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 Feb, 2020
Submitted to Contest #269
MathieuShe is dead now, that Ms. Beasley who wielded the nastiest red pen this side of the Atlantic. I saw with my own eyes the drops of blood punctuating the white tile floor. I heard with my own ears the frantic call for help. I listened as the breathing became still, due to the poison of my dart.Generations of upper-year science students had to suffer the indignity of Beasley’s red pen as she reigned supreme in her laboratory. I was a student, a damn good one too. I had to take her lab class—I needed that course for my degree, and I had t...
Submitted to Contest #268
Due to wildfires our house burned up, my husband got laid off, and my asthma began acting up with all the smoke and residue. The doctor said I needed to stay indoors, with an air filtration unit, at least until the baby is born—two months from now—and ideally for the next six months, until the baby’s lungs were robust. Mom lived in Stittsville, a two-hour drive away. Although Dad died twelve years ago, she’s still rattling around in the family house. “I’d love some company,” she said, “and the air here is clean.”Can skylark and night o...
Submitted to Contest #267
At the corner of 8th Avenue and W 39th Street, David stands, blinking in the morning light, finally surfacing to air outside the tiled hallways of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the busiest bus terminal in the world. Slowly, dazedly, he paces to a street corner, shifting the shoulder strap of his overnighter. He’d slept jaggedly on the pleather seat of the Trailways overnight bus, and now is confused by this hectic city he’s been ejected into. He takes a deep breath. He touches his wallet in one pocket, his cellphone in the other. So far, ...
Submitted to Contest #266
Jackie Yay, the perfect day for writing. Three friends agreed they would extend their usual two-hour write-together date into a daylong feast. “Labor Day—for our labors of love,” Jackie said, and she reserved the big meeting room at her office for the three of them. They would each bring their work-in-progress.Jackie’s husband was away on a weekend retreat; her time was truly her own. She set out on her bike an hour early, planning to get a head start. But her front tire had a slow leak so she had to stop twice to pump it.The second time she...
Submitted to Contest #265
“I am on my way to pick up a horseshoe. My brother Dennis took it. It’s been outta my hands for a very long time,” says the man on the seat beside me. We’re on a Greyhound somewhere in West Virginia. I swirl my frosted vanilla cappuccino and take a long pull through the straw. Around us the other passengers are snoozing or gazing out the window. I’m glad I doctored my drink with a stiff shot of Grey Goose before I boarded. “A horseshoe, eh?” I say.My seatmate Braydon is a tough-looking guy, with close-cut hair that doesn’t quite disguise the...
Submitted to Contest #264
Maggie settled down in the reserved pew, second from the front. Listening to the organ prelude, she smoothed and re-smoothed the skirt of her new dress. Dove gray or pearl gray, she couldn’t remember what she’d finally decided on. Keep it together, she reminded herself. Do not embarrass your daughter. This day was about Sasha and Devon—those two gung-ho, madly-in-love young folks. She adjusted the pin of her corsage, an ebullient display of lily, chrysanthemum, and baby’s breath.“Go ahead, turn around, have a look,” a familiar quiet voice wh...
Submitted to Contest #263
Willa would never forget that day. She was coming home, carrying the new kill, with the fine jackrabbit fur tickling her nose, and the iron taste of blood still warm in her mouth. She planned to show the kill to her three cubs, Winken, Blinken, and Nod. She planned to use her razor-sharp teeth to tear the skin away, letting the blood sprinkle in their quivering little noses. She needed to wean the growing cubs off her milk and onto good, life-giving food. Fresh prey. Rabbits, mice, voles. She arrived at the rocks and bramble that concealed t...
Submitted to Contest #262
During the hottest summer on record, I was in a terrible slump. I could find only part-time work, so I volunteered as much as possible. “Please,” I begged, “that batch of incoming mail for the city councilor simply must be processed.” I was appointed summer relief, in charge of sending personalized responses to the councilor’s snowbank of letters and cards, chiefly well-wishers, due to recent news of her lymphoma. I replied, rephrased, and, whenever possible, redirected the concern to different departments of the city. Yes, it was a mentally...
Submitted to Contest #260
Change is in the air. Mr. Smith is back home, and he is singing his number one song, Amazing Grace. His warble falls flat in some places, and he mangles some words, but it’s recognizable by all. Mrs. Smith is sick of Amazing Grace. So sick of it. She hopes tonight they do not have the personal support worker named Grace, a plump young woman who wears too much jewelry, who is always snapping bracelets on and off. Although surely Grace is sick of that song by now, too. Isn’t she? Sometimes Mr. Smith sings Amazing Race instead. The first time h...
Submitted to Contest #259
Excitement was in the air. The Little Theatre was mounting its biggest production ever. The crew was erecting the stage for the show called Heaven on Earth. A two-week run, for starters. Sketches in hand, I walked onto the stage amid the whine of a buzzsaw and the scent of freshly sawed pine.Stuart, the set designer, and Bob, head carpenter, were deep in discussion and didn’t notice me at first. As I approached, Stuart moved away from Bob. When I stopped, Stuart flashed an irritated glance at me. “Looking for Wardrobe?” I paid no mind to his...
Submitted to Contest #258
“Break time’s over,” Mrs. Haggerty yelled out the backdoor of City Central Goodwill. She stared hard at Marty and Nadine, as if wondering who had dripped cheese all over the brand-new toaster oven in the staff room. “Nadine, you’re Check-out. Marty, go to Intake.” The teens whined and were slow to move inside until Marty recalled his probation officer’s advice: “Community hours go by quicker if you cooperate.” So he stubbed out his cigarette, as did Nadine, on a long, filthy snowbank near the backdoor and they went inside to their assigned a...
Submitted to Contest #257
Far away in the city of Thunder Bay, two brothers, Duke and Fred Jones, owned and operated a trailer park. Duke, the elder brother, was sly, scrawny, and a whiz at customer relations. Fred was beefy, strong as a moose, and could kick out undesirable tenants faster than you could say, “Hit the road, Jack.”Big changes were afoot in King’s Court Trailer Park because one night, while listening to a televangelist, a lightning bolt of revelation hit Fred Jones: “The meek shall inherit the earth.”“The meek? That’s me!” Fred shouted. His burly physi...
Submitted to Contest #256
Out of habit, I awaken every day with my running clothes laid out at the foot of my bed. I pull them on first thing before I’m fully awake. My eyes are still crusted with gunk while my body lunges through the dark, stumbling down three flights of stairs, the handrail my savior as I lurch from side to side. On the final stair I sit to pull on each shoe. The big gray door has one slender window through which I peer as I double-knot the shoelaces. And stretch against the stair railing. S-t-r-e-t-c-h. For two months of the year, the window...
Winner of Contest #250 🏆
Dad did not like summer. “A little respiratory problem,” I overheard him tell the neighbour on one side of our house, but that was not why; I could hear the regular sigh of his breath when we watched TV together. “A minor circulatory thing,” I overheard him tell the other neighbour, but that was also not why because I could hear the steady ba-dump of his heart when I put my ear on his swollen belly. He just did not like the heat, I decided, like he did not like Coke but I did. The afternoon heat would drive us to the depths of the old stone ...
Submitted to Contest #249
Leaving his father’s funeral, Joe was on autopilot, barely registering his wife Francesca and two daughters in as everyone piled into the old Volvo. A Stoic does not cry. Blinking rapidly, stern-faced, he had delivered his section of the eulogy, rather more eloquently than his brothers but not quite as ardently as his sister. Still, he had “kept it together”—how Father would have wanted. Not like Rita, who spoke of the childhood things: old-forest hikes with Father, spooky tales around the campfire, funny faces and silly-yet-wise sayings tha...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email:
13 likes
