Vanessa Kilmer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019

Stories (17)

17 Stories

440 karma pts

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“Dying Wish” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #70

I lay dying in bed in the nursing home. I hate this place. I don’t want to be here. I won’t stay long. Everyone knows this. I made my wishes known my whole life. I’m here because I fell at home when getting up during the night to pee. I missed the toilet and went over backward into the tub. My husband tried to lift me out, but he’s old, too, (three years more than my eighty), so he called the emergency squad, and even though I said no, they brought me to the hospital and then moved me here for therapy to get me back on my feet. But that is...

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“Bitter & Sweet” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #69

I face the two-story white clapboard house with its yellow shutters. Three hundred years and counting. Counting down to my bomb. I plan on blowing it all to smithereens. My family beat me to our annual Thanksgiving shindig. I look in the living room window as I suck on my cigarette and the pint bottle of the family’s claim to fame, Barrens Brandy. They sit around the formal room, thirteen relatives, not a smile on one face. That will happen after a few more rounds of cranberry cocktails.  The room looks like something from a Victorian...

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“betwixt and between” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #68

Some recruits showed up for the draft dressed in their guilds’ insignias: patches, jewelry, and pins given to them by family, friends, and sponsors. Their partisanship glinted in the floodlights that brightened the night and the parade ground like high noon. Aysu, dressed in an oversized black hoodie and black pants, her black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, blended into the shadows. She wandered off from the crowds, soaking up the solitude of the dark in the forest. She brushed her fingers on leaves as she passed blackberry bushes ...

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“Missing Clues” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #66

Raymond was dead. So are Becky, Josh, and Melissa. Sylvie may or may not be. I only have a few heartbeats left. We decided to have a Friday Fun Night after being cooped up for the last seven months. Six friends at a puzzle room, masked for our own protection and in compliance with the pandemic rules of life. Three boys and three girls together since kindergarten. A clique, a company, a troop, a gang. Friends without benefits. At least, that’s what I always thought, but apparently, we have been lying to one another. We arrived at six. Since...

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“Boo Hoo” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #65

I stood in the rain and watched the water drops splash up from the ground through the arches of my feet. The light from the street lamp sparkled and refracted on liquid beads. I turned my face up to the weeping sky and felt nothing. I was the only being out on the street tonight. The wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube jack-o-lantern in my neighbor’s yard dodged and bobbed in the wind. The blowup ghost hissed and moaned. An umbrella, its bones turned inside out, tumbled down the avenue, skipping to the tune of spooky music blarin...

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“Jack & Jill & Josiah Jenkins” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #64

“I double-dog-dare you,” said Jill, her unruly bangs covered her right eye and the port-wine birthmark on her cheek. She pushed Jack in the back. “Or are you chicken?” She began a bwok bwok noise but choked on it when a faint light lit up in the tower of the old farmhouse. It moved away from the broken window glass, disappeared for a held breath, and reappeared in the round windows dotting down the side of the clapboard walls, from the fourth flour turret to the ground floor. It stopped behind the front door side window, blinked three times,...

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“Apple Bee” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #63

“I was mad to agree to this, Maddy,” said Aldrin. “Apple picking. Christ, if you want apples, I can get them from a roadside stand, and we can go to a club.” He drove their BMW i8 up the farm path towards the orchard. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “Look at this dust. The car’s filthy.” Maddy glanced at Aldrin. She ran her fingers along his bottle, tanned arm. “I thought we could spend some quality time together, you and me, out in the sunshine.” She brushed his sable brown hair from his forehead. “I miss you.” He pulled he...

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“Neverland” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #62

The stinging pain of her mother’s handprint on her cheek faded. The sharp burn of her mother’s angry, hurtful words continued to clamor in her head, fighting for space and attention with the voices of the woman and two men that were Ayla’s constant companions. Ayla closed her bedroom door without a sound. She stuffed a handful of her mother’s sleeping pills into her mouth and swallowed. She flung her body on the bed. She wanted a few moments of peace, of nothingness.  She tried to snuff out her life with her pillow, the feathers o...

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“Toy Story” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #61

Wendy moved a lot. Not like any kind of body movement, or dancing, or even a walk in the park. She moved her household, her private domain, her pad. And with each move, to each new neighborhood, she lugged around belongings as old as her babyhood.  A caramel mohair Steiff bear from the 1950s, matted and waxy. A wooden baby doll crib on plastic wheels with lambkin decals on the end panels. Cardboard books bound with metal rings written in German about guardian angels and Cinderella. A pale pink music box that once played Brahms' Lullaby ...

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“Panic, Schmanic” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #60

I have two towels. I’m rich by today’s standards. Right now, they are pinned together to form a poncho that’s keeping me warm. It’s the end of spring. The first few generations after The Event, no one kept track of time, days or years. Heck, the world was so bleak and black that no one could keep track of the seasons. You couldn’t tell the difference between winter and summer. Someone in one of the larger settlements up north on the Upper Bay near Old New York, calculated the current year as 2520 OD (Old Date) or 500 ND (New Date.) They ca...

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“Truth-Seekers, LLC” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #59

A bomb exploded as my feet hit the tarmac. The concussion pushed me a few inches back up into the air, like the weighted end of a see-saw when your ass hits the ground. I rolled over and covered my head with my arms. Embers peppered the backs of my hands, and I smelled burning hair. My elbows pressed against my ears didn't block out the screaming. I crawled towards the shelter of a wrecked white van as chunks of bricks rained down around me. My camera bag snagged on something. The bag's handle caught on a sneakered foot no longer attached t...

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“Mrs. Twindle's Son” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #58

Death splashed onto the marble floor of the church with watercolor sunlight through stained glass. Samuel Twindle watched the procession of devotees from the shadows of an alcove. He fidgeted the pill bottle in his right hip pocket. The window across the aisle from where he stood showed a mother holding her broken son. Blood poured from his heart and stained her hands and dress.  "Heavenly," said Mrs. Smith. The longtime parishioner stepped up to the pane, her nose dusting it with condensation. "They're like paintings in an ...

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“Second Thoughts” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #57

Solly Saved Seven Sisters The headline became a meme shared millions of times within seconds. Solly's picture was permanently embedded as 1s and 0s in networks and motherboards across the world. Solly was now immortal. Digital pictures tell no lies. Solly Snail saved seven sisters whose van was hit by a train as they drove to church on Sunday. Cell phone photos and videos captured the exact moment when Solly opened the crumpled vehicle doors, bowed the seven sisters from their van one at a time, and seated them in his limo. Once all sa...

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“True BFFs” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #56

The dead girl sat up. I squeaked. The EMT that brought her in made some odd sounds himself. We both stepped back from her and looked at one another. We exchanged an unspoken, invisible understanding, and nodded. The dead girl swung her legs over the side of the gurney and stood, reaching for us. The EMT patted me on the shoulder and held out his hand to me. "James," he said, "do you happen to have any weapons?"  He had read my name tag: James Godfrey. I read his: Edgar Frog. We shook. "Can you hold her off for a few minutes, Edgar...

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“D.o N.ot A.sk” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #55

I didn't look like anyone in my family. From an early age, at least from five on, I asked my parents if I was adopted. They always said no, but I never felt like one of them. Even when they showed me pictures of dead relatives with the same hair color, a similar chin, or shorter-than-the-rest height.  When the family tree websites offered DNA tests, I ordered several right away. I gave them to my family for Christmas.  My parents refused to take them and forbid the rest of us to participate. "We're not going to be part of som...

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