reedsymarketplace
Hire professionals for your project
reedsyblog
Advice, insights and news
reedsylearning
Online publishing courses
reedsylive
Free publishing webinars
reedsydiscovery
Launch your book in style
Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2022
In my day, everyone wanted to marry a Saint. The Macy’s Day parade would come to town with a long open bus of blessed virgins, you’d pick one that was affordable and VOil-oom! Nature took over.But my buddy Chad, Chadworth? Or Chadwick? I forget his stuffy birth name and we just call him Chad. Chad is an engineer, not a real beauty in the world of men. He’s the kind of guy you couldn’t pass off to a one eye sister as a good provider or that he might be Leonardo Davinci proportional. She’d see right though it (with that one good eye) and say, ...
Submitted to Contest #299
Every two years in California you have to renew your marriage license or the police can come into your bedroom and take the kids out of the stomach. It’s really weird and I’m greatful it hasn’t happened yet. But this year I got a notice, DOG Certification Required, in addition to paying the normal marriage license fees and getting a red sticker to put on my wife. She forced me to get my marriage registration tattooed on my left finger while I was drinking. I just pay for the tattoo number removal and then get the new one zipped on every year...
Submitted to Contest #298
Let us be brief.I was excavating down the Tehachapi, really pulling on the drain plug for the entire lake with a hydraulic bucket rated at twenty five cubic tonnes of pressure. The metal was sweating to lift the gigantic cork left by the ancients but we have to drain this large bathtub once a decade or the watershed becomes too polluted and people in San Francisco react with their coffee.You’ve heard of the homeless crisis that started in the Tenderloin? Bad water. We forgot to drain over the COVID years and all of a sudden you have albino c...
My Nefarious plan was about to work.Michelle texted at 11:49pm, “We need your help tomorrow if you are available.”A little backstory:Michelle had faked her own death to serve me divorce papers at the funeral, but we had 3 kids in common, so I moved three blocks away. It was kinda funny to go to the local bar and come tripping over to my old house and see through the windows who might still be alive. I paid for the girls’ cellphones, yet they never answered or returned my texts.Even if a husband/father can be replaced by episodes of The Last ...
Submitted to Contest #293
Tom Svinver barely missed the weight limit designed by the National Space Administration who claimed that his extra twenty pounds would cost a quarter million dollars to make him weightless. It was cost-prohibitive to send obese people to space. He had tried diet and exercise but at 43 years of age, tethered to a lab all day, Tom was desperately attempting a side-experiment with the dissolution of fat by a chemical alternative. All the rats had died. Two weeks before lift-off and final weight test he asked General Brodrick, “If I find t...
Drunk Dentist, Chestmaster and Tommy were all drinking because it is a favorite pastime of the surgeon. The Chestmaster did not want to join them at first but they said they would only listen to his glory days in the Russian Federation if he took a swig because American bottles are often filled in thirds. Mahdav began to twirl his cup, “What are you working on, Tommy?” I had to admit that a new form of pornography had come to my office, a challenge so exciting that I could not date or even see my impossible children. This new lov...
Submitted to Contest #290
GET UPAlexa is set to ‘prison security voice’ and the second alarm blares out the bridge to Ouija Board by Morrisey, it’s time for Jillian to rouse, smell her pits, and decide if there is enough time to take a shower including the hair because she does not enjoy the elastic pain of shower caps. Her watch rings “ring zip ring” (like that) and she barely remembers it’s the day to put Ms. Lice in the ground. FUNERAL at 8. Quaking, because her adult kids left the package to Jimmy Dean Croissants open when she was defrosting and not rea...
My angel’s name was Pauve, but I didn’t get to name him. Pauve used to keep the house safe at night, locking the doors, checking that the camera lenses were clean, setting the mouse traps and the solar launch snares, he used to clean up the blood spills and mimick the noise-dampening slurry of traffic. There were no reports to wake up to, no 3 am knocks, and the mosquitos from the great pond across the street obeyed Pauve and didn’t fly over without a direct summoning.Then I brought home a dog. Just a limp cocker-spanial with hair so matted ...
Couple’s Therapy: Ukraine Russia EditionDah. “Now Don-nald, I have to say this is very mature of you meeting me man to man. It’s much (how you say?) much less NOISY without the princess of Ukraine. This is good, no?”“Well Vlad, “ [Crossing the legs] “I’ve had time to learn this life is more than money. I’ve had my share of big splits… Why don’t you tell me what really troubles you?”“You know I take care of her for many years and she gives me back my nukeclear rings and say this: ‘Destroy! Destroy!’ You know how the nukeclear ring is for...
Submitted to Contest #289
Trigger: written in the fat thumb grammar to avoid data miners over-borrowing any more labor.Grandpa was dragged out by his neck and forced to sign his property away. The crows thronged hard and threw their gnatty green tomatoes, their wooden shear sticks fanning about in the hazey morning. It was like a thunder strike as this tassled leash went around his neck and someone slapped a horse on the hind and the cobblestones went bumpety bumpety. It’s rough to have this awesome guy, this King of royal blood in your line, but you can’t brag ...
Submitted to Contest #280
Master Combat Sargeant Elvis Kneel was discharged from his third tour of active duty so he could go to the multi-person funeral of his wife and daughters. The Army asked that he leave his duty guns in a secured check with a padlock and a combination given to his squadron commander. The newspapers knew that a scarred and tenacious freak was coming home but they simply reported that the women were survived by their husband and father.The Mayor thought it was a good time to appoint a Vice Mayor if anyone would like the fringe benefit of unlimit...
The ushers were very kind, just so gentle, not clingy when my legs gave out all the way down the aisle to meet CJ Mach and his microphone. He had one of those 1980’s microphone that was skinny and came to a mushroom head and the man expected me to give him a kiss on the cheek (or the lips if I wanted to get lucky). “Tommmmmmmy Goooooooooround! Come on down.” No CJ. I wll not go down. (I felt like nearly puking). In all my years as a consumer, a sinner, a speeder and the occasional fictitious filing on a tax return – I had neve...
Submitted to Contest #277
Hard Water was going around because some of the local kids got hold of oodles of erectile dysfunctional pills and climbed the water tower, opened the testing hatch and “Voila!”Blame Amazon, again. So the entire town is on lockdown now because Mr. Westly at the bank likes to walk around with his morning coffee. His wokeness was right in the face of a kid waiting to see if their parents got an extension on their mortgage. The kid screamed, Mr. Westley dropped his coffee all over the spots that got McDonald’s sued for hot coffee. The bank ...
Submitted to Contest #272
The tales of Michelle’s death were greatly exaggerated. She did not die of Hyper-Calcitus (the overconsumption of orange juice), and she did not require 16,000$ worth of encasement and beachfront property in Pacific Grove. I had always argued that the cemetery was too close to the Pebble Beach golfers, their crusty eyesight was conjunctive, and it would take only one missliced drive and I was going to join her forever.Michelle got the kind of funeral reserved for rich nobles in the 14th century. I wondered if they buried Lady Godiva with clo...
Submitted to Contest #268
All right, the omnipresent omni-powerful phone thing is getting out of hand. I mean a guy can’t even take a girl out anymore without her trying to wrap his phone in a wad of tin foil. They follow us into the restroom on the first date. Not to make sure we are washing hands but to make sure we do not defile the stalls with the lust which is founded in the Wall Street Journal. “I can see your feet!” Olivia is screaming at me and I thought it was a private place and the waiter understood. He would fill her cup with iced tonics...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email: