Zilla Babbitt

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (48)

48 Stories

32518 karma pts

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“Imbolc” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #35

High above the lofty rowan trees the wind swayed, lifting fallen pink petals and blue streamers and corpses of lightning bugs. The sky was heavy blue, threads of thin clouds wavering uncertainly across, and beneath, hidden among the marigolds and loamy moss of early spring, lines and crossing pathways of flickering globes lay in a patterned dance. Crowds of people gathered under every tree, every globe, around every burdened table and streaming maypole. The tables overflowed with bursting red fruits and dripping meats and steaming mulled win...

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“Lion Bark Garden” by Zilla Babbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #35

The dogwood trees bent gracefully, their flat layers of bursting fat blossoms arrayed as far as the sky climbed. Lined along the gravel path were the crabapple and pear trees with their juicy green leaves showing off around the apples and pears. Following the path were half-eaten and broken fruits, leathered and wormholed and dripping with juice. The air was cold but the kites didn’t care. They danced high along the tops of the redbud trees, knocking the thick pink flowers to the ground. Chill breezes spun and laughed and swept the paper and...

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“Octopus” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #30

Amadis the octopus seller had never tasted an octopus. A long time ago he lived on the banks of the Campisi—but that was a long time ago, and he doesn’t live there anymore. Nowadays I hear he lives in a deflated balloon in Mongolia somewhere, but I don’t tell stories in the present, I tell them in the past. Amadis the former octopus seller who probably lives in Mongolia is a lot less interesting than Amadis the octopus seller who lives on the banks of the Campisi. So a long time ago he lived in a fish stall by the Campisi. He didn’t sell fis...

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“The Burning Avocado Tree” by Zilla Babbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #29

As Kiwi grew up we took her to her granpadre’s place more often. We lived so far away that at the beginning, when she was younger, we only went there at Michaelmas time. Before we moved to the America we drove hours and hours home to Guadalajara, and now it takes too many hours and aeroplane rides.Kiwi loved her grandfather and hated Guadalajara. We lived in el Ciudad de Mexico in a tiny narrow street house in a building with thirty others. Granpadre was in his huge empty house full of silence and green waving plants.When Kiwi was ten we too...

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“Festival of the Bear's Hand” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #26

I am the woman who sits at the café edge, the one with bluish curled hair, the one who writers her Ls all cursive, the one who only loves men named Martin. I am she. I sit. I watch. The café belongs to me within my soul. I live here. I sit under a viney shade with a cup in my raw-rubbed fingers, blue curls hiding my eyebrows, sitting, watching. They call me Mademoiselle Sorcière. The witch-lady.I do this every day, here in this café. I drink the same tea, smile the same smile, sit in the same place. But the people that I watch are different....

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“Night of the Flaming Cow” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #24

The Bahai-Rama was awash in light and laughter. Swirling, bubbling lights swept over the crowds of beautiful people, bursts of fire exploded in the face of the yellow moon above them, and music of all kinds rumbled from the corners of the yacht.Women in gauzy yellow butterfly dresses flocked around men in high scarlet collars breathing fire. A man with three monkeys hanging from his shoulders stood on his head and sang a love song to a blushing lady whose neck and face were painted in gracefully whirling, gleaming colors of bloodred and mell...

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“Zenobia Harsch Has No Idea She's Dead” by Zilla Babbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #23

The snow’s out again. Like a huge stupid blanket that insists on suffocating all mankind. Zenobia Harsch has always hated the weather. Winters, she wants the heat and the lemonades. Summers, she begs for snow and hearths and haute chocolát. Pull and complain and do it again, that’s Zenobia Harsch’s motto. She is a tall and imposing woman with raven hair and smeared eyebrows that pull on her face and make her look a constant frown. She noticed people’s feet first rather than their smiles or the way their noses crinkled. Zenobia Harsch used to...

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“Beth” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #22

My school, many years ago when I was in the high school, was a massive old building of Greek scholars, stone pillars, and confused Latin mottos, named Calving Conservative Preparatory School. It sprawled on several hundred acres, a well-to-do private school where many students and all of the teachers boarded.Hidden in the recesses of the school, bricked up and guarded by her sharp tongue and evil dreams and fiery spirit, a girl named Beth lived and hated.Beth was tall and thick, blue-streaked black hair in a pixie cut, with olive skin and a ...

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“Butterfly Wings in a Shoebox” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #20

Maarte woke with a start, and early. It was dark still. She lay there with her eyes open, searching for the window, trying to remember what day it was. Then she remembered.She rose after a few minutes and went and sat at the kitchen table, watching the window that looked out onto the empty lot next door.Maarte sat silently, listening to the first of the birds outside. After a few minutes she made her coffee and waited for the sun. By the time she was drinking the dregs, dawn had broken quietly before her.Maarte stood and dressed quickly. It ...

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“A Million Ancient Bees” by Zilla Babbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #18

The tears dripped off my nose, down, falling to the ground until they hit the floor and disappeared into the reaching embrace of the ground. I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried to swallow my sobs. My body shook. Outside, the sky was turning a purple-blue sunset, like a bruise filling the sky. I could hear the whining of the bees outside, pulling the shrill scream of the bees out of the sky like a whirling vortex. I hurt. The sobs racked my body as I tried to quell them. I was cold. The little house that I had found on this abandoned ...

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“Gordon, Surnamed Parks” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #14

Long orange shadows flung themselves against the beat-up bricks of Fort Scott. The bloodred sun disappeared slowly from the sky and inky ghosts of night took its place. The stars, mostly blotted out by the street lights, peeped around the lightning bugs that dotted the sky. Two young boys walked, shoulder to shoulder, down Penn Street. One was white, with red hair and red eyes and a hangdog look that marked him as a troublemaker. The other was darker—dark enough to be called black, in this time of segregation—with short-cropped curly hair an...

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“Queen Cymbeline” by Zilla Babbitt

🏆 Winner of Contest #13

The island reeked of fish; scattered guts and oozing blank eyes littered the black beaches, and the mountains smelled of bubbling, potting fish intestines. The sky was continually dark with the smoke from the fires beneath the cauldrons, and the water had a thin film of scales and oil, all in the bays and quaysides round the island. In the deepsea around the island, the fish that were still alive avoided the inlets and told tales among their young that a bloodthirsty monster lived on the isle, with a mouthful of snatching teeth poised to tak...

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“On the Roof Never Dancing Ever Again” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #11

Mommy didn’t let me out of the car for five minutes after we got there. Daddy said it was because I’d been screaming I WANT A WOMBAT FULL OF GRILLED CHEESE for lunch the whole way there. So I need to stay inside to learn to be quiet.But that wasn’t my fault, right? I DID want a wombat full of grilled cheese for lunch-- oh no, it’s that creepy man with the squirrel on his chin. He keeps smiling at me. I hate him.I spent my five minutes drawing Norse gods on the frosted windows and trying to avoid looking at the squirrel-man.Mommy says it’s Un...

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“Wolf Aaron and the Wild Sceptre” by Zilla Babbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #10

He was a stranger, and he was strange. He had thick black hair and spiky handwriting and he stuttered.He was an odd one out, and he didn’t know if he was loved.His name was Aaron.Aaron was young, with strong fingernails and a typing score of two hundred words a minute. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He was in the tenth grade and he was a shunned oddball.Poor Aaron. He did not talk very much. He had red, scarred fingers from a long-ago fire, and though he was smart, not many of the kids knew it, because he kept his mouth s...

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“Piecewise” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #10

The water was black. Feathery fingers of swill rested atop the clear black waves, rushing along to the south and bringing their familiar stench to the city with it. Wrecked boats, bloody rags, a whale’s worth of dead leaves from upriver, old clothes, wreckage from long-gone houses; everything ended up in the river at least once in its lifetime. Edward Piecewise stared down at the water. He contemplated his reflection, or at least what forced its way back up to him through the garbage that obscured the water. His face rippled, and anyway it ...

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Author bio

🌻 Soli Deo Gloria! Interested in longer versions of my work? I published a novella, Broken Sky, Dec. 2020. In it, a boy and a dog are abandoned in the arid Texan wilderness. Please leave a review if you have the time ❤️ www.amazon.com/dp/B08R6M8J6B/ I had up to 221 stories on my profile by March 2021. I left the ones I truly love.

Winning 2 stories 🏆

Contest #36

Kiss of the Snake – read story

Contest #13

Queen Cymbeline – read story

Shortlisted 8 stories ⭐️

Contest #91

La Tempestad – read story

Contest #57

That Dogwood Town – read story

Contest #35

Lion Bark Garden – read story

Contest #29

The Burning Avocado Tree – read story

Contest #23

Zenobia Harsch Has No Idea She's Dead – read story