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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2020
Submitted to Contest #229
Christmas is ruined. Ruined, once again. Last year it was the debacle with the nutmeg wine, and this year it’s the ghosts from the future showing up to terrorize everyone with some grumpy looking gentleman in old pajamas. Didn’t I tell you as soon as we saw that specter in the window that you needed to go outside and scare her off? Now, I don’t know how one goes about scaring a ghost, that is true, but we’re trying to have a party, and who feels like making merry when there’s demons floating about? I don’t care if she was a very pretty...
Submitted to Contest #228
I swallowed a statue of Saint Jerome. My mother said I could be forgiven, because I’m only nine, but she followed that forgiveness up with the clarification that I am a very bright nine-year-old, which is why I go to a gifted school that is secular rather than parochial. She told me that even if I weren’t very bright, a nine-year-old should still know better than to go around swallowing things that don’t belong being swallowed. She asked me if there was some kind of extenuating circumstance that led to me ingesting Saint Jerome, and I told...
Submitted to Contest #227
Anne had requested a room on a lower floor. When she entered her suite to find a floor-to-ceiling window confronting her with a view of lower Manhattan, she nearly fainted on the spot. Her acrophobia had begun later in life, somewhere in her 40’s, and thirty years later she still couldn’t shake it. Carefully--and with half-closed eyes--she found the switch for the automated curtains and watched as the city disappeared behind a wall of beige. Her trips to New York were something of a reverse exit from hibernation. Whereas her friends on the...
Submitted to Contest #226
This never would have happened had there been pizza in the fridge.I could have sworn there was one slice remaining from two nights ago when I placed an order (along with pesto bread), but when I got home, the box was still in the fridge, but there was nothing in it. At some point in the last forty-eight hours, I must have eaten the last piece and not even remembered it. Maybe it was wishful thinking that kept me believing I had something to look forward to when I got home since pizza would be the only thing that qualifies.I pulled the empty ...
Submitted to Contest #225
Now before I say anything else, I just need to establish that I am not mad. I have every reason to be mad, but I’m not. I’m not mad. I’ve never been less mad than I am right now even though I have every reason to be madder than I’ve ever been in my life. To the best of my recollection, you were not working here when I came in on Sunday. I’m sure I would remember somebody with as many piercings as you, especially with you being such a young lady and all. I’m sure I would have made some sort of comment about how you don’t have a wedding ri...
Submitted to Contest #224
The shark has promised that when George leaves the church, it will swallow him up. George sits in one of the pews and tries to remember a prayer from childhood. He believes he knows the standard ones, but he’d like something more specific to his current situation. While he knows there is definitely not a prayer about being trapped in a church while a Great White Shark waits outside, he seems to recall a prayer about an enemy at the door. A long night of the soul. Suffering and sleeplessness. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and George ...
Submitted to Contest #223
Ms. Montgomery, I’d like to write something about your grade. First, I should give you some background. I am not, as you know, a teacher who attempts to endear herself to students by blurring the line between the personal and the professional. You will have noticed, I suppose, that at no point this year have I ever disclosed anything about where I live, whether or not I’m married, whether or not I have children, what I like, what I don’t like, or even how I feel. I speak. You listen (hopefully). I distribute education. You absorb inf...
Submitted to Contest #222
Ramirez shows up three minutes early everyday. I am to be here ten minutes earlier. Somehow she knows if I’m not. The wall is blank. It was painted over in the night. A lost white. As if a blizzard had swept in to confiscate the previous day’s mural. I am allowed one brush and two colors. I may choose the colors the night before, but I must do so having no idea what Ramirez will ask me to paint. According to her, she doesn’t even know what she’s looking for until she walks into the studio. The wall is three times as high as either of us. T...
Submitted to Contest #221
The line is one block deep by the time I arrive. I always tell myself I’ll get to the shop early, but life intervenes with burnt toast or my landlord banging on my door asking about back rent. Sure enough, I don’t get to Marty’s until after eleven, and there it is--the line. “How’s it moving today,” I ask the woman in front of me. She gives me half a glance before taking another drag of her cigarette. Her coat is too thick for autumn weather, and her shoes look like they’ve been sewn back together once or twice. “Slow,” she says, “Ev...
Submitted to Contest #220
Holden Arroyo had been lost in the desert for approximately twelve days before he stumbled upon the mobile phone store.“That shouldn't be there,” he mused.The store appeared over one of Holden’s favorite dunes, which was a few dunes down from where his plane had crashed. He was on his way to Tanzania when the self-flying plane’s license expired, and before Holden could go online and renew it, the aircraft was plummeting into the sand. Luckily for its only passenger, the plane landed in one of the softest patches of sand in the Ganasi Desert,...
Submitted to Contest #219
The clock doesn’t dictate the pace. The pace is separate from the clock. The clock tells you it’s one. So what? It doesn’t have to be one. It could be two or three. It could be next Thursday. You don’t go by the clock. You go by what you see in front of you. Sixteen screens. The Sweet Sixteen. The guy who worked the night shift before you used to say every night was cake. You never got what that meant, but you didn’t worry about it. You are given the answer to one unanswerable question in this life, and you certainly aren’t going to use it t...
Submitted to Contest #218
He always wore English Leather. Sundays would come around and he’d tap lightly on the front door. His car would be idling outside, but before I’d hear the engine or see his blonde curls dangling above his Cheshire smile, I’d smell the English Leather. Like all good fragrances, it strikes you differently depending on which scent resonates in your memory. For some reason, I took the lemon first. It reminded me of a glass pitcher sitting on the counter. My mother on the porch, talking to a man I never knew the name of. That man had a softer eng...
Submitted to Contest #217
Personally, I like the big guy, but that’s just me, you understand? I feel as though if the king wanted me to go slay a dragon, he should have picked a nastier one. This fellow ain’t bad at all is the problem. I showed up and he was just sitting there lighting the occasional tree on fire. Well, I suppose if you like trees, that sort of thing might upset you, but a tree never did me any favors, so what issue should I take with it?Every other knight was given a notoriously terrifying dragon to vanquish, and by the time the king got to me, I co...
Submitted to Contest #216
You can’t go home right now. Go to that pizza place that’s always open. Order the buffalo chicken. You have some cash on you from the other day when Uncle Greg slipped you a twenty. That’s enough for two slices. You can have some pizza and check your phone. Play some chess. You need to play more chess. You’re good, but you could be better. You always give up your bishops right off the bat. That’s no way to play. You gotta protect your pieces. I don’t care if the other guy is willing to give up his good pieces; that doesn’t mean you have to...
Submitted to Contest #215
The family left Gardenia around five in the morning. They quietly packed their things and left, stopping only to clean the fridge, because they felt strongly that a dirty fridge would speak poorly of them and their abrupt departure. When they left, the fridge was clean, and there was still blood all over the walls. The blood did not belong to anyone in the family. It had started pouring down from the ceiling, and the family decided that was the final straw. It was one thing when specters appeared at the top of the stairs with two heads and...
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