Wake Lloire

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2020

Stories (15)

15 Stories

428 karma pts

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“Off With Her Head” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #250

“We’ll have to cut it off.” I don’t think I’ll forget that moment, or those six words. That night the air smelled of Irish whiskey and the party had gotten too loud, and somehow no one had noticed my sister putting her head through the bannister, again. No one except me. The quiet kid. This time though, she was a little older, and her head was bigger. She was four now, and I was five. I had never put my head through the bannister. Never. I wouldn’t. But my sister, she liked to make me laugh. Maybe cuz mum said I was “so serious”. But Winnie,...

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“Kissing Fish” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #230

“It wasn’t the last time I’d kiss a fish in the back of a Model T, but it was the last time the fish turned out to be a princess.” I was used to Delilah making big claims under the influence of a few too many plastic cups of Baby Duck sparkling wine, but this one was a new one. I knew that Delilah hung out with me because I was a good listener and because most of her friends were dead. That might seem a little harsh, coming right out and saying it that way, but Delilah was not young. She was “catching the lip of 92” was how she’d said i...

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“Cereal and Steak” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #224

I used to be a night owl. I’d stay up reading under my covers with the contraband flashlight my godmother bought me. I would wait for my parents to go to sleep, I’d slip into the living room and put on my favourite record at the time, a weathered copy of Hooked on Classics, and I’d snuggle back into my bed with one of my favourite OZ books (there are fourteen from the original series, most folks don’t know that). My favourite was one about a boy who’s island was attacked and he was left alone with a talking goat, the ridiculous king who rode...

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“Dead-Tired” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #221

Content warning: non-gruesome child death, mental illness, swearing Dead-Tired The night my mother drowned us in the bathtub I could only count up to 57. It’s been a thousand series of 57 as of today. I’ve done a lot of self-reflection in the past 156.1643835616438 years, a lot of updating my math skills as well. My siblings and I are stuck here in this mansion turned hotel, turned affordable housing, turned Airbnb, turned haunted-spot of 2023. I mostly hang out in the bathroom, staring out the window they thankfully put in the wall. T...

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“Looking for Quiet” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #220

The sound of her kicking gravel was the only sound in the empty desert valley. It was hot but not unbearable. Intoxicatingly still. Quiet. She’d come to the outdoor museum to get away from the loud of the Las Vegas strip. Her friends had wanted her to be a part of their girls weekend out, but from the moment she’d set her sneakers on the sidewalk of that crowded distraction of a landscape, full of noise and chaos, she knew she wasn’t meant to be there. This thought shook her. She felt like the first woman to think that. Doesn’t everyone wa...

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“The Chicken” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #184

The sky out the window was brighter today. The sounds of the birds outside; louder. Harriet sat on the bench, contemplating the chores she had to do today.Harriet remembered to tie her laces. When she didn’t the chickens liked to peck at her feet as if she’d brought them worms. She bent down slowly her boots seemed further away today, somehow, than yesterday.The kettle whistled on the iron stovetop. Harriet turned to move the kettle to the counter when she noticed movement near the door.A small beak nudged the door, and it slowly swung open....

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“The Wind is Whistling Today” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #177

My phone vibrates. A picture of an owl sitting on a ladder fills my phone screen.I sit, staring at my phone. The text above it reads.-it’s minus 40 here, plus the wind chillThe image and the words completely disconnected.-cute owlI text back. I watch the three little dots bouncing, indicating that there is another text coming in.-yupI send her another video of the wind whistling in the trees.These texts are emblematic of the way I’ve learned to communicate with my mother. When I was younger, I’d talk with her and tell her stories about my da...

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“Utter Chaos” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #173

Cleo looked at her calendar for the month. It was one of those giant ones with the big boxes attached to the fridge with magnets that sometimes meant she’d hear crashing in the middle of the night to wake up in the morning to a mess of art by her children, restaurant take out menus and the business cards of people she’d meant to call all over the kitchen floor. Her calendar was full, and heavy. Both metaphorically and literally. Jeremiah had just taken up Taekwondo. It was on Monday and Wednesday nights. Caitlyn was in dance class on Tu...

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“Oasis” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #132

The plush dinosaur sat on Kara’s bed, looking at her with a stern gaze. It’s velvet exterior a little worse for wear. Its one eye slightly scratched where her dog had gotten ahold of it when the pup was in her teething phase. The wire in its wings no longer holding them up. Kara had gotten the pterodactyl (or was it a pterosaur?) when she was six. Her grandmother had given her the bright magenta (or was it purple?) stuffed creature because she had been obsessed with dinosaurs, “like standing up at the children’s museum to correct the facil...

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“The Bookstore Chair” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #108

Devin blinked his eyes. She had just been there, sitting crossed-legged in the oversized red chair, singing Moon River in a high falsetto…and now she wasn’t.Or rather, Devin had watched her disintegrate into iridescent sparkles. She had gone from corporeal to disappeared, Devin knew that because only moments before she had vanished, they had been kissing. Admittedly, it had been a weird week.On Monday Devin had begun his new job at the bookstore. It was a small town, quiet bookstore, with a solid cast of regulars. Sarah who loved queer ...

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“Bug Snek” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #78

It was teeny tiny, about the size of a big strawberry seed. It was whitish-brown and gooey-looking. Glenda was bending down to get a closer look at the small object at the bottom of her trousers when she realized that the small object had sprouted two eye-stalks and was also trying to get a good look at her.Glenda plucked the tiny creature off the bottom of her pants, and there it sat on her finger, semi-translucent and staring at her with its alien appendages.Glenda squealed in delight, and turned to her girlfriend. “It’s a baby slug! Get m...

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“Table for One” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #59

Kari looked around the restaurant. It was a busy Friday night and the serving staff looked exhausted. Kari took out her notebook, something she brought to restaurants because she would rather people thought she was a restaurant reviewer than what she was in actuality. Kari had started seeing ghosts in the sandbox of her first house when she was three years old; a little boy who couldn’t explain to her why he couldn’t leave the sandbox. Kari visited him every day, and her father had been grateful for her “imaginary friend” because it had allo...

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“Bioluminescent Algae and a Purse Made of Underpants” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #56

I love bus stops. They are the ideal place for people watching and sometimes, if I’m lucky, I’ll manage to start up a conversation.Talking with strangers, it’s kind of my thing. I think it might have to do with my spectacularly oppositional nature. Tell me not to do something, and seconds later there I am, doing that thing you just told me not to do. It used to drive my mother up the wall. I’d never sit for pictures because it was “required”. I couldn’t pee on command, especially next to the side of the road on a road-trip, and my mother wou...

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“The Living Funeral Society” by Wake Lloire

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #55

Harold rarely read the newspaper anymore. Not the real, fold out while you have your morning coffee kind. He didn’t have to with news alerts set on his phone to deliver the most recent headline right to his device. Today, though, he had opted to put his phone in his sock drawer. He didn’t know what possessed him. His phone was his constant companion, and rarely ever even in his pocket these days. He was a news addict. He could guess the way the story would be written by the headline alone. He had begun to think of the opinion columnists a...

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“Under the Iridescent Umbrella” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #54

The stone wall was covered in moss. The entire backyard had an abandoned farm house look about it. In the middle of the yard there were two white wooden chairs, or rather they would have been white had it not been for a giant iridescent umbrella catching sun rays and painting the chairs pink and gold and teal depending on which way Celestine looked at them. Celestine hadn’t been home since they’d left twenty years, three months and fours days ago. Then they’d gone by another name, a gender assigned to them by their parents and a pronoun th...

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Author bio

I’m a parent, a poet, a comedian, a storyteller, a writer and a genderqueer/queer human living in a small friendly arts community in Canada.

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #55
The Living Funeral Society – read story