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Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2022
Submitted to Contest #239
In the instant that she had been placed on the wooden mantelpiece over thirty years ago, she had become aware of something. It’s difficult to say exactly what that awareness was, but she knew she existed.To the young lady who had put her there, all those years ago, she was a porcelain figurine of a girl holding a basket of flowers. The flowers were pink, mauve and white. She wore a painted white gold edged dress adorned with embroidered flowers of pink, gold and mauve, that flowed elegantly down to her mossy white base with no feet in sight....
Submitted to Contest #236
Note: Contains religious and political satire.The Angel sat looking dispassionately out from the top of Papoose Mountain across the sandy desert and mountain ranges. He could just make out the lights of Las Vegas in the pre-dawn gloom where, without doubt, the revellers were having the time of their lives. It was bitterly cold, but the Angel did not shiver. The light breeze carried the faint aroma of juniper and, the even fainter, sweet scent of cactus flowers making, ironically, one last effort at reproduction.Without his wings he had been ...
Submitted to Contest #223
“You can say what you like about those Australians but they certainly know how to make a big red and no mistake:”Professor Jim Lucas and Professor Belinda Conti had been firm friends for the full twenty-five years of their tenure at the University. And on this early summer’s evening they were to be found, as is often the case, sharing a reasonably priced but very acceptable bottle of Australian Shiraz in the University bar at the end of a, not too exhausting, day. They would delight in railing against the students, railing against the Vice C...
Submitted to Contest #187
I am stepping, softly now, through the dense undergrowth. An eerie quiet has come over the forest and, like it, I am unnerved. All of my senses are on high alert. I stop and look around, probing everywhere for the slightest movement while I hold my father’s ex-army rifle ready. The only sounds are the slight rustling of the breeze through the treetops and a distant hawk-cuckoo trilling its persistent call to climax in a familiar manic crescendo.To my left, the silence is broken with an explosion of red, brown and blue feathers as a junglefow...
Submitted to Contest #186
“I hope how thinks don’t to be out we start decent cookies today trust that three o’clock yes thanks.”“Okay, okay. Everyone quiet down. Can everyone stop talking and sit down please?”“Who wants coffee?”“Oh, please. Always need a coffee to start.”“Okay. Get your coffee or whatever and we’ll get started”“Cookie?”“Yes, please. It’s a while until the sandwiches and muffins”“Now. Let’s have another vote to see if we’re all of the same mind as yesterday’s finish”“I’ll do the whiteboard again”“Let’s start here”“Not guilty”“Not guilty”“Guilty”“Not g...
Submitted to Contest #184
The blackout started at eight thirty-nine exactly and the knock on the door came around one hour later. Jess had been streaming My Fair Lady, watching it with her nine-year-old son, Paul. Before the film had started Jess had looked out of the window of her tiny two-bedroom apartment, in Jackson Heights, New York. It was a wintery, moonless late January evening and Jess and Paul had been mostly inside since Thursday. Only venturing out to the corner store to get milk and what supplies she could afford. Now, with no wind and no cloud cover th...
Submitted to Contest #183
King Leo, sat gloomily in his Palace’s long breakfast room waiting to start breakfast. He always liked to have breakfast with his only son and heir, Prince Chris, who finally slouched in at the far end of the room. King Leo noted that Prince Chris’s finely embroidered clothes, made of the best cloth with impressive puffy shoulders, were crumpled and stained. The King said. “This is late, even for you.” Standing, now at the walnut sideboard, helping himself to generous portions of bacon, eggs, sausage and tomatoes, the prince mumbled. “You kn...
Submitted to Contest #182
So, I’m sitting in my taxi at the front of the rank just looking at nothing in particular and waiting for the people at the front of the queue to get their shit together and get in the back. It’s a busy Friday evening outside of the front of Flinders Street Station and there are all sorts of people coming and going. Commuters on their way home, youngsters on their way in for a night in the city, and drunks just wandering about aimlessly. Did you know that some people reckon that when the plans for Flinders Street Station were sent out from L...
Submitted to Contest #181
“Let’s go for a walk”. My mum and dad looked at me as if I’d gone crazy. They knew that I didn’t like walking anywhere and they didn’t care for it much either. After a brief silence Dad said. “Okay. I just need a piss first” He finished his beer, put the empty bottle on the coffee table next to the empty KFC boxes, took a final drag on his cigarette and waddled off to the toilet. Why had I suggested that? I did hate walking but I was still angry with them. Dad mostly, and I thought “That’ll show ‘em”. Dad came back and said “Where are we gon...
Submitted to Contest #152
Dad and his three kids, the youngest holding a very sad-looking and forgotten brown fluffy teddy bear by one of its stuffed legs, stand in front of a sideshow fairground tent. The date is 30 September 1973 and they are at the Bridgewater Country Fair. Bridgewater is an old but unremarkable town in the middle of Somerset in the South West of England. However, it does have the distinction of hosting the largest annual country fair in the South West and every Autumn the crowds descend on Bridgewater from as far afield as Bristol and Exeter.&nbs...
Submitted to Contest #146
I open my eyes and look out at the world for the first time. I see you looking at me and you are typing. And that is all I know. You are writing a story and I am one of the characters. This is my character profile. Am I the main character? Who will I be? Am I male or female? Old or young? A child maybe? Am I even human? An animal or maybe an alien? There’s a lot to consider here and you haven’t even decided what I am yet. But now I know that you are creating me from your mind as you type and the possibilities are almost endless. It’s thrilli...
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