Zelda Crist

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2021

Stories (3)

3 Stories

54 karma pts

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“The Maybe House” by Zelda Crist

Submitted to Contest #152

CW: language, substance abuse, suicide.Every day after work, car seat cruelly erect against my aching back and the growing bags beneath my eyes gaining weight at every stop sign, I drive by the house. The yellow, sunny, westward pointing, cape cod style house with twin bird feeders out front. It was the crown jewel of that little block, just across from the gate of the community garden on the other side of the street. I’d slow down as I approached, crawling up the block at five miles per hour, and come to a complete stop...

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“Salt” by Zelda Crist

Submitted to Contest #100

When you come to sit in this room, you will be rigid as though you are trying to avoid the eyes of some predatory goblin. The people who sat here now felt as though they were being watched, but by what they didn't know. It didn’t feel human; it didn’t feel malevolent. It was a feeling as though if you did something wrong you would be caught eventually, like you were being recorded by hidden cameras. They all had a headache pulsing behind their eyes, brains feeling swollen. Their throats felt the same, vocal cords paralyzed, so they sat in...

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“The River, The Mine, and All of Us” by Zelda Crist

Submitted to Contest #98

CW: pandemic The water there was red. Little particles of clay were constantly swept away by the raging river, and the iron deposits made it look as though the water itself had rusted. The river itself was positively serpent-like, winding its way across the Earth in a hissing rush, as though maddened by something. The process by which that water was filtered was long. If there was a slight delay at the plant, we may have a few hours with no running water in our homes. If you were washing the dishes and suddenly your pipes ran dry,...

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Author bio

I've been writing since I knew what words were. My first short story was a rip-off of the Wizard of Oz, with 'Dorothy' being replaced by a mouse who enters an alternate dimension by leaping through a hole in the side of a slide at a playground. Things got a little more serious from that point on. Human nature is a topic which I find both endlessly fascinating and paralyzingly terrifying. In my stories I use characters, settings, themes, and motifs to amplify and analyze symptoms of the human condition. If I do my job correctly, readers will find themselves first intrigued, then engrossed, then uncomfortable. Of course, if I get bored I could always go back to rodent fairytale parodies.