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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2021
Submitted to Contest #98
Last night I was in the black water. It happened the way it always happens. I wake up lying face up on ground that is covered by 2 inches of black water. No sky, no land; it’s a void. Yet the water ripples in places all around me. Somewhere far away, I hear The Elk slowly walking through the black water, the splashing sound playing against the sound of hooves against glass. The ground is obsidian. The Elk is a ghost. He will have left hoofprints of blood in his wake; they will have melted and spread through the water in ephemeral swirls unti...
Submitted to Contest #97
I forgot to tell him. I forgot to tell him that the night sky is too dark when he’s not holding me. I forgot to tell him that I don’t know how to breathe without him. I forgot to tell him he is the sun. I forgot to tell him. Staring out the window, there was nothing but darkness, grief and the smell of sickness. The reflection of nurses hurrying past the reflection of parked cars in the lot down below. The waiting room. The fucking waiting room. It had been 9 hours; what could possibly be happening back there? WHAT IF HE'S DEAD. ...
Submitted to Contest #93
They said the Solstice festival was the safest to go to. The most normal. Virtually the whole town disappears into The Commune in the Woods during the Summer Solstice. For a week, the roads are empty and the smaller businesses are closed, and you can tell who doesn’t really live here, because they’re left wandering the streets, wondering where the hell everyone has gone. I’ve never gone before; I stay outside, with the outsiders. The Commune in the Woods is a place where people think they mean well. They don’t. I’ve gone there for softer o...
Submitted to Contest #90
It’s not her fault; she told me not to go. I’ve only seen pictures of trees and blue skies. All the screens in the hallways, projecting something that we’ve lost. I can’t stand it anymore - living underground in metal rooms and recycled air and only the stories of the elders to keep the memory of the time we lived above ground alive. It’s not her fault; she told me not to go. My mother, always with the worried look and the asthmatic cough we all have from breathing filtered air our whole lives. But I’m tired - I have to know. I have to ...
Submitted to Contest #89
And then it became apparent; he would never re-become what he had once been, and she had never been anything more than a spectre walking through a dilapidated house that was endlessly replaying the horrors of the sickness from the forest. He was looking at her with eyes that didn’t have a color anymore, and she knew he didn’t recognize her. She was looking at him, for the first time, as the creature he was now - frail, defeated, translucent. He would fall back into the darkness of the spaces between the walls. And she knew she as well would ...
Submitted to Contest #87
“I told you- I want this to be like Job, but funny.” “But didn’t Yahweh think that Job was funny?” “I’m honestly not sure. They write him as this omnibenevolent creature who only wants good for his creations, but then he tests people for no reason. Like, as a bet.” Muhtal laughed. “No, you’re right. I don’t know how anyone could read that story and not ask why the hell he needed to make that bet with Set. No reason besides a dick measuring contest. Well, guess what, Yahweh? Set won. He always does. Everyone he ever came after is dead i...
Submitted to Contest #86
TW: self harm She pointed her little mitten-covered hand somewhere off to the right of the trail we were walking- Do you see that, momma? It’s a crocus. It means The Dark Season is almost gone. I smiled to myself, and then to her as she turned around to see if I had heard her. Yes, pretty girl. Good eye. How’d you get so smart? She shrugged, stuck her tongue out at me and then turned back to skip along the trail. Sometimes I don’t believe she exists. Sometimes I wonder if she is the only living piece of me left. S...
Submitted to Contest #85
He built the house on the hill overlooking the town’s oldest cemetery. Red oak and what he didn’t know was the last of the American chestnuts from below the ridge line. Local limestone filled with fossils of the things that came long before us- the same stones that marked the graves of the poor in the cemetery below. He built the house hoping to begin something new, something clean, so he could start over- rebuild everything he had lost in the war. But he built the house next to a field of death so that he would never forget how he became a ...
Submitted to Contest #84
It’s March again. I think. At least according to the calendar I scratch into the wall underneath my bed. It’s March again, but it never matters. I don’t even know why I still keep track. What would I be now if I was outside- 30? No, that can’t be right, that means I’ve been here for…. 12 years?It’s March again. I think. It’s another day I’ll walk to the small kitchenette 5 feet from my bed, the chain around my ankle clinking against the cement floor, and I’ll make my tea. I’ll stare out the barred window wondering how this happened to me and...
Submitted to Contest #80
We Have Stolen Bodies Tatiana Fox, Feb 2021 I went to the history museum for the exhibit on the era of colonial and Native American conflict during the settlement and expansion into the Mid-Atlantic. It was supposed to focus on first-hand accounts of the time period of kidnappings and micro-treatises between small settlements of both European settlers and the local tribal villages, including peoples like the Shawnee and the Delaware. As an archaeologist who works in the Mid-Atlantic region, this period we call the Proto-Historic, or Contac...
Submitted to Contest #79
A Level of Non-Reality Tatiana Fox, Feb 2021 “He told me it’s Schizophrenia,” she said, leaning over the small, wooden table across from her brother. She ran her finger around the rim of a plain, white ceramic mug. Empty. It had taken her an hour to summon the ability to speak the words while she had quietly nursed a double cappuccino. She didn’t want to admit to him the night terrors had never stopped. That she wakes up screaming and feeling like she’s covered in blood at least twice per week. She hadn’t wanted to tell him about the wakin...
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