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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2020
Submitted to Contest #283
I told them that I’d had enough. I am all done being trapped inside a ball as it plummets to the ground all to celebrate some mindless construction of time. I understand the value of ritual. I get the nature of tradition. My family has been involved in New Year’s Eve since the very first celebration. The Windells are, in some ways, the First Family of New Year’s Eve. We were given the burden of sacrificing a little bit of ourselves every year, because when the calendar as we know it was created, we were the ones who thought to make a big dea...
Submitted to Contest #282
He shaved on Monday, but never on a Tuesday. If he didn’t shave on Monday, he’d have to wait until the following Monday to pick up the razor. He was a creature of habit. If the habit was disturbed, he punished himself by never rescheduling. Tuesday's tasks were never moved to Wednesday. That was how he trained himself. If he missed, he missed. His hair grew remarkably fast. That meant, if he waited a week, he’d have a beard by the time he could finally shave again. That was why he never missed a Sunday. On Monday, May 13th, Michael shaved a ...
Submitted to Contest #281
The gull saw the husband explaining why he didn’t know how to change a tire. He had told his wife on their first date seven years ago that he knew how to change a tire. He crowed about it over linguine at Nino’s Bistro. Somehow, in all those years, neither he nor his wife had ever gotten a flat tire. Now, they were on their way to her mother’s house for a holiday dinner, and the passenger’s side tire was a goner. There was a spare, but the husband didn’t know how to put it on, nor did he have the proper tools. He could have used the tools as...
Submitted to Contest #280
“Do I look nice?”She pulls down the front of her dress. When she purchased it, it fit like a dream. Those changing rooms seemed to exist in another universe. Everything was perfect, and then, once home, defects appeared. Love wasn’t trying to show too much cleavage, but she also didn’t want to look like a cloistered nun. Carter was laying on the bed, not dressed yet, on his phone like always. She walked over and pulled the dress down again hoping to catch his attention.“Carter?”“Mmm?”“Your girlfriend is asking you if she looks nice.”He peere...
Submitted to Contest #279
If the mirror didn’t suit her, she’d walk to the next one. That’s how she wound up lost. Two mirrors in a row painted an unflattering portrait, and so she kept on like the March Hare or the Mad Hatter. Another mirror, and another. Finally, she found one that presented a suitable image. The jacket cinched properly; the pants the right length. It frustrated her that the older she got, the more mirrors she had to find, but that was the reality of getting on. There wasn’t much to be done about it, and she certainly wasn’t one to complain. When s...
Submitted to Contest #278
Dear J, I lit the mailbox on fire when I saw you kissing M. Others told me that when feeling too much, one might hurt one’s self. There might be cuts along the arm or starvation. I had no inclination towards self-harm. From a very young age, I understood that the world does enough to you; why do anymore to yourself? I saw you kissing M behind the cafetorium, and I ran all seven blocks home. On the way, I saw the Gozer’s blue mailbox, and I knew it had to burn. One match around the base, and it went up quickly along with whatever mail was ins...
Submitted to Contest #277
He can go out when the kids are asleep. They’re still young enough to be put to bed before ten. That’ll change in a few years, and then he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He loves his kids, but he thinks about what having kids meant a hundred years ago. When there were nannies and people went on honeymoons for months on end, like in The Sound of Music. He thinks about boarding school and wonders to himself if he has the guts to send his kids to one. Not because he’d miss them, although he might, but because of the judgment he’d face from everyon...
Submitted to Contest #276
I was never known for having luck with fish. When I was a child, my mother dutifully bought me a goldfish in a perfect glass bowl. This was the ideal goldfish. I don’t remember what I named her, but I remember that she looked just like Cleo from Pinocchio and I pledged to find a way to take her on adventures with me. Unfortunately, we never got that far, because my favorite thing to do with Cleo was feed her. I was--and still am--very fond of snacks, and it seemed only fair that the fish should eat every time I ate. Soon, she was takin...
Submitted to Contest #275
I don’t see what the fuss is all about, to be perfectly frank with you. Never did I see this many people going out of their way to engage with me when I was alive. Now, I’m dead and laid up in my poor daughter’s kitchen and suddenly the whole neighborhood’s out in their Sunday best. Margaret Walsh showing up in the dress she wore to her own father’s funeral as though I was as close to her as he was. That woman hasn’t said two words to me since we got off the boat in America, because she tried cutting in front of me, and I told her that I’d h...
Submitted to Contest #274
She should have bought a third pumpkin. Growing up, her mother had always said that you buy three pumpkins for carving. One for mistakes, one for precision, and one for pleasure. Naomi could only carry two pumpkins into the house, so two is the number she bought. Plus, she picked up a bag of apples. The plan would be to bake a pie, but plans were often discarded now that October featured eighty degree days. She deposited the pumpkins on the dining room table, and the apples on the small breakfast table in the kitchen. Today would be a beach ...
Submitted to Contest #273
Minutes for the Meeting on 4/14/2025 doc. by L. Root Pre-Meeting: Acknowledgment of C. Whitehall for bringing the snacks. C. Whitehall blushed. Questions about parking. Request to place questions about parking at the end of the meeting. Request made by G. Chives and approved by Chair Copson. Closed Session Initiated For notes from the Closed Session (doc. by L. Root) please send an email to L. Root at LRootMinutes.ClosedSession@cloudspot.com. Closed Session Ended Meeting Initiated - Open Session, Zero Members of the Public in Attendanc...
Submitted to Contest #272
He said he’d be here an hour ago. I decided to go to sleep, because I have to get up early tomorrow. I told him that. I told him that I was going to Montreal to see my ex-boyfriend, because we might be getting back together. We might be getting back together even though my ex-boyfriend refuses to move back to the United States, because he says we’re a country built on the graves of the innocent, as if every country isn’t like that. I told the guy I was talking to that I wanted to hook up before I left tomorrow, because if I end up back with ...
Submitted to Contest #271
I noticed your left hand first.The strawberry-colored birthmark at the top of your ring finger matched mine. I wondered if I should hide it from you or the table, but I’ve come to realize that the people I’m waiting on never seem to notice details. Sometimes for fun, I put on a slight accent when I’m reciting the specials just to see if they’ll raise an eyebrow. How did a Scottish man end up waiting tables at a town in New England? Two years of community college theater classes and I can do two barely passable accents and play improv games w...
Submitted to Contest #270
Stare at the photo of your grandmother. Stare at it. Imagine her voice telling you that you will never make her sauce the way she did. Never. Hear her cackle. Remember the time you tried to rollerblade in her driveway and fell on your face. Remember the cackle. Steel yourself. You will make this sauce and it will be better than hers. Imagine her saying ‘If ghosts were real, I would come back and crack an egg on your head just for the hell of it.’ Tell yourself that you’re not really smelling her cigarette smoke. It’s all in your head.Look up...
Submitted to Contest #269
She simply wanted him to have someone to talk to. I don’t blame her for that. I was not born into this world with any anger inside me despite my larger counterparts being fueled by fire. I am battery-operated. The force is not strong, therefore I am not able to muster up much emotion. Even the day I became aware, I didn’t feel much of anything. There was no time to drum up shock or surprise. I had a job to do. I had a track to cover. This is what I’ve gathered over the past two years-- Mark is the one who loves me. He comes to me every night...
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