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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2025
Submitted to Contest #308
The commercial came on during the eleven o’clock break between local news and whatever late-night movie they were running on Channel 8. Danny Kowalski sat in his recliner, the same brown corduroy one he’d bought at Goodwill when he first moved into the apartment on Elm Street twenty-three years ago, picking at a Salisbury steak TV dinner that tasted like fine cardboard. The sunscreen ad was nothing special, just beach scenes and families laughing, but the soundtrack hit him like cold water in the face.Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowi...
Submitted to Contest #307
Trigger warning: This story contains mentions of substance abuse and physical violence. The radiator in Room 103 had been bleeding rust since the Bush administration and nobody at Millhaven Community College remembered anymore whether the stains on the linoleum were from water damage or something meaner. Meredith sat at the pressed-wood desk that passed for a teacher's station and watched five adults pretend to write essays about overcoming obstacles while the real obstacle, the one nobody talked about, pressed down on them all. December in ...
Submitted to Contest #306
Brother found the letter on his cot in the back room, weighted down with the shoebox that held thirty-seven years of unsent birthday letters. All addressed to Dr. Katherine Marie Sullivan-Chen, Portland General Hospital, Pediatric Oncology. Flora's handwriting was shaky from the morphine but every word cut clean as a blade. The cancer took her three days after she wrote it, alone in the county hospital because she wouldn't let Brother waste money on a private room. Brother, Don't you dare read this till I'm cold. I mean it. You always were...
Submitted to Contest #305
“You know what? I quit.”Lee muttered it at the sink, not loud, just rough enough to rattle the spoons floating in the greasy water. The murk smelled like yesterday’s sausage fat and burnt coffee. He pulled the plug and watched the mess spiral away.Flora never lifted her head from the stack of invoices on the counter. Cigarette clamped between two yellowed fingers, she said, “Quit what, Brother?”Nobody in Millhaven called him Lee anymore. Folks said Brother or, when the joke grew legs, Hollywood Brother, because of the crooked tattoo stretche...
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