Vanessa Marczan

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2020

Stories (10)

10 Stories

606 karma pts

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“The baker” by Vanessa Marczan

The last trains emptied the city of daytrippers and office dwellers as Chris unlocked the door. The cafe was tucked in an alleyway between towers of glass and steel. He walked into the gloom, past stacked chairs, tables, the counter, the coffee machine - an engine all shiny and fawned over. He squeezed into the kitchen, the heart, deeper to the womb. Clad in his apron, hands washed, Chris gathered bowls, flour, butter, eggs, water, rolling pin. The oven growled to life greeting the long night. Like a warlock, he performed th...

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“The Waiting” by Vanessa Marczan

(Trigger warning: Substance abuse, domestic violence)It reminded me of one of the times I went to rehab. She was an older woman. Her face was creased in places that indicated she had a low bullshit threshold. My dumb questions were answered in a hard, clear voice. She wore a navy blue kimono, her blonde and grey hair tied in a low bun. The gold engraved nametag on her chest read 'Maricourt'. We sat in a thoughtfully designed room. Scandinavian aesthetic. Minimal. Not unlike a hotel room...

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“The girl at Boy's ” by Vanessa Marczan

My wife takes a big, deep breath and smiles. 'Can you smell that?'We are sitting on little plastic chairs at a little plastic table in an open-air hawker centre, a great al fresco food court, at Gurney Drive in Penang, Malaysia. The sun has set. The hawkers are setting up, unfolding the limbs of their metal carts. The sound of music and chatter in a smattering of languages, laughter mixed with knives chopping, water pouring, plastic plates being stacked. The preparation of every kind of food you could e...

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“Red dust and sunlight” by Vanessa Marczan

My pop, my grandfather, lives on the edge of a small town near Broken Hill in Australia. The name of the town doesn't matter. It's unpronounceable, a higgletypigglety mess of syllables, like most Australian town names. It's barely a town at all. More a collection of weatherboard houses held together by rough people who are set in their ways and live out there for a reason. It's country where Mad Max was filmed. It's all red sand and rocks and bush dust, huge clear blue skies as far as you can see, dirt tracks leading to the featurele...

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“The magnificent Arthur Goldbury” by Vanessa Marczan

Three-quarters of the way through watching The Wrath of Khan with his daughter Alexis, the clock ticked over to a minute past midnight on Arthur Goldbury's 50th birthday. At the end, Alexis wiped her eyes. Her bottom lip trembled. Arthur knew she didn't want him to see her crying.'It's okay, honey,' Arthur said. 'You know Spock doesn't actually die.''I know, I know. But it's still sad.''What was your favourite bit?' he said.Alexis composed herself. She was a tough little 12 y...

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“Sink and swim, repeat. ” by Vanessa Marczan

Congratulations, reads the first page of the self-help book, you have survived all of your hardest days. I can't help but laugh. My precious little Lucy is six weeks old. She cries, wails and bleats her way into the early evening. Recently, like a week ago, she awoke to the world. She became aware of this unpleasant reality, no longer sheltered in my warm, tight womb. It's cold out here. It's bright. It smells funny. It's dry. It's too noisy at times and at others, not noisy enough. She has decided that she doesn't...

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“Us and Them” by Vanessa Marczan

I was pretentious in my first year at Sydney University. I'm not ashamed to say it now. I used words that were too big and I didn't know the meaning of. I only read Herman Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Jack Kerouac. My wardrobe consisted of black skinny leg jeans, black t-shirts and Doc Martens. My efforts at expressing my individuality, my personality, lumped me into the 'arty-goth-emo crowd'. We complained about the st...

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“Summer Time Travels” by Vanessa Marczan

It's a Sunday in December 2018. In Sydney, it's a glorious early summer's day. The cloudless sky is vast and blue and bright. The afternoon air carries the scent of an early bushfire season, that unmistakable, menthol smell of burnt eucalypt. 'Your popsicle's melting,' my brother Adrian says. 'Huh?' We don't call them popsicles in Australia. It's one of those affectations Adrian's picked up since moving to ...

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“Uncle Ed” by Vanessa Marczan

My mother is from the Philippines. Few of my Filipino-Australian friends believe I am half-Filipino, but every year until was seven, we spent at least a month there. My second childhood home was a small village called Aureliana, in a town called Patnongon in the province of Antique on the island of Panay. To my five-year-old self, it was a day and a half on a plane and the better part of another day looking out the windo...

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“Number Two's number twos” by Vanessa Marczan

Oh hello, are you awake, little one? Are you hungry? Ah, yes, yes you are. Alright then, just let mummy get herself organised. Well it is... Let's see... Ah, we made it to 1am. Nice one baby Georgie! We'll start with some freshening up. Change your nappy, okay? No one likes to have something to eat with a wet or stinky bottom right? Well maybe your sister... Maybe daddy, hahaha! Just gonna...

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Author bio

A reading, writing mama who needs to work on writing slightly faster (has been working on the same novel for six years now...)

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #75
The Waiting – read story