Rebecca Miles

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2022

Stories (27)

27 Stories

1954 karma pts

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“A Blaze of Hope” by Rebecca Miles

It was so terribly cold: I struck a match, but its tiny flame could never warm me.Snow was falling: dreaming of food and a life of plenty, I lit another match; but flame and dream spun into smoke. It was almost dark: the third match sparked, but a complete and final darkness enveloped me. I lost consciousness, gripping my final match. Four matches: four life chances, just waiting to blaze bright, however briefly. Friction made...

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“The Day the Music Died” by Rebecca Miles

Have you heard the rumor? The one going round town? About a no-hope kid, his luck just going down. Rumor has his number,Rumor's splashing it around;Rumor shouts: run, kid, your luck just hit the ground.Gnawing the stub of pencil, I look back at the lyrics. Not quite Bob Dylan, but the words sing my story; the ballad of the howlin’ no-hoper: Mitch Malarkey. It’s a freezing Monday in March and the wind tugs at...

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“On the Pulse of Tomorrow” by Rebecca Miles

“You can check by gripping my wrist, you know.” The doctor looks at me like I’m something quaint, like a moth-eaten teddy; something that one used to hug, but now needs consigning to storage. “To measure the pulse,” I circle my papery wrist, pressing my thumb to the blood flowing, tapping an almost imperceptible stream. “Ah yes, of course.” He nods like he’s remembering something he was once told, perhaps as a joke, on his first day at med. school.“Well...

62 comments 62 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“The End of the Line” by Rebecca Miles

The waveYour lips are telling me you love me and that you’ll be home tomorrow. I watch your legs briskly walking away. With decisive steps, you mount the train steps and the doors slide shut. When you sit at the window, I think perhaps it is so you can see me one last time; but when the train pulls away, you are already checking your messages. I raise a hand and wave to your bowed head. Is this gesture to catch your attention? Look at this tableau: your wife waiting on the platform, hand half rais...

46 comments 46 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“Save the Last Dance for Me” by Rebecca Miles

You look beautiful in that dress, floating under the disco lights like silver smoke. You dance in his arms, but I imagine you spooling apart, drifting out of his hold, back to me. No one else can see the ten slight pressure marks where his fingers meet the softness of your flesh, but I feel them like his hands are on me, not you. And you are smiling against his cheek, wearing a lipstick I have never seen you in, never kissed you in, before. Your first dance of the night is over and others stream onto the dancefloor ...

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“The Climb of your Life” by Rebecca Miles

Rising up before you, the mountain dominates everything. Craggy outcrops interspersed with woods carve out of rolling green fields, reaching higher and higher, before thrusting into the sky. It is here that elements must collide: earth gives way to space and finite matter stretches into infinity. There are other peaks, a whole mountain range in fact, but this is the one you have set out to climb; and that summit, well it’s got your name on it.Quickly lacing on your boots, flinging a small rucksack on your back, you start off on the...

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“How to Hack your Fridge” by Rebecca Miles

Eleven days into the New Year, Merinda knew that she couldn’t keep yet another of her resolutions; she needed toast and she needed it now. Nursing her aching head, a sad reminder of how she had broken the first set of New Year’s resolutions last night, she made her lurching way to the kitchen. “Dry” January was actually wet in weather and wine; and her pledge of “no late nights” had been binned when she tripped over the bottles on her way to bed at 3.25am. At least Mark had kept her company, but where was he now? In the kitchen s...

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“Cinderella Respun” by Rebecca Miles

TW: sinister...When he put the slipper on my foot, beaming up at me from the crimson cushion on which his knee was resting, the thought did pass through my mind: where did he get that other matching shoe from? For I’d left him only the one on the palace steps, that momentous midnight; yet, here he was, on the eve of our wedding, slipping a second identical one onto the foot he claimed had won his heart.“Don’t say anything Cindy, my love,” he said, putting a finger to my lips, “this is my little gift; to say...

79 comments 79 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“The Summoning Bell” by Rebecca Miles

-The Cutter’s Inn, 1844Winter trees reach with long dark fingers into an unresponsive sky as the figure strikes the match, eagerly bringing the hungry flame to the paper’s edge. Clouds mask the moon as they did a year ago and no reflection from the inky waters mirrors the man’s face, shaggy brows knitted in fervid concentration. He is alone, only thoughts and fears for company.The canal carves its quiet way through the night, secrets flowing through each of the 105 locks, linking this backwater to the smog and...

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“The Emporium of Dreams” by Rebecca Miles

John Flounder woke with a start from the most amazing dream. Time was of the essence, he must record his recollections; there wasn’t a second to lose. Groping blindly in the dark, he reached over to the bedside table, knocking his phone onto the floor. With a groan, he leaned over the mattress and rooted through the pile of clothes which he’d discarded last night. No phone, it must have slid under the bed. A piece of paper then. If he was quick, he could hold onto the dream with the strange man and his bulbous eyes; the atmospher...

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“An ABC” by Rebecca Miles

Allusions to abuse I hate books. Every story I’ve ever overheard has been a load of rubbish from start to finish, nothing at all like how life actually is. Given this, it is a bit weird that I go every afternoon to my local library as soon as school is out. I stay until the librarian, Miss Robin, rings the bell and I have to leave, heading slowly to number 83 Prickleby Road: the brick box with the broken gate I should call home.Today is no exception. I leave dusk at the door as I slip into the warm bright ...

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“The Bell, the Star and the Christmas Angel” by Rebecca Miles

There’s no sign of snow, not even the scent that some might be on the way. Sitting in my bedroom’s window seat, I look down at all the last-minute shoppers, hurrying back home with their final gifts and forgotten food items. It’s so mild, an unseasonal 15 degrees, that some haven’t even bothered to sling on a coat, just dashed out to pick up the cranberry sauce in joggers and a t-shirt. This year I wasn’t hoping for snow anyway; I wasn’t expecting Christmas full stop. For all I care, it can stay in the store or up in the ...

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“All I want for Christmas is Jus” by Rebecca Miles

Christmas: peace and good will to all mankind; well, that was certainly not the case in the London supermarket where I worked. My boss, nicknamed Mr Blotchy by all the employees forced to endure his red-faced rants, found running the store during the big Christmas lead-up stressful, to say the least. I’d taken on the holiday job as cashier and stock clerk to earn a bit of cash, help pay off the student bills, perhaps save a bit for Fran’s gift; I wasn’t expecting a bonus packet of high blood pressure and nervous tics. And that wa...

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“Driving East in the Evening” by Rebecca Miles

James was driving east, sunsetting in the rear-view mirror. The street he had driven along, every day for the last three decades, was rapidly receding, watched over by the blood-shot eye of the weary sun. Accelerating, he had the uncomfortable feeling it was staring right at him. He pulled his gaze back to the darkening road ahead, passing his old college, keeping his eyes dead ahead as he drove past the office, memories of his retirement party bursting into his mind like the streamers they had thrown, thanking him for all those years of ...

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“Castles in the Clouds” by Rebecca Miles

13 June 1886Standing at the edge of the lake’s still waters I stare out at the sublime mountains, still visible in the twilight, trying to ignore the commotion behind me. Ahead is peace and tranquillity, the calm of the water only briefly disturbed by the dance of a fly across the surface and sometimes the flip of a fish, pulling it down. If I keep my eyes fixed ahead and up, locked on the summits of those far-off lofty peaks, perhaps I can disappear from the disturbing present, into thin air, just as he has done.It...

70 comments 70 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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Author bio

We all have a tale to tell. Let's come together and weave a web of wonder with our words. Rebecca is a displaced Brit living for the last 14 years in the land of sausage and beer. She's written her first manuscript for a YA book and is seven chapers (and counting) into a book based on the Castles in the Clouds story; Reedsy shortlist, competition 171. Teacher by day, writer by night and lover of stories every minute of every hour. Happy to critique, just send me a comment to any of my stories and I'll hear you by the yellow button! As of December, Reedsy Judge too. Writing success: First place in The Writer's Forum magazine: Blackout. Winner on Reedsy: Letting Go. Shortlisted on Reedsy: Castles in the Clouds; The Keeper of the Flame; The Poison Tree; Cinderella respun. Copyright © 2022 Rebecca Miles - All Rights Reserved. Using content for commercial gain without written permission is prohibited.

Winning 1 story 🏆

Contest #166

Letting go – read story

Shortlisted 6 stories ⭐️

Contest #185

On the Pulse of Tomorrow – read story

Contest #183

The End of the Line – read story

Contest #179

Cinderella Respun – read story

Contest #171

Castles in the Clouds – read story

Contest #169

The Keeper of the Flame – read story