Tanja Cilia

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2020

Stories (34)

34 Stories

807 karma pts

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“Running Totals” by Tanja Cilia

“I want you to have this!” she said. I undid the bow and opened the shoebox. I eased out the gift inside. It was something full of bells and whistles; a thingamabob between a Fidget Box that is given to those inclined to stim, and Ziggy, the Supercomputer of Quantum Leap. “Will it bite?” She laughed. “What does this do? And this? And this?” “That is for you ...

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“The Food of Love” by Tanja Cilia

love is a sandstorm undulating sand-dune sea a map is useless love is a marble hard glass encases a core that’s unreachable love is an onion it’s got a hundred layers and it makes you cry! love is a corner of the street or o...

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“Tunnel Vision” by Tanja Cilia

As soon as I saw the tunnel, I knew that it just had to be mine.I knew why and wherefore I wanted it – I knew I would even sell my tiara to obtain enough funds, if I had to. But of course, I wouldn’t have to. Of course not.My mother had always told me about “the light at the end of the tunnels” and she was being her usual ambiguous self. Yet, here it was, in Glorious Technicolor – or as much as an underground tunnel could be thus – and it was what I had visualised all my life.You know ...

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“Stone Walls, Iron Bars” by Tanja Cilia

Hey, you, out there; you think you know everything there is to know about incarcerated women. But you are grossly misinformed. Just because you watch re-runs of Locked Up, Orange is the New Black, Wentworth, or Prisoners, you can’t even begin to know what life is like behind bars in a women’s prison. Each of us has a different story. Oh yes, the dramas about favouritism, butches ...

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“Happy Days” by Tanja Cilia

“Think about it. If you’re still interested, give me a call and I’ll set you up!” And with that, she cycled away, ever so gracefully, despite her girth. But let me start at the beginning. The lethargic spinning of the fan blades, whirling over the heads of the congregation, was hypnotising me as they caused the disco balls to sway ever so slightly, creating nauseating patterns on the walls...

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“Museum Piece ” by Tanja Cilia

It was just my luck.I hadn’t even been a week at my new job, and here I was, stuck inside the Museum because of bad weather. And I wasn’t even supposed to be there, in the first place.Bad weather, did I say? It turned out to be The Storm of The Century – The Grandmother of all Blizzards of March 14, 1973 – my birthday, incidentally.In my gap year, just for fun, I had been working as a waitress at Le Riche Oursin, an upmarket French Bistrot in the tourist area. Who should walk in but the curator of the Graffiti Pl...

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“Soap Opera” by Tanja Cilia

“There you are.I've been waiting for ages. But I knew that sooner or later you would come to do the MSN Solitaire Collection, because there’s just enough time for you to finish the five games before the episode begins... That is one of the good things about being able to watch television on your laptop, and having a smart television, so you can hop back and forth between the two, according to whether or not you are alone in the house.Am I not the clever one? I knew...

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“House Hunting” by Tanja Cilia

“This is the year I will get out of here.” You call it the Psychiatric Hospital. I call it the Funny Farm – funny as in weird, not funny as in ha-ha. The day I checked myself voluntarily for hospitalisation into a psychiatric ward, I didn’t quite know what I had let myself in for. But my state of mind – or rather the voice reverberating in my brain – told me it wou...

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“Abracadabra” by Tanja Cilia

December 18It is the beginning of the end; the first time that I find something missing.I have OCD. So, I know where everything is. I don’t even have to look at what I am bringing out of the cupboards.When I put my hand up for my cappuccino cup and felt an empty space, I was flummoxed. I looked in the sink, on the draining board, on the bedside cabinet. Nada. Zilch. I took out my second-favourite cup, and… I discovered that all the mocha pods were missing.

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“Light Relief” by Tanja Cilia

I was the first coryphée to pirouette offstage when the cue was Exeunt Stage Left. I almost always, but not quite, avoided getting dizzy and / or smashing into the backdrop, thereby making things difficult for the rest of the nymphs and dryads sprites and naiads. I had joined the troupe with a view to going places during my gap year – not because I liked dancing. My sister’s boyfriend had high hopes for me; he said my height and carrot-top would make me famous. You don't often see tall ballerin...

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“Flight of Fancy” by Tanja Cilia

Leeza woke up with a start, bathed in sweat. She’d been having one of those weird dreams, parts of which were recurring. Her shrink said they were replete with suppressed memories and significant objects, but she knew they were her brain’s way of saving her from having to resort to electroerasure therapy. She was in a classroom, the walls of which were painted aquamarine,...

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“The Not-so-Duff Duff Duff” by Tanja Cilia

The plan was perfect. At least, so it seemed, on paper. I was chosen to bring to fruition a Sting Operation for the Government of Zirconia, with the aid of the Secret Service. I was to go, find a huge house, buy it, and insinuate myself into the community. I would work undercover, and help nab all the bad apples that passed my way… that is, members of the Five Families that went by the ...

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“Thinking It Over” by Tanja Cilia

They framed me. It had been going on for weeks, not quite actually right under my nose, which is why I hadn’t noticed. Now, I fully understood the meaning of all those not-so-subtle comments before I wen out on Sick Leave... like you’re too good for your own good, and he who sups with the devil must have a long spoon, and beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

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“In Her Own Words” by Tanja Cilia

I was seven months pregnant with Alison. The car was at the body-shop, and he sent me by bus, alone, to fetch Ivor from my friend’s house, where he had been having a post-football match sleep-over, because he said, ironically, that riding on a bus made him queasy. He didn’t even think of calling a taxi; and I didn’t want to beg, or use any of the money I had been squirrelling away.Oh, he was manipulative - just like his father, who could have stayed home and lived off his wife’s untold wealth. But he preferred to keep hi...

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“Belonging ” by Tanja Cilia

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same, in a manner of speaking.Of course, you wouldn’t expect paint not to flake, and shingles not to fall, if a place had been uninhabited for almost a quarter of a century – but the building still stood, erect and proud, on the top of the hill, and a lot of the way inside it, with a labyrinth of corridors that ran crosswise, and, for safety reasons, had cleverly designed exits in all four points of the compass,...

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Author bio

Maltese, Mediterranean, European.