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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories (266)

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15 Followers

14 Following

266 Stories

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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 ...

2 likes

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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The Scent at 3:17

Gus lived a routine life. He worked in IT, made his own coffee every morning, and took the same route to the subway at 7:52 a.m. sharp. He had a calendar for everything — laundry, gym, phone calls to his mom. It gave him a sense of control. Predictability.So when the apartment above his started making noise at exactly 3:17 a.m. every night — scraping, tapping, like someone dragging furniture back and forth — it pissed him off. First night, he assumed someone had just moved in. Second night, he started calculating how to politely complain. By...

2 likes

The Story He Told

The Story He Told Chris showed up twenty minutes late with a gas station coffee and a half-eaten muffin. He stepped into the conference room like he wasn’t already neck-deep in trouble, flashing that grin he’d been using since high school to get out of gym class and failed tests.“Traffic was a nightmare,” he said, sliding into the empty chair beside Debbie. “Some guy rear-ended a garbage truck. Whole street was a war zone.”Debbie didn’t look at him. Neither did the three people from corporate sitting across the table with folders labeled...

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What Stayed Behind

The Call It started with a phone vibrating on a kitchen counter. A name lit up- Lakesha.Jim stared at it.He hadn’t heard from her in four years. Not since the night he walked out of their apartment without saying a word. He just packed a duffel bag, left his key on the table, and disappeared.He picked up the phone. “Hello?”Silence. Then- “It’s me.”Her voice was flat. Not angry, not warm — just tired.“Yeah. I saw the name.”“I’m in town,” she said. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I want to talk.”Jim looked out the window. Rain tapping at the glass. ...

2 likes

Under the Paint

Most people never looked twice at the underpass.It was one of those cracked concrete spaces beneath the city — a long, echoing tunnel that reeked of piss, exhaust, and something harder to name. It was tagged to hell, a blur of old gang signs, forgotten art, and fresh scrawls in neon. The only ones who came down here were the desperate, the curious, or the kids with cans in their backpacks and something to prove.James was the third kind.Sixteen, skinny, hoodie always up. He moved like smoke — quick and quiet. He knew the underpass better than...

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Day One Again

Trew sat in his parked car outside the apartment building, engine off, keys clenched in one hand like a talisman. The building wasn’t much to look at — three floors of tired red brick, paint peeling on the trim, a crooked row of mailboxes like bad teeth. But it was where he lived now. And this, for better or worse, was the start of the reset.He had exactly two suitcases in the back seat. One with clothes, one with notebooks and random life detritus- a pair of cracked sunglasses, a high school yearbook, his last pay stub. He’d left the rest b...

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The Corner Between

The Corner Between J never spoke much, which suited everyone just fine.At work, he was the guy who nodded at meetings, typed fast, and brought his own coffee in a thermos that had once been blue but was now chipped silver at the edges. In the breakroom, he’d sit at the same corner table, farthest from the microwave. People said hi, he said hi back. And that was it.No one really knew J.That was how he liked it.Until the Tuesday that Ashley sat down across from him, completely uninvited, with a sandwich in one hand and the wrong kind of sm...

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Southpaw

Mary Beth had never set foot in a boxing gym. She wasn’t out of shape — she jogged a few miles a week, went to a yoga class every other Sunday — but boxing? That felt like something other people did. People with calloused knuckles and anger issues. Not thirty-four-year-old copywriters who lived alone in quiet condos and got nervous about calling customer service.But here she was on a Tuesday night, standing awkwardly in the corner of Merlino’s Boxing Club, her hands stuffed in brand-new hand wraps that smelled like polyester and poor decisio...

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Later Than You Think

The Light in Unit 6B The first time Michael saw the light in Unit 6B, he assumed someone had left it on by mistake. It was a low, warm flicker, barely visible through the dusty blinds of the apartment across the courtyard. At 2:43 a.m., everything else was still and dark. The city buzzed faintly in the distance, but their building was dead silent.Unit 6B had been empty for months.Michael watched it from the narrow window over his kitchen sink, holding a glass of water he hadn’t meant to drink. His throat wasn’t dry. He wasn’t thirsty. He ...

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When the Light Turns Green

The light turned green.Aaron didn't move.Horns barked behind him, angry and immediate. He sat still, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hovering over the gearshift. The engine hummed, a low, patient growl under the hood, waiting on him. The green light glared overhead, a judgmental eye in the rain.His phone buzzed in the passenger seat. Again.He didn’t look at it.Instead, he looked ahead. Across the intersection, on the sidewalk, a woman in a red coat stood beneath a dripping awning. She was staring back at him. Not at him, exactly — ...

2 likes

In the Second Before

Rain hit the windshield like shrapnel. Colin leaned forward, squinting past the wipers as they scraped back and forth, useless against the downpour. The highway stretched ahead, blurry and gray, headlights from oncoming traffic flaring like exploding stars.He shouldn't have taken the late shift. He knew that. But Barbara had her recital in the morning, and she’d asked — begged — him to be there. So he’d worked the graveyard shift at the hospital and left the moment his replacement clocked in.Two hours to go. Just two more hours and he'd be h...

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When the Night Doesn't End

The Hour Before Light The diner sat on the edge of Highway 41 like it had nowhere else to be. It was the kind of place that didn’t need a name, just a flickering neon sign that read “Open 24 Hours” even when it wasn’t. At 4:37 AM, it was technically open, but only barely.Inside, the air smelled like burnt coffee and something fried a long time ago. The jukebox was unplugged. A single waitress named Lani leaned against the counter, flipping through a People magazine from last year.The door jingled.A man walked in, soaked to the bone. He ha...

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The Hour Without Sound

3:17 AM It was 3:17 AM when Heather Murphy woke up, not from a nightmare, but from silence.Too much silence.The kind that rings in your ears and makes your heart beat louder, just to break it.She sat up in bed, blinking in the dark. Her phone screen said 3:17 AM in bold white numbers. Notifications- none. Signal- full. Wi-Fi- off. That was weird. Her Wi-Fi never went off. Ever.Her apartment on the sixth floor was usually hum of distant traffic, muffled neighbors, and the occasional bark from the labradoodle two doors down. But now, nothin...

1 like