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Smudge Himmel

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020

Stories (20)

Comments

Library

93 Followers

3 Following

20 Stories

318 karma pts

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The Set-Up

Submitted to Contest #81

Emery didn't normally celebrate Valentine's Day. It just didn't go with his vibe. Besides, Valentine's Day was busy, which meant that people were more cheerful, more careless, et cetera, et cetera... a perfect heist planning day. Or heist committing day. Which, you know, when you were the cities greatest (not) supervillain was something to be cherished. It meant that that bastard, Bubble Bath, The Shine Monster, He Who Makes You Slip, Emery's nemesis, hero alias Bathesar, would be on the lookout. Because they'd been through this routine. Man...

14 likes

Waiting for Who Knows

Submitted to Contest #49

Ant had always found the bus stop awkward. How could it not be? You stood beside a bench because you were too socially awkward to sit beside the girl in the thick mascara reading a book, while other people walked past not even acknowledging your existence. Like the bus stop was some sort of time-out corner. People in transport, neither hear nor there, a space separate from the rest of the world. The cold wind blew up Ant's legs and ruffled the edges of their shorts. It ruffled the pages of the book on the girl's lap too, nearly taking one co...

15 likes

The Gay Gatsby

Submitted to Contest #46

"So in your story I die?"The voice blew softly over my neck and I turned in my chair. James straightened up from where he had been leaning over my chair to read over my shoulder as I wrote. I pulled the final page carefully from the typewriter so as not to smudge the fresh ink with my fingers. The morning sun streaming in through the bay windows of the small study curled in his hair, his pink suit blended in with the morning sky, molding him into the apparition of a young god, a young Zephiros. He smiled at me, that more than understanding s...

12 likes

Charcoal and Metal

Submitted to Contest #44

The sky was charcoal black, the underside of the clouds having been greased up with the sooty excretions of the new and densely clustered factories below. The smell was unbelievable: a stench incomparable in its acrid tang that laced the back of the tongue and spoke of unwashed bodies, disparity, and the iron taste of money. To Anna, who had been born in the country before her parents got sick with the fever, it was a nightmare. She had been moved to live with her aunt on the edges of this steaming metropolis. She had made Anna bathe to get ...

18 likes

Ants

Submitted to Contest #42

Peter was staring at ants. It was an easy thing to do: crouch down and watch as their red and black bodies spun over the pavement like a roller coaster in two dimensions. His breath fogged against his glasses. It wasn't a cold day, far from it, but wearing a medical mask over his nose and mouth had that effect. The elastic straps pulled uncomfortably at his ears. The sun was hot on his neck and gleamed off of the ants' carapaces. Peter pulled out his phone and without looking dialed his friend Celia. After five rings she picked up. "Peter?" ...

16 likes

The Australia

Submitted to Contest #41

I, the great explorer Benjamin Weird, have discovered a new species! (Or I believe I have. I am not all that learned in biology. They did give me a manual of all discovered flora and fauna, but even on this long voyage I have been to lazy to do more than skim. The book is nearly too heavy to lift anyway.) Let me begin to describe this species. The first quality of interest is that this species seems to have no bones, much like an octopus. When we first pulled it out of the sea I thought we had run into a bad patch of seaweed, it was so entan...

8 likes

The Heist

Submitted to Contest #40

Lidel: Dear Diary. Abe: June 7, 2020. Ika: You'll never guess what happened today!Lidel: Diary, I don't think I've ever been as embarrassed in my life!Abe: I suppose to most people this wouldn't be an ordinary Saturday, but with my friends everything abnormal seems normal. Ika: So, so so! I was with my friends Abe and Lidel, like always, and we were hanging out at the park. I'm never growing too old for the park. I love the swings. I managed to convince Lidel to push me. Lidel: Ika convinced me to push her on the swings, which does seem a li...

3 likes

Rebel and Silent

Submitted to Contest #40

The cafeteria is crowded, in the painted garden sort of way. There's the wash of green camp shirts sprinkled with shorts and shoes and skin and hair of different colours. It's like pressing my nose to an oil painting. It's my first full day at camp. My first lunch at camp. I got settled into a cabin last night, but didn't really spend time getting to know the people in it. I guess I just didn't feel like I fit in, from what they were talking about. Not that everyone had a common interest, far from it, but none of them stuck out to me as 'fri...

4 likes

The Watcher of Maple Grove

Submitted to Contest #39

Morgan had been made for the job of a Google Street View Driver.Morgan was one of those people who loved car rides for the journey. They'd stare out the windows and admire the scenery as it passed. Morgan had been a funny child that way - more enraptured by the passing world than by any song or screen. When Morgan learned to drive they enjoyed seeing the brief flashes of the other drivers' faces: this one pouting, this one yelling at kids, this one singing. Driving felt like a giant dance - so long as you kept your head you didn't risk squis...

5 likes

All the Human Feeling

Submitted to Contest #38

It's pretty much impossible to learn the piano without feeling some companionship with the Phantom of the Opera. At least it was for me. I knew I pretty much sucked when I started, squinting at the page in front of me, trying to get my two hands to work in time, but hey- I was playing the piano! I was sitting at that giant wood monster making a beautiful racket and giving off waves of mysterious power. Or I would have been, if the room were dark and candlelit and I was actually good at playing the piano.My piano teacher was a girl named Sofi...

6 likes

Soft, Pale Hands

Submitted to Contest #37

I'd seen them before. Or more correctly, I'd seen their hands before. Slim, pale hands. Delicate. Dexterous. So fine that the skin almost looked like a surgeon's glove. I stared at the hands on the homeless woman slumped in the alley. I stared and stared. She wasn't anything special. I'd barely given her a second glance at first: tweed coat, far too big, a baggy hat that had seen better days, old yellow rainboots, scraggly hair... The alley across from the bus stop I took to school usually housed at least one down-on-their luck individual. T...

6 likes

The Nightmare Muse

Submitted to Contest #36

05/06/3019I must write this down, if only in an effort to quell my fears. If I write it down, perhaps I will not dwell on it, and that is all I can hope.I have just awoken from a nightmare. Not my usual nightmares, which haunt my sleep with the images of those long-ago days, those horrid creatures with their long pale teeth and thinly fleshed limbs and lolling eyes. Those are shallow imitations of this nightmare. In dreams, most things take on an ethereal quality. There is that film of separation that lets you know it is a dream. Tonight the...

9 likes

There's a Flower Sasquatch in This One

Submitted to Contest #35

I shouldn't be nervous. What is there to be nervous about? I've been taking dance lessons since I was five, any of these other kids can't say anything bad about my dancing. I'm not nervous, I'm just... excited! Yeah. It's really never any use to convince yourself you feel a different way than you do. And yet, I've been trying to, I really have. Because... well...Because. I haven't even let myself dwell on it. I won't dwell on it. I'll go through these doors and the blaring music will shut out my thoughts and I'll dance till my feet bleed and...

2 likes

A Long-Winded Story

Submitted to Contest #35

I really must get a warmer coat. The wind just bites through this one. It looks nice, it has got that. Top leather, and fitted perfectly. Cost me a fortune, but to be respectable one must be willing to pay for it. No other men in the park have coats as nice as mine. That poor fellow's coat has seem better days. The colour is all faded. Poor fellow's collar just got blown up. Oh! So that mustache was a fake, was it? Better catch that! And now the hat to! Brr... the wind really is strong... I'd hate to lose this tall hat. And... his hat is in ...

3 likes

X marks my Home

Submitted to Contest #31

The wind was blowing. It was almost always blowing. When you were a pirate, you always wanted it to be blowing. It was just one of those things, innocuous things really, that life on the sea made you accept as normal. Of course, it was worse if the wind was blowing against you and it was awfully hard to tack when in a dinghy. I pulled on the oars. The chest was empty, at least. I had just been to the X, dropping off our last shipment of plunder. I liked calling it a 'shipment' because it was somewhat of a pun. The crew always moaned whenever...

4 likes