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Teacher Mom

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2025

Stories (22)

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22 Stories

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The Living Manuscript

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #304

The first time it happened, Elias Graye woke to the clatter of keys.This was not a dream but a real, rhythmic stuttering tap-tap-tap, then a steady roll, like rain on an old tin roof. He lay frozen in the dark, breath caught in his throat, barely daring to move. Moonlight slanted through the blinds in narrow stripes, striping his cluttered study with pale ribbons. The sound was unmistakable, the steady clatter of his old typewriter echoing softly in the quiet room.He hadn't touched it in years, since the girl died and long before The Hollow...

9 likes

One Honest Sentence

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #304

The cursor blinked on Dani's laptop screen, steady as a metronome. She sat cross-legged on her sagging couch, wrapped in a threadbare quilt that still smelled faintly of lavender and cedar, the only comfort in her cramped, dimly lit apartment. Outside, the city thrummed with life she hadn't touched in weeks. The stale air was thick with the scent of old paper and forgotten dreams.Her latest draft filled the screen, two thousand words of elegant nothing. Clean sentences. Polished metaphors. Not a single pulse of truth. She scrolled back up an...

7 likes

Echoes of the Unseen

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #303

The extraction chair remained still and silent, waiting in the lit room.The low hum would come later, after calibration, after clearance, after the cold protocols ran their unyielding course. For now, the memory archive held only stillness.Mireya Cal adjusted her gloves with practiced precision, watching her reflection ripple across the polished steel interface. Every morning began this way, same station, same sequence, same illusion of control. In a place designed to preserve what was lost, routine offered a fragile kind of mercy.A flicker ...

8 likes

The Echo Archive

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #303

The cold hum of the Transfer Chamber was as familiar to Liora Vale as her own heartbeat, a constant rhythm beneath the sterile white light that filled the room. Outside, the neon skyline of Neo-Astra pulsed with holo-ads, each one promising eternal life through consciousness uploading. The city's elite lined up eagerly, desperate to escape the confines of flesh and mortality, their hopes resting on the dream of digital eternity.As a technician and archivist of minds, Liora moved with quiet precision. She mapped neurons, stabilized synaptic e...

6 likes

Translations of the Heart

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #302

The sixth draft of the MindMail shimmered uncertainly, its silvery mist curling into the air like steam from a half, forgotten tea. Nira watched it dissipate, then sighed and waved the enchantment away.Still not right.She dipped her quill again, letting the ink pool in the flask's lip as she considered her next try. Her fingers hovered just above the glass. Around her, the quiet bustle of the Westdock market flowed on, clinks of watering cans, bursts of laughter, the soft rustle of seed packets she should be sorting. But her focus stayed fix...

5 likes

The Patience of Trees

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #301

Gwen had steady hands. People admired that most about her. At the museum, when someone spilled a coffee too close to an archival box or flipped a parchment too quickly, Gwen's fingers were already there, lifting, blotting, reordering. She had the touch of someone who never panicked.No one would ever believe what she had done, that was why.The letter had arrived in a sealed tube from a private donor, thin, yellowed paper with delicate creases, ink faded to the color of dry violets. It was a love letter, dated July 12, 1863. The author was Pri...

8 likes

The Orchard of Memories

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #300

The desert stretched endlessly before Eida, a barren sea of dunes shimmering under the merciless sun. Heat rose in visible waves, distorting the horizon. Beside her, Tal stumbled, his frail body drained by the fever that threatened to consume him. The sand shifted treacherously beneath his uncertain steps, as if the desert itself were trying to pull him down."Just a little further," Eida urged, though she had no way of knowing if this was true. The grit of sand had worked between her teeth and into the folds of her clothing, an ever-present ...

6 likes

Marvin the Magnificent (and the Price of Wonder)

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #299

The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows across the cracked pavement of the park. Marvin stood at the edge of the fountain, the faint smell of stale popcorn mingling with the scent of freshly cut grass. His fingers trembled around three juggling balls, smooth, round, and heavier than they had any right to be."Come on, Marvin," he muttered, glancing at a small group of children sitting cross-legged on the grass. A couple of parents lounged nearby, only half-watching, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of phone screens.He tossed...

9 likes

Theo Whimble and the Avo-King Prophecy

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #299

Theo Whimble had always felt a little pitiful behind the library desk. Filing away ancient cookbooks, shushing children mid-snack, and once getting pelted with a rogue plum during Food Literacy Week, it was a quiet life, full of laminated cards and expired dreams.That all changed the day he opened Ye Olde Recipes & Revelations: Volume 5, and a single sentence glowed gold on the page:"He who mashes the green shall rule the scene."Theo rubbed his eyes, thinking he was still half asleep. He'd been in a bit of a rut lately, questioning wheth...

5 likes

The Lie That Became the World

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #299

Vincent hesitated, his thumb trembling just above the glowing "Send" button.The excuse was airtight, a runaway greyhound, bleeding paw, tearful child clinging to his leg like he was some street-corner saint. He even tossed in a quote from the kid, "You're my hero, mister." It was pure fiction, obviously completely made up, and he knew it.He tapped the button, sending the message into the void before he could rethink it.The email zipped off to his editor, who'd been waiting, no, begging, for his column three days ago. Vincent exhaled, leaned ...

6 likes

The Silence Between the Notes

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #298

It was always there. The music flowing like a river beneath the streets. It drifted through alleyways, curled around lampposts, soaked into cobblestones like rain. The city pulsed with a thousand private symphonies, flutes of joy, strings of longing, brass heavy with sorrow. Mira felt them all, not through ears, but through the marrow of her bones.But she didn't belong to it.To Mira, emotion wasn't a sound. It was vibration. Pressure. Texture. Like brushing fingertips across a stranger's soul. The world around her hummed, but she could never...

7 likes

The Ink Remembers

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #298

Rain tapped gently against the dusty windowpanes, a patient reminder of the world outside. Inside the cramped shop, Elias hunched over his oak writing desk, the tip of his quill poised above ivory parchment. The scent of ink, earthy and sharp, mingled with the faint sweetness of dried lavender tucked into a clay jar nearby. His gnarled fingers trembled slightly as he dipped the quill into the vial, the ink inside shimmering with a dark violet hue that never quite dried the same way twice.He whispered the name aloud, as was his custom. “For M...

8 likes

Buried Promises

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #295

Margaret stood in Daniel's study, dust gathering on the bookshelves she couldn't bring herself to clean. Six weeks since the funeral, and she still couldn't call it "her study" despite her sister's gentle encouragement to "reclaim the space."Her fingers traced the spines of his chemistry textbooks, stopping at the gap where his journal should have been the one the police had never returned. She'd stopped asking about it after the third time the detective had given her that look pity mixed with impatience and suggested grief counseling instea...

8 likes

The Wind Remembers

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #295

Lena pressed her palm against the rain-speckled window of the seaside cafe, watching waves curl and break against the rocky shore. The air smelled of salt and freshly ground coffee, the soft hum of conversation blending with the distant cry of gulls. She tapped her pen against her untouched notebook beside her espresso. The words refused to come.She glanced at her phone, another email from her agent: Lena, your publisher, is asking about the manuscript again. Any progress?Her stomach clenched. Three years since her debut novel had been savag...

19 likes

Letters Across Time

Teacher Mom

Submitted to Contest #294

May 15, 2024Dear Future Me,Do we finally have things figured out? I'm sitting here in my apartment, rain tapping against the window, wondering if I'll ever stop feeling like I'm just pretending to be an adult. I'm questioning everything—my job at the publishing house that once felt like a dream, my relationship with Daniel that's growing increasingly distant, all of it.If you could respond, what would you say? What decisions would you unmake if given the chance? The apartment feels emptier since Mom's visit last weekend. She kept asking abou...

5 likes