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Zoë Page

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2022

Stories (38)

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37 Followers

9 Following

38 Stories

797 karma pts

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To Have a Mind of Your Own

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #263

My parents named me Sofia-Dafne. Sofia, for what they intended to call me, and Dafne, for what they would’ve called my twin, had I not unfortunately absorbed her in the womb twenty years ago. They also generally believed it was a pretty name for me to bear, a nice tribute to what could have been – but what my parents don’t know is how fitting that name actually is. People first started to realise something was unusual about me when I began to talk well enough to have conversations. Naturally, as with any child, when I got to this point, peo...

7 likes

Souvenirs of Space

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #247

It’s been so long without really any contact, without any sight of her face, that my heart could’ve been aching for a lover staying on the moon, and not one beneath the same stars I look up to. I only really feel that Caroline is back when she enters the familiar orbit of my arms, and her head fits comfortably in the crook of my neck, the final piece to my puzzle. She feels the same, but her hair smells foreign – a new conditioner, most likely, bought somewhere that she went, but I entertain myself with thoughts of souvenirs of space brought...

6 likes

All in a Day's Work

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #237

Everything was going swimmingly: nobody had committed any serious crimes, and we only had ten minutes left. We’d caught some kids trying to pilfer some chocolate bars from the general store, and a couple other fineable crimes here and there, but nothing extravagant enough to ruin the pleasant mood that always settled between me and Matt. It wasn’t like I’d been expecting to see anything more dramatic, but it always seemed the more likely when I desired everyone to be law-abiding more so than usual. My heart was dancing an odd little jig as w...

10 likes

Runaway

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #235

She has been running such a long, long, long time. She runs along the sea and into the night, and if one impossible day she does reach the edge of the world, she would keep running off it. And if that impossible day did so impossibly come, if by then she was still physically able to run, she would run and fall along with the sea as it tumbles inevitably over the edge, into the forever-night lit by the pearlescent and guiltless moon, and finally be free from the thing that has been running after her such a long, long, long time.For to run off...

7 likes

It Was The Cold

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #227

I felt it like a thousand fingers everywhere. All of my body given away, outside, intruding inside – inside, within my throat, lungs, getting at my brain. The fingers stroked, tickled, caressed; they were persistent, slowly unravelling me. They left me bare, just a wild, pale, struggling shape. They scratched until they drew not blood, but memories. I had felt it all many times before, the feeling of not owning yourself. It was cruelly familiar: a reoccurring nightmare in both the sleeping and waking world. But never had it come so clo...

6 likes

The Empty City

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #221

There’s a place that everyone goes when they die. A city. A city of the Dead. A forever city, to stand for eternity, painted in the colors of your emotions. Grey: there is nothing to feel, so all you see is grey. You no longer have anything to lose, gain, nor anyone to miss, nor to miss you, and you feel no sorrow that you are dead, because you have never felt so light. Thus, the city is all grey monotony and supposedly full of souls, and yet they call it the Empty City.Souls are subjective, see? When you can see someone’s soul, you know the...

8 likes

The Wake Up Call

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #216

A man works, behind a counter, crafting wake-ups. He combines cloudlike froth and powdered bean, dissolved in steaming water; hands them away for thrice a dollar, the occasional heavy-lidded smile. His face is blurred, his unimportance in the bigger picture, as the world rolls on by. They’re addicts, they all are; it’s just another bitter morning, with a bitter drink to warm the hand, defrost the heart, and he’s just a most-likely-bitter person, behind a counter, crafting wake-ups. Wake up, wake up, from where dreams engulf, where reality ...

7 likes

The Gardens of Omorfia

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #213

The Gardens of Omorfia are a cursed, beautiful solitude, and they will stand for all of eternity. They were once home, as much as you can call it that, being such a cruel reminder of unbelonging, to a myth still untold. They now grow in the space in between everywhere and nowhere, situated right outside death. They hold memories of confining sadness, short-lived loves and most naturally, the cursed, beautiful Omorfia herself, trapped in the solitude. Omorfia was a sweet young girl born to the lush, vivid countryside of Ancient Greece. As ...

3 likes

Paper Apologies

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #212

Rosa. Rosa. Rosabel. It is as if your name is the word written in a beautiful motif across my sorry heart; with every precious beat another inscribed in your hand. For so long – too long – I could not see it, as one cannot see his heart, but now I know with as much surety as though I hold my bloody, still pulsing heart in my hands, that it is so. It is you. It has always, will always be you. It is like that heart is tearing to sorry little pieces right in front of me that I did not realise this fact sooner. I thought that maybe it was ...

8 likes

The Show

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #208

Matilda sat with the dollhouse cradled between her knees. Blonde hair tumbled down to frame her face as careful, delicate hands worked to arrange each little piece of furniture: the little velvet couch that had once been a sweet blue but had faded to almost grey, the little China sink, the little double bed with its matching kitten motif duvet and pillows. Everything was little, so small and perfectly sized for her hands.They weren’t fiddly. For some people they might be, people with big and clumsy and impatient fingers; Matilda curved her b...

2 likes

Blindness and Sight

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #200

I am bornof negativity. I am weak.I wake to darkness, blinded by hunger, to search sightlessly for food. I am somewhere else,in Nothing,and they can’t see me. I scrabble mentally, sensing very little,the lies and the hatredvery weak flickers in the abyss. I reach out feebly with my tongue, my only moving appendage formed, and lick gingerly.I taste them,though the flavor is not strong; hungrily, I slurp it all up, though it is but a mere morsel.Her husband was seen with her sister.There is a bitterness to it –truth –which makes me recoil. Ten...

10 likes

Storm of Nightmares

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #197

Tobias dreamed vividly. First, his mother was standing on the balcony, gazing across at the rumbling grey skies. Her hair tumbled in thick brown curls down her back, which was turned to him, her lithe body swathed in a blue dress. He approached her to stand and clasp the railing beside her. It was cold, and the wind sliced at him like knives. He remembered this night. I had chosen it particularly because of this: it was the night before his mother died, and a night where each memory of it came with an army of regret. “Ma,” whispered To...

1 like

A Mark of the Soul

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #196

[TW: themes of physical violence, gore and substance abuse.] Stepping into a packed club from typical British weather for the first time is exactly how I imagine time-travelling to be. The mass of bodies are flames heating up a gigantic, sweaty, intoxicated furnace, and it truly feels like I’ve entered another dimension, because no place should be this hot when the rest of England suffers in such rainy, frostbitten silence. In a way, you do time-travel when you can first legally get into a club: your body is frozen by your soul, unable ...

10 likes

A Not-So-Much-of-an-Ode to Main Characters

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #195

Sometimes I think I want to be the main character – I always wake up from the nightmare screaming. You ask why; I ask why you ask why, because I think it is quite self-explanatory.You won’t know my story, not specifically at least. But I’d wager you’ve seen it written throughout the pages of many books. I live through every one of them.It’s rather fabulous. Secondary characters are fabulous. Main characters are the weapon that strikes the killing blow, but sidekicks and secondaries are the hands that drove the blade home – give or take. I ma...

3 likes

Snakes and Ladders

Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #194

Life’s a game, and love is the prize – or so they say. If that is the case, then why, of all things, is the first kiss the horrible, long snake that sends you tumbling right back to square one? Well, perhaps not the kiss itself, and more how the kiss ends: whether you’re interrupted, walked in on, broken apart fiercely by something. That’s always how it goes in novels. The character’s build up such a connection – oh, sparks are flying the size of deadly lava bombs – and they finally, after so agonizingly long, have that first kiss… but it’s ...

13 likes