How to Appear Smarter in Meetings (Tip #3- say “let’s unpack that” and nod solemnly).But then, the Pr...

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