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Vincent Paiement Désilets

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2021

Stories (17)

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16 Followers

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17 Stories

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Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #232

Polar bear or snow gust? I play that game every time something moves in the distance. I take off my sunglasses and expose my eyes to snow blindness as I try to focus. Until a shape detaches itself from the barren, obscenely white landscape. Heart rate goes up. My hand tightens on my rifle, ready to send a warning shot. I both hope and dread it’s a bear. I’m either about to face the biggest challenge of my life...

6 likes

Don’t

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #215

I’m writing this with two remaining fingers, one dead friend, and three decades of regrets, loathing, and pain. You’ll never read it—there’s no such thing as time travel—but consider this a therapeutic exercise. A hopeless shot at inner peace, at settling the past. I’ve tried many times to write this. Must be my fiftieth attempt. I’d burst into tears, I’d shake for hours, I’d get lost in a confusing mist of memories, bite my cheeks until they bled. One night, I slit my wrists and soaked my sheet with blood. You’re young, healthy—you feel ...

14 likes

Lost

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #210

The lights swirled above me, between branches of towering pine and cedar trees. Spills of colorful ink in the starry sky. They seemed to communicate. A red glow would enlarge, then retract. A blue halo would shine brighter as a response. And purple, green, yellow… High in the night. They had to be gigantic, for I saw them large and clear from the ground, lying under a sheet of dead leaves, shivering. I had blamed the cold for waking me up. Only thin embers remained of the dyin...

7 likes

Last Ride

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #209

The road got bumpier as they sank deeper into the countryside and asphalt gave way to dirt. Enough to stir things up in George’s mind. The Jack Daniels had kept him quiet for a while. His hands and pants were sticky with it. He opened his mouth and turned toward Alan. A couple of seconds passed before the words came out. “You think I did the right thing?” &...

8 likes

Scorchers

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #206

Laura’s grip on the wheel wouldn’t loosen. Her foot crushed the accelerator. The country road melted into a blur. Lying on the backseat, her son was caught in a loop of torturous screams. Heat came in waves on the back of her neck. Between the screams and spasms, Tommy’s face was the same her students made when clueless. But add pain, a lot of it. Triple the despair. And flood it with fear. Laura choked on the...

7 likes

An Incident at the Love and Peace General Hospital

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #195

Gina's a nurse at the Love and Peace General Hospital. She's thirty-two, looks fifty. She's been working both the evening and night shifts for the past ten years. When she gets yelled at by a patient, she zones out and thinks about that time she went to Cape Cod six years ago. A crackhead once broke her nose. It still shows. The insurance didn't cover it. She has a cat that doesn't speak to her. She sips her black, cold coffee from a cup with a bird that says Early riser gets...

7 likes

The Death of Honor

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #191

The old man Takeshi stood alone at the end of the counter in the Tachinomiya bar. He lifted his glass, dragged the water with his finger to complete the circle his beer left on the wood. The beer didn’t taste like the one he shared with what was left of his fellow soldiers at the end of World War II. It didn’t taste like the one he had after he finished building his house with his bare hands. It tasted like nothing. Because it meant nothing. &nb...

4 likes

What the Heart Wants, Wants the Heart Too

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #183

The woman had left quite an impression on me with her uncanny eating habits. But the most attractive feature in anyone is passion—intense, unrestrained passion. In this dull, mechanical world, when someone still has a spark in the eye, that light is contagious. What was she so enthusiastic about? Meat. Someone who can find excitement in the mundane is always a keeper. Since we’d met, on our first date, she occupied most of my mental screen time. My friends, they’d said of cou...

12 likes

The Deceiving Machine

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #182

I'm watching the night's footage from the camera I had to install, contributing to global surveillance, because someone's been stealing my packages, and I see the shady creep dressed in black who's been roaming in front of my block for days shoot some guy in the head, look up at the camera, haul the corpse in a black car and drive away. This morning, there was no package on the balcony, but faint mud traces leading to my door. Can’t be me, I haven’t left my apartment in weeks, order everything online. Don’t even go to work anymore. My assho...

10 likes

Revenge Is Best Served Mechanically

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #157

One, two, three, four, five—there you go. One, two, three, four, five—there you go. Breaking the task into smaller portions made it bearable, survivable. It made it so I wouldn’t use the box cutter to open my veins instead of the cardboard boxes. So many cardboard boxes, hundreds of them, because who had to sort out all the tiny pieces needed for the next day? Thirty-five of those here, fifty of those there. Who had to do that until ten in the evening, until his fingertips went numb, until his eyes couldn’t focus anymore? Me. &nb...

8 likes

The Screaming Hole

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #152

The hole had never been there, but this morning, somehow, it was. In the middle of the park. A black spot in a sea of green. A dead pixel in the aerial view. “Aaagrooooooomn,” the hole said. Nearby, a boy dropped his ball. He stared at the hole, then approached with as much precaution as a kid could have. Half an hour later, six other kids had joi...

7 likes

Mouthful of Love

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #146

As soon as Melany stepped into the restaurant, her heart pounded. She felt the burn of people’s hostile, disgusted stares. She didn’t belong there. It was a beautiful restaurant, with beautiful people, beautiful candlesticks, and beautiful tablecloths you shouldn’t drop wine on. The hostess greeted them behind her desk. There was that glass candy bowl with fun little white mints with colored lines. Melany stopped herself from taking one. A green one and a red one. Maybe they ...

9 likes

The Doomed Crew

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #143

The doomed crew drifted down Slave River in their rotten York boat. They had given up on paddling. Fatigue, strain, and hunger had ripped all layers of thought so that only the roaring of the river and the cries of the pelicans filled their heads. Most of the original crew, the rejects of the Hudson Bay Company, had died from sickness or attacks. Four of them remained, including the Husky, who was covered in dirt and had patches of hair missing, exposing the pink, damaged skin. Halfy—a nickname he hated—stood at the front of the boat, the po...

6 likes

Sour Love

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #133

One day, the sun left and never came back. Now it’s dark and cold all the time. I don’t mind the dark because mommy and daddy used to put me in a little room with no light when I annoyed them by bringing too many dead animals inside. Even when I brought alive ones for friendship, mom still complained and hit me with the discipline flower. The discipline flower was a big rose with many little spikes. She said it was a loving way to make me learn because it was a flower and flowers are beautiful. Daddy almost never hit me. He didn’t care. But,...

7 likes

And Another One Gone

Vincent Paiement Désilets

Submitted to Contest #126

"Happy New Year!" my mother shouts into the phone. "Ok," I say, and I hang up. I'm getting old. Time's flowing without me. Another year has gone by and nothing's changed. I've had the same To-Do list for fifteen years now, and I haven't done shit. You get a job, you pay the bills, and next thing you know your life's been amputated again. Your life is born with flesh-eating bacte...

7 likes