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#319 The Monster Within with RJ Valldeperas

This week, we're running a takeover in collaboration with RJ Valldeperas. This contest’s winner will not only be awarded $250 — they’ll also receive a special bonus prize: personal feedback from RJ herself! Here's what she has to say about her takeover:

Hi Friends! I’m RJ Valldeperas, the author of Their Will Undone — an Inca-inspired, “Coming of Rage” YA fantasy (coming out next summer with HarperCollins). I’m also a homeschooling mom of five kids and a content creator who’s gone viral on both TikTok and Instagram for videos about my writing journey, my six-figure deal, and more!

I love to read and write fantasy — not because I want to escape, but because I want my beliefs to be challenged by a world where so much more is possible. I want to sympathize with a monster. I want to hate a hero. I want to understand that nothing is ever as it seems. For Their Will Undone, I use the tagline “Coming of Rage” very literally. My protagonist, Nina, is a young girl who’s given impossible choices and then forced to confront the monster within her.

So, for this week’s contest, I want to see stories where the narratives are twisted. I want to see the manifestation of a character’s choices, the heartbreaking moment where we understand a monster’s motives, and maybe even the full-circle moment when a guiding belief they clung to is turned or used against them.

To be clear, it doesn’t all have to be tragic. I think that sometimes, becoming a monster can be delightfully freeing. I can’t wait to be amazed by your brains. Xoxo RJ

Special Update: The Results 🏆

RJ's top pick for her takeover was "Padrick" by K.M. Ross. Here's what she had to say about it: "This was incredible. It would have been so easy for Padrick to turn to his anger and become a monster like his father. In fact, I almost expected it! But to watch him choose light and rest was so touching and refreshing. There was so much characterization packed into the story that I felt invested in even the smallest part (Gemma, the sweet soul!). Thank you for sharing this story with us all!"

Congratulations to contest winner K.M. Ross and the runners-up, Bryan Rogers and Avery Sparks!

🥇 Winner

Padrick

K.M. Ross

Winner of Contest #319 🏆

The clatter of swords rang out. Steel hissed against steel; wood cracked against bone. Boys stumbled through forms while their partners, the risen dead, moved with a rigid steadiness that would not tire or flinch. Their eyes were milked over; their skin pulled drum-tight.The captain barked sequences: high guard, turn the shoulder, sweep, step in. A boy’s blade knocked free, and the dead thing he faced did not chase the opening; only returned to ready stance. Mercy by command, not intention.High above, the long gallery threw a hard shadow ove...

72 likes

⭐️ Shortlisted

The Broken Open Room

Avery Sparks

Shortlisted for Contest #319 ⭐️

Sixty-one months four daysThis is a house of monsters, and we are its keepers, Herc and I. We never know what we will face when we enter. Today, all was calm. The Persian rugs which line the creaky floorboards lay in place, untorn, the walnut panelling was unstained with ooze or gore, and the crystal chandeliers, although flickering, were intact. I am sure that vapours of the noxious history of this house have seeped their way into the grain of the wood, the fibres of the carpets. Try as I might, I am unable to cleanse it. There is little ve...

22 likes

Goodnight, Eugene

Bryan Rogers

Shortlisted for Contest #319 ⭐️

Living under a bed was entirely too cramped, Eugene thought to himself. He often bumped his head, and it was impossible to keep the dust out of his fur. Sometimes he daydreamed of roomier assignments — an attic, perhaps, or a basement — but like all monsters fresh out of monster school, Eugene was given the customary post beneath a child’s bed.Yes, Eugene was a monster — one of the very ones you’ve heard of, or perhaps encountered hiding beneath your own. It is true that under every child’s bed lives a monster. It is untrue, however, that th...

19 likes

This week's prompts

Write a story about a misunderstood monster.

Short Story – 93 stories

Center your story around someone who must decide whether to embrace or fight their inner darkness.

Angst – 92 stories

Write a story that includes the line “This is all my fault.”

Dramatic – 54 stories

Center your story around someone who turns into the thing they’ve always hated.

Short Story – 42 stories

Write a story from the POV/perspective of a non-human character.

Short Story – 83 stories

Stories

Padrick

K.M. Ross

Winner of Contest #319 🏆

The clatter of swords rang out. Steel hissed against steel; wood cracked against bone. Boys stumbled through forms while their partners, the risen dead, moved with a rigid steadiness that would not tire or flinch. Their eyes were milked over; their skin pulled drum-tight.The captain barked sequences: high guard, turn the shoulder, sweep, step in. A boy’s blade knocked free, and the dead thing he faced did not chase the opening; only returned to ready stance. Mercy by command, not intention.High above, the long gallery threw a hard shadow ove...

72 likes

Screaming Like a Little Girl

Submitted to Contest #319

The monster's hot, steamy breath smelled like decayed skunk. My stomach churned, and I almost lost my breakfast, but that would be disastrous, so I covered my mouth and forced it down. My chameleon suit can keep me from being seen, but it can't hide puke. The giant tiger-like creature sharpened its claws on the other side of the massive tree I had chosen to hide behind. Even as a kid, I was never any good at finding hiding places, and I was usually the first one found. Actually, I'm not good at doing anything on this alien planet. I should h...

44 likes

Frankie's Very Bad Week

Adam Short

Submitted to Contest #319

Day One – MondayDear Diary,Today, I was certain the villagers would finally see me as good neighbor, not "terrifying monster who lurks in shadows." Small deed. Easy. Harmless.Kitten in tree—classic hero situation. I reached up, plucked it down gently. Smiled. Practiced smile, too. Not too many teeth. Just enough to say, Hello, I am friendly, please offer pie.Then Mrs. Kettleworth saw me. She screamed, "HE'S EATING THE CAT!" Villagers came running with pitchforks.I tried to explain: "No eat cat. Just hold cat." But apparently my voice sounds ...

34 likes

Cloaked in Bones

Submitted to Contest #319

The Nightmare spoke with a voice of silk and ash. “Give in,” it whispered. And like every night since then, the woman gave the same answer. “Never.” *** Each night, The Nightmare arrived cloaked in a shroud of dusty bones, a drapery threaded with blood-red silk and beaded with broken bottle shards. Her monotonous reply slipped out between bloody, chapped lips, “Never.” “Never is a long time, Tired One,” it warned. And with that, the shadows receded, melting into the beige wallpaper. *** It arrived at precisely twenty-five minutes past midnig...

29 likes

Butterfly Wings

Elizabeth Hoban

Submitted to Contest #319

Butterfly Wings It was the sort of seaside town that stood still over time. Weathered cottages lined cobbled streets, and the scent of brine clung to every corner. Townsfolk lived by the reliable rhythms of the sea as tides ebbed and flowed from the pull of the moon. Nothing ever really happened here and that’s how they preferred it. This is until one night when the sea itself seemed to cry out to them for help. It was half past midnight when the sound came- bellowing, rolling across their low rooftops like thunder trapped in barrels. One...

24 likes

When the River Fell Silent

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #319

The first thing I remember is the taste of limestone. Not a taste on a tongue, for I have never had such a thing, but a taste in my essence. It was the incredible, clean, mineral shock of water forcing its way through ancient stone, finding a fissure, a weakness, a new path. I was that path. I was that pressure. I was the sigh of the rock and the chuckle of the stream that was born from it, high in the snaggle-toothed teeth of the Sniježnica mountain.They call me a vila. A nymph. A spirit of the water. I am the consciousness of the aquifer t...

24 likes

The Girl Who Fed the Moth King

Samantha Freeze

Submitted to Contest #319

Luna had never dreamed. In a village where dreams are sacred, visions were gifted by the spirits in the jungle. This made her something less than human—or something worse. The elders called her “Touched” where moths marked her in the womb. Children kept their distance at night. Dreams weren’t just stories that came while you slept. They were messages from the jungle spirits–signs of favor, or sometimes warnings you couldn’t ignore. During the Moth Festival season, children were warned not to go after dark. He waits in the jungle, still as ...

24 likes

The Broken Open Room

Avery Sparks

Shortlisted for Contest #319 ⭐️

Sixty-one months four daysThis is a house of monsters, and we are its keepers, Herc and I. We never know what we will face when we enter. Today, all was calm. The Persian rugs which line the creaky floorboards lay in place, untorn, the walnut panelling was unstained with ooze or gore, and the crystal chandeliers, although flickering, were intact. I am sure that vapours of the noxious history of this house have seeped their way into the grain of the wood, the fibres of the carpets. Try as I might, I am unable to cleanse it. There is little ve...

22 likes

The Shape of Her Shadow

K Ray

Submitted to Contest #319

The first time her mother locked her in the bathroom, Tara was nine.It wasn’t for long. “Just a few minutes,” her mother said afterward, voice tight, her hands trembling as though she were the one who had been trapped. But those minutes stretched deep inside Tara’s chest. She had sat on the cold tile, staring at the towel rack and breathing in the stink of bleach, her ears straining for her mother’s footsteps.Later, when the door opened, her mother’s arms had wrapped her close. She smelled of cigarettes and lavender lotion, her chest warm ag...

21 likes

Miles Between

Submitted to Contest #319

Ms. Carter found the first drawing while clearing out desks at the end of the day. Just a loose sheet, ends bent and folded, streaks of gray dragged across one side by restless hands.At first glance, it was a house. Four windows, but no door. Also the windows weren’t empty squares. They’d been filled, every inch, with black strokes so dense the paper had nearly torn.The next sheet showed a family at a table. Plates neat, forks lined straight. Every face, though, had been scratched out, marker lines pressed down hard enough to split the page....

20 likes

California, Undeveloped

Missy Matchstick

Submitted to Contest #319

The sun hangs over Joshua Tree like a severed head, golden and godless, watching. Opal walks between rusted stalls and tarp-fluttered tables, her boots crunching through gravel like old bones. Everything smells like sun-warmed vinyl, oranges going soft in the heat, and the ghost of gas fumes. The wind drags dust across her skin like a prayer that won’t be answered. It’s been a year since the crash. A whole calendar cycle since her Toyota spun out on a forgotten road and folded like an insect against a Joshua tree trunk. Three other bodies we...

20 likes

I Cried to Dream Again

Submitted to Contest #319

Caliban is not so readily evoked because of his low, feral nature, or to his pretensions as a would-be rapist. Characters such as these are common enough, a major motif without whom literature would barely exist. A part of the fabric, without which the tartan would have no plaid.No. Caliban is brought to mind so readily because he was ugly, and it is this singular deviation from physical form that so ensures his longevity.But was he a monster? Because if Caliban was a monster, then I, by definition, am the greatest monster of them all. If al...

19 likes

A monster, misunderstood.

Joff Lecomte

Submitted to Contest #319

The Misunderstood Monster"The capacity for destruction among the human race is teetering on admirable," said Bigfoot. A name they find particularly offensive, as among these magnificent creatures they are so much more than a foot, large or otherwise.The words hung in the mountain air like smoke from a dying fire, acrid and impossible to ignore. Jarrod Manning felt his throat constrict—thirty-five years of searching, and this was what he'd found. Not vindication, but indictment.Beside him, Jamelia shifted on the rough-hewn log that served as ...

19 likes

Time to Serve

Keba Ghardt

Submitted to Contest #319

Beady black eyes stared up from the rough wooden crate, pincers clattering over one another as needle legs scuttled and slipped on shingled shells. CB rested his foot on the edge of the box, the rubber Saf-T-Step tread caked with Old Bay, and let the dove-colored claws clutch at his untied laces. When one of them got a good enough grip, CB lifted his foot, like a reverse arcade machine, the lucky crustacean rising up from his confines while half a dozen of his fellows tried to drag him back down.“Hey, Cry Baby!” Mark called from the kitchen ...

19 likes

Goodnight, Eugene

Bryan Rogers

Shortlisted for Contest #319 ⭐️

Living under a bed was entirely too cramped, Eugene thought to himself. He often bumped his head, and it was impossible to keep the dust out of his fur. Sometimes he daydreamed of roomier assignments — an attic, perhaps, or a basement — but like all monsters fresh out of monster school, Eugene was given the customary post beneath a child’s bed.Yes, Eugene was a monster — one of the very ones you’ve heard of, or perhaps encountered hiding beneath your own. It is true that under every child’s bed lives a monster. It is untrue, however, that th...

19 likes

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Contest #319

This contest has ended. Thank you for your submissions.

$250

Prize money

364

Entries

139

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Sep 12, 2025 EST

Won by K.M. Ross 🏆

Title: Padrick

Submissions must be between 1,000 - 3,000 words and will be approved and published on Reedsy Prompts within 7 days of the contest closing.

Read the full terms & conditions or check out the FAQ if you have any questions!

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