Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog

Alex Merola

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2026

Stories
Comments
Library
42 Followers
29 Following

25 Stories

664 karma pts

?

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 feel ...

15 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

The Library of Lost Days

Weekly Contest #349

The Library of Lost Days Today 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 ha...

16 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

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...

5 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Silver Key

Weekly Contest #345

The Silver Key The 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 di...

15 likes 13 comments 13
Read story

A Sound of Silence

A Sound of Silence I 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 ...

2 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

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...

2 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Bus Stop

BUS STOP The 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 boa...

2 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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 lu...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Hundred Year Bloom

The Hundred-Year Bloom The tide at Blacksand Cove didn't just recede; it seemed to exhale, leaving behind a thick, briny silence. Under the void of the Blue New Moon—a sky so dark the stars looked like salt spilled on black velvet—the cycle began. This was the "Blackest Night," a lunar anomaly occurring once a century, and the sea was prepared to pay its toll. In a deep basalt tide pool, the water began to churn. It wasn’t the wind, but a rhythmic, pulsing motion—the heavy thrum of a heart beating inside a lung. Sensing the shift, the local ...

3 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A Touch of Grey

Alex Merola about 2,000 words 270 Callahan Road 41472 (207) 573-6465 amerola@gmail.com A TOUCH OF GREY By Alex Merola A Touch of Grey The book had been open, face down, since 3:00 AM—the only way she could find the shore of sleep these days was to read until her eyes burned. Maya reached out a thin hand and closed it. The cover, a stark image of a bell jar, seemed to mock her. It was time for school. I watched her from the kitchen, my hand gripping a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold. I am a man of few words, a sing...

1 like 0 comments 0
Read story