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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2020
Submitted to Contest #70
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. They had been siphoning off money, and stealing goods, from the warehouse, while I was off work and recuperating from having all my teeth pulled out, and dentures fitted, after a ve...
Submitted to Contest #69
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 his office job, he used...
Submitted to Contest #68
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, albeit at different levels.Now, all she ha...
Submitted to Contest #67
“You sound like an old married couple!” his sister told us, when she heard us alternately bickering and bantering.“Ha!” I replied, ever the nerd. “At one point in Green Card, Lauren tells Brontë and Georges exactly that; ‘You sound like an old married couple’. Déjà-vu, ha ha!”We were at the Emergency Clinic at hospital. Xanthe had fallen off a ladder (long story!) and we had driven her to hospital.By ‘we’, I mean Matthew and myself. He was, literally, the boy-next-door. We had virtually, and literally, known each other since before we were b...
Submitted to Contest #66
Whenever I tell people something that really happened to me, they always say I’m making it up as I go along. I am the Poster Girl for “Tell the truth, and nobody will believe you”. I spent my summers in what the townsfolk called the Ancestral Mansion. To me, it was just Nanna’s House – a rambling building built on a hill, with a whole wing preserved as it used to be in bygone times. There was just one room that was out of bounds – a room that was said to be haunted. This room was always cool in summer, and warm in winter. Whenever anyone ...
Submitted to Contest #65
Dearly Beloved I have called you here today because it’s traditional for witches to be given their wings - ha! – on This Night. Frankly, I think it’s a silly idea. If it were for me, I would have convened this meeting on October 1, so by today you’d all be well-practiced in the Arts, and also in the Non-Arts. But Orders are Orders. As it is, we’ll just have to wing it, and meet again next Sunday, to compare notes. First – The Arts. You will see that on the Booklet I have prepared for you, I have, by dint of habit, included the fa...
Submitted to Contest #64
Three missed calls, in quick succession – from a withheld number. It was our Signal – and I use Upper Case on purpose. He’s in Malta! My heart missed a beat. As I had done an untold number of times before, I called the 12-digit number I had concocted out of our combined birthdates. This hooked up to an exchange, whence it was re-directed to the self-same phone from which he had called me. I hated this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but he had patiently explained how it was a necessary safety precaution. Answer, dammit! I knew that the procedure ...
Submitted to Contest #63
It was our poem… To Celia, by Ben Jonson. Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I’ll not look for wine. He’d recite it as we drank scalding coffee on the steps in front of the Youth Centre. I told him that my dream was to open a coffee shop where people would not hesitate to come in, even if they were alone. He painted the sign for me as a surprise – “To Celia”, it said. I had the name of the shop, even before I had started saving up for it. We were just eighteen years ol...
Submitted to Contest #62
Out of the blue, the boy appeared in front of me.“I want to die!” he sobbed, rivulets of tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.It’s not often that children step into the path of an oncoming bike, holding out the palm of their hand as a traffic warden would. Had he had run away from home after a hiding?“I really want to die. It hurts. It hurts so much.” The words came out in gasps. This was not the time to offer platitudes. I got off my bike and hugged him, then rummaged in my backpack to get him a tissue. I also fished out a bottl...
Submitted to Contest #61
“It’s all done with smoke and mirrors, you know. It’s like what Death says – that eating curry is like biting a red hot ice cube…”“Don’t you begin with the literary references now. I’ve had it up to here already. I wish I’d never signed up for extra classes.”“The problem with you, kiddo, is that you take too much for granted. You thought it would be a cinch to earn writing credits rather than attending classes full-time… and oh, how good it feels to say ‘I told you so’!”Hadrian scratched his scalp, drawing blood with his ragged fingerna...
Submitted to Contest #60
Do you remember, back in 2013 - January I think it was - the fuss made about the remains of a Roman woman who died in her 30s? As I recall, the find was made in a necropolis near Lleida in the Catalonia region of Spain. The woman, who had died some 1,600 years before, had a calcified tumour in her pelvis…and it had a bone and four deformed teeth embedded within it, two of which were still attached to the wall of the tumour. There will always be theories about what causes foetus in foetu. The self-styled experts sometimes call it an ovar...
Submitted to Contest #59
I’m here. It looks all right, so far… but there’s a kind of smell in the air, like someone has gone crazy with the mint-and-lavender air-freshener. I’m a bit confused, still. Me and my big mouth. Oh! You want to know how it happened. Bear with me while I do one of my Voices skits. I am a stand-up comic, after all… - Real people. - What do you mean? - I’m not about to spend megabucks on safaris, when there’s raw material galo...
Submitted to Contest #58
I left my boyfriend for him, because he promised me the earth and a bag in which to put it. But after three years I knew I still yearned for my first love. “Leave him!” he said, when I reconnected through a false identity, on Facebook. It was not easy. My (ex!) husband owned me – mind, body, soul. It began to fall into place when I was standing at the sink. No, no, I tell a lie. It began slightly before that; before there was a power outage. But for the sake of this story, let’s just say that it began after supper. Just for th...
Submitted to Contest #57
Real Estate Deeds - check. Jewellery inventory - check. Bank Documents – check. House photo album - check. List of vehicles - check. Monogrammed stationery - check. Chequebook - check. Ballpoints galore - check. Iced coffee - check. Ritz Crackers - check. Spotify on - check.Being of sound mind… that is my story, and I am sticking to it… I have decided to write this, My Last Will and Testament, which cancels all the others I have written so far.I know, posthumously and humorously, that most of you gathered here are at loggerheads with on...
Submitted to Contest #56
“You’re hot!” he said, placing his open palm just millimetres away from my face. I moved back involuntarily, and nearly fell backward over a dog that had loped into the room. He reached out to steady me, and I knew I would feel his grip for a long time. “Yes... there was an accident at the crossroads, and a traffic snarl-up... I didn’t want to be late, so I ran all the way down the avenue, since I did not want to be late; I’d love a glass of cold water please.” One sentence. The News Editor would have had my head if he’d heard me. I blush...
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