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Alex Merola

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2026

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29 Followers
11 Following

17 Stories

300 karma pts

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Maestro of Silence

Weekly Contest #363

MAESTRO OF SILENCE The latch of the front door clicked shut at exactly five o’clock on a grey Wednesday morning—a sharp, sudden note that cut through the silence like a wire snapping under too much tension. It left a vacuum in its wake, a freezing draft that crawled straight up the staircase. On the hall table, propped against a cold ceramic teapot, Clara left her keys resting on a single sheet of paper. She hadn’t taken much: a battered suitcase, a winter coat, and twenty years of unvoiced suffocation. Mom and Dad,You will say you gave me e...

5 likes 3 comments 3
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The Last Meal

Weekly Contest #362

The Last Meal The late afternoon sun baked the interior of the Ford Country Squire, turning the scent of stale tobacco and old vinyl into a thick, suffocating fog. Marge sat with the engine idling, parked in the furthest corner of the grocery store lot, safe behind a wall of overgrown hedges. She breathed in short, shallow gasps, a ragged sound that competed with the rhythmic ticking of a faulty dashboard clock. A brown paper bag rested on her lap—heavy, its bottom darkened by transparent circles of hot grease. She adjusted her mirrors to sc...

5 likes 6 comments 6
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The Fiction Between the Lines

Weekly Contest #360

The Fiction Between the LinesThe air in the luthier shop was heavy with the comfort of hot hide glue, beeswax, and centuries-old spruce. Outside, the rain lashed against the frosted glass of the front door, mimicking the plucked string sound of a muted pizzicato on the roof. Inside, the back room remained a sanctuary of amber lamplight.AaronJames sat at his workbench, meticulously cleaning the channel of a custom mandolin top. Across the room, tucked into an oversized leather armchair, twenty-year-old Alysha curled into a tight ball, her ske...

20 likes 13 comments 13
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Sign of the Times

Weekly Contest #357

“But Thanksgiving is more than eating, Chuck…Those early Pilgrims were thankful for what had happened to them, and we should be thankful, too. We should just be thankful for being together.”—Marcie. At the last Labor Day picnic celebration, we all gathered on the large backyard deck of our oldest sibling. It seemed reasonable for the rest of us five siblings to have family celebrations where there is more than enough room to accommodate children, nieces, nephews, significant others, and a friend or two. This would usually mean a headcount of...

14 likes 9 comments 9
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D-o-N-ot-A-sk

Weekly Contest #355

D-o-N-ot-A-skThe paper was a pale, construction-paper green, the color of a mint that had sat too long in a grandmother’s glass dish. In a drafty classroom in 1960s Bridgeport, Miss Keller handed them out with the solemnity of a priest distributing communion wafers."This is your life," she said, her voice echoing against the chalkboard. "This is where you came from."She was a master of the board, using different-colored chalk to distinguish the hierarchy of existence: white for the children, yellow for the parents, dusty blue for the grandpa...

15 likes 12 comments 12
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RED 21

Weekly Contest #352

Henry and Mikey stood before the red-brick maw of Harding High. They had been a pair since the fifth grade, a pact made in the dirt of the elementary playground. Mikey viewed it as a simple friendship; Henry saw it as a mathematical necessity. Mikey was flesh and bone, but Henry’s most loyal companions were the digits and shades that crowded his vision. “You’re an eleven, Mikey,” Henry said, his voice competing with the roar of the school buses. “Always an eleven.” Mikey adjusted his backpack, his eyes tracking a group of cheerleaders. “Beca...

14 likes 15 comments 15
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The Shared Root

Weekly Contest #351

The Shared Root The spade hit something that didn't ring like stone or crunch like pine. It thudded—a wet, heavy sound that vibrated up the hickory handle, traveled through my tensed forearms, and settled deep in my collarbone like a dull ache. Under the porch, where the air tasted of saltpeter and the dry, metallic dust of dead crickets, I stopped. My breath came in ragged shudders, the kind that made my ribs feel too small for my chest. It was my turn to bleed for the inheritance. Every Elder since the Civil War had demanded this ritual: ...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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Sylvie's Light

Weekly Contest #350

This story is about a little girl who survives a car crash. Sylvie’s Light The hospital room feels cold. Strange and shadowy. For two years—ever since the car slammed into us and sent us tumbling down the steep hill—I have lived in the dark. In the Before Time, my world felt sharp and bright, like a fresh-peeled orange. Fluffy clouds danced across a blue sky so wide I couldn't see the edges. The sun made the sidewalk warm under my bare feet. Now, the world feels like a heavy wool blanket pulled over my head. I lie still in the bed and f...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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The Library of Lost Days

Weekly Contest #349

The Library of Lost DaysToday is April 31...Julian stood before the dry marble basin, his fingers tracing the smooth stone where he would soon etch their final deadline. The fountain at 42nd Street didn't flow with water; it flowed with time, or at least the jagged, calcified memory of it.In the Old World—the one buried under two centuries of carbon debt and the white crust of the Great Calcification—the date was a mathematical ghost. In this world, where the seasons had long since melted into a singular, grueling kiln, time was a fluid hall...

15 likes 9 comments 9
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The Silence of Lies

Weekly Contest #347

The Silence of Lies The kitchen air pressed. It was a suffocating blend of stale nicotine and the sharp, clinical sting of antiseptic—the twin scents of our mother’s long, slow surrender. My sister stood across from me, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the laminate table. She had a look of contempt. Not just annoyance. It was a harsh disguise of morality, the kind people wear when they are terrified that the floor beneath them is actually a trapdoor. She took one more puff of the cigarette, concluding a moment of tension, gathe...

4 likes 4 comments 4
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The Silver Key

Weekly Contest #345

The Silver KeyThe fluorescent hum of the 7-Eleven was a low-voltage snarl, the only thing keeping the silence from swallowing the room. Behind the counter, Toni watched a moth batter its powdered wings against the glass of the jerky case. The creature didn't know it was a prisoner. It had made a frantic, blind choice to chase the heat, forgetting the narrow gap where it had slipped in. Now, it lived as a captive of its own instinct. To stay was a slow torture; to keep beating against the glass was a quiet suicide. It refused to move in a dif...

15 likes 13 comments 13
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A Sound of Silence

A Sound of SilenceI awoke not to a sound, but to a rhythm—the cold, mechanical pulse of a streetlamp bleeding through the thin slats of my window. It was a rhythmic flicker timed to my heartbeat, a metronome for a world that had forgotten how to sleep. Then, a whisper... “Hello darkness, my old friend,” drifted through the room. It wasn't a sound heard with the ears; it vibrated through the marrow of my bones, a low-frequency hum that made the surrounding shadows feel heavy, as if the darkness itself had settled deep within my lungs.“I’ve co...

2 likes 2 comments 2
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A Glitch of the Heart

A Glitch of the Heart The rain in Bangor didn’t just fall; it suffocated, clinging to the windows of Chimera like a damp wool blanket. Inside, the air was a thick slurry of yellowed pages and the sharp, bitter tang of espresso Renee couldn't quite afford. She retreated to the corner table—the one that still seemed to echo with David’s ghost. Five years had vanished, yet sitting here, she felt the same frantic, unmoored version of herself. At twenty-seven, her graphic design degree felt less like a career and more like a hollow promise, a vib...

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Bus Stop

BUS STOPThe bench at the corner of 4th and Elm was Arthur’s pulpit, though he didn’t look the part of a preacher. In his faded corduroy jacket and polished loafers, he looked exactly what he was: a retired actuary who still kept his watch synchronized to the atomic clock.Every Tuesday at 10:15 AM, Arthur took his seat. He lived alone in a house that had grown cavernous and hollow since Martha’s passing—a silence so heavy it occasionally made his ears ring. To combat the quiet, he went to the stop. He never bought a ticket, and he never board...

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Moon Shadow

The moon hung bloated and silver over the silent rooftops, draining the town of color and stretching shadows into jagged ink. Amidst the stillness, a young girl stood in a tattered nightdress, her hair a wild thicket of knots. She stared upward, unblinking, bathed in the cold lunar glare.Leo, cutting through the square on his way home, slowed his pace. "Miss? Are you okay?"She didn't move. Concerned, he stepped closer, reaching out toward her shoulder. "Do you need help?"The girl spun with unnatural fluidity. Before Leo could gasp, she lunge...

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