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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020
Submitted to Contest #80
“I remember when the news broke out,” Marlowe said, her words jabbing at the inside of her mask. “I was on a ski lift with my mom. I’ve never skied before and never planned to in that moment. I guess I was just going to take the lift back down.” She peeled bark off a nearby tree and swatted moths out of her tangle of curls. “We were sharing a bag of chips. My mom had heard about the virus and told me. We stopped eating chips.” The air was stale and chilling. It was silent except for dog howls and the pulse of hearts under coats and the crun...
Submitted to Contest #79
It was a Saturday afternoon and I’d already polished off three drinks. Each one stronger than the last, with olives and grapefruit slices pinched carelessly on the sides, making my head trip in circles like a carousel. The people at my book launch party had begun to stroll laps around my living room. Their smiles were like flashing pinwheels and I tried to offer one back. Because I know if I didn’t, Allen would shapeshift into the responsible chaperone and the booze would be locked right up. The balloons floated around aimlessly like gh...
Submitted to Contest #78
I only get autophobia in the spring, or at least that’s what I tell people. It’s the season that’s printed on calendars with crooked lines but never seems to exist in this mustache of constellations and planets. There are specific step-by-step directions that I follow to rid myself of winter’s thick cardigan. To think of my life as this big chess metaphor, where I’m the queen of ivory and ravens like a grayscale film of an unvoiced war. If I’m the queen everyone else is a pawn so I’m not alone.To hop-scotch into the day when I drive to ...
Submitted to Contest #77
I took a Red Eye to San Francisco. The plane balanced on a navy sky and for a second I thought I was above the stars. The flickers of arrowhead lights were below me and as the clouds licked the sunrise, I saw the city. No stars, just twinkling city lights. Half of the buildings were already drenched in gold and smudged gray. It was breathtaking to see an entire city half-asleep, rubbing the flocks of aging seagulls under its eyes. The streetlights blinked out like Morse code messages into the shadows and the plane directed its nose tow...
Submitted to Contest #76
Imagine: Cheyenne Yasuda. A dancer with feathered costumes and twinkling sequins in her eyes. She was a former ballerina whose blistered feet couldn’t fit into pointe shoes. Her reputation spread through the lips of her neighbors and was for the way her O’s were stretched long and echoed in the back of her throat when she talked. Her name was musical and belonged under a spotlight or carved into a plaque. That’s what her family believed, anyways. But her name actually meant “one who speaks incoherently,” which was also true. There ...
“Make me happy.” Dot’s arms sink over the edge of the railing and sift through the salt-speckled air. The sun slithers onto the rough angles of the waves and appears like snakes of light dancing in the corner of her eye. Adelaide is also there, in her peripheral vision, her stomach swollen and stretching the front of her floral blouse until the threads peel and screech. “You will, won’t you?” Her voice is camouflaged by the whispering thrum of the boat. Adelaide’s hands are unconsciously orbiting around her tummy and Dot recal...
Submitted to Contest #75
September, 2011There was a space, behind the bookshelf, where heat spat through the vent. It was tucked away from the rest of the classroom and my favorite spot to read. Spiders would knit webs through the nooks and crannies and dance onto my finger if I had the courage. Dust flew through the air like blind flies but I ignored it, sneezing into my elbow. I thought I was safe and alone but one day he showed up. He was sharper than all the other boys I knew. Kohl always had a plastic fork in his pocket and dimples carved into his fac...
“Two bedrooms, two bathrooms.” Brian gestured down the hallway like he had many times before, but this time, he knew the walls were listening with their pierced ears. His client massaged her floral handkerchief between dough-soft thumbs. “1,400 square feet.” She ran her free hand along the walls and noticed they felt like peeling bark during a heatwave. Her fingers dipped into every dent and slipped along every curve. “In a nice neighborhood. It seems perfect for you,” Brian admitted, tapping his short nails again...
Winner of Contest #74 🏆
I’ll be on the train. It’ll be an underground train, like the subway, but in an airport. One door is both the exit and entrance with a few people trickling in and out. The train’s name will be Bart and my father will have warned me about it. The train will have pastel colors of gum, crafted into inappropriate pictures of body parts and messages in another language. I’ll know that if I was in another world I’d call it art and take a photo to show my kids. I’ll be standing. Sucking on a mint and molding it to the shape of my tong...
Submitted to Contest #74
Top Ten Things to Believe in This Year #10 Santa Claus Do you believe in Santa Claus? I don’t anymore. I used to think he was this kind man with big hands whose smile was pale and stretched lines into the moon. My childish thoughts shaped this man who drew snowflakes and birds into the sky like a coloring book. But that was ended for me when my grandmother let those three forbidding words slide off the tip of her tongue. I used to be a stupid child who knew nothing but how the light combed through the sky. Now I know thi...
Submitted to Contest #72
It’s 6:13 pm in the cobwebbed auditorium behind the elementary school. You know this is where they teach kids to count on their fat fingers and show slideshows of where babies actually come from. The thought makes you gag. You’re hidden behind the frayed red velvet curtains that nobody’s replaced in years, rubbing concealer onto your forehead to cover your hideous acne. It had blossomed under your eyes and down the bridge of your pointy little nose. People call you ugly on the street and you couldn’t agree more. Your own mother c...
Ethan didn’t believe in soulmates. He thought there was no possible way that two people in the world could somehow be connected by some fictional magic. Separated perhaps by blue seas and fields of yellow-faced stars, never to meet. Yet, 73% of people imagined that someone out there, waiting to kiss their palms and smile. That’s why, on an overcast Thursday morning in November, Ethan brought up the topic in his anthropology class. His students, young with eyes that could fit through the loops of chain-link fences, disagreed...
Submitted to Contest #71
Thea wouldn’t talk to her anymore. Unless it was about money or the well-being of her cat Rosie. Who could blame her, really? They exchanged short letters sometimes. It was a broken feeling when Eve saw her older sister dressed in orange, her pretty face split by metal bars. Or maybe it was an empty feeling. Makeup peeled off Thea’s pretty face and her bracelets unhinged. Her cold hands when they secured them with handcuffs. Thea was the type of sister who told Eve about happiness but left her at red train stations, all alone. ...
You had this friend, Charlie. She was the kind of person who broke limbs while fitting into yoga positions and cried while watching Elf despite the fact that she was Jewish. Charlie liked to buy piggy banks of twisted animals and tell stories about her free days. She’d tell this one story about an all-nighter in college. You went to the same college and exchanged clipped words but still you didn’t appear in the story. It didn’t bother you, really. Charlie owned a house and you owned an apartment. Perhaps that’s what bothered you. But C...
Submitted to Contest #70
On my birthday he brings me flowers. A thin bouquet of sweet apricot-colored carnations. A million little delicate petals that smell of small-town grocery stores. The white papery tag is still hooked to the plastic but I don’t dare look at it. The flowers are real, dripping water into my palms, but the gesture is fake. He holds my hand in the doorway and kisses my ring. A fake ruby the size of a thumbnail that he gave me for my last birthday. I hate the way it reflects in his eyes but I have to wear it when he visits. He never mi...
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