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Alexis Araneta

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2023

Stories (51)
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579 Followers
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51 Stories

6599 karma pts

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A Thousand First Meetings

Submitted to Contest #271

12 October 2024Dear Natasha,Yes, it’s me. Again.Well, I can finally admit it, spill to you the secret I’ve kept buried like a chest of gold for, well, as long as my memory could trace seconds. I should tell you that I keep all the faces I put on to meet you in large, crystal jars of lapis lazuli and lush, brilliant greens, the collection stacked on shelves in an ivory-painted cupboard that almost reaches the ceiling. Each one of them, every perfectly moulded mask of flesh and keratin is labelled in thick crimson card and my chicken scratch p...

61 likes 57 comments 57
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Sparkle

Submitted to Contest #269

28 September 2024Dearest Peter,Just so you know, I have kept the ring you gave me fifteen years ago. Oh, and I…well, I guess by the end of this letter, I can finally let it out, spill out the very thoughts that have been swirling inside me like a tempest for a decade and a half. Trust me, it will be good.Oh yes, Peter. I’m still wearing that delicate, fuchsia plum blossom on a thin 18-karat yellow gold band, and in fact, I’ve never taken it off. Right now, as the sun shoots its arrows of light through the windows of The Bijou Café here in Br...

64 likes 80 comments 80
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Do Me Write

Submitted to Contest #266

Hey, Stephanie! I have a little request. If you’re going to keep changing me, reach those artificial nacho cheese-dusted hands onto the Wheel of My Fortune and spin it to figure out who I’d be this thirty-second time (Yes, I counted.) around, could you at least swap out…you know?Yes, I’m aware, all too much, in fact. You say that you’re a pantser, that you’re a flâneuse who would rather meander the winding alleys of your imagination rather than follow some preset road map. You balk at the idea of anything other than the thorny weeds of a plo...

60 likes 95 comments 95
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A Ticket to Me

Submitted to Contest #265

“Number 76, please proceed to the counter now,” a lilting voice, warm like clay, croons out of the loudspeakers.  A tiny smile as thin as a twig forms on my face. With that velvety announcement, adrenaline pumps from the base of my spine upwards, like a tree emerging from the smallest mustard seed. A slip of paper with the number 77 is trembling in my hand like an autumn leaf helplessly shaking in a gust.Perhaps, yes, in queue at the services counter of the only shopping centre in the small town of Lumangkahoy, three hours away fro...

51 likes 74 comments 74
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To My Heart's Call

Submitted to Contest #264

Author's Note: This story borrows lyrics from the 1968 Glen Campbell song "Wichita Lineman". I don't own rights to this song or its lyrics (That would be Jimmy Webb who does. He's brilliant.).**“Glenn, you may now say your vows to Lucy.”Lucy, my light….Oh gosh! I’m so nervous, I’m shaking like an overhead cable in the breeze. Sorry about that. Yes, my love, for all the brawn I use to climb up those thirty-five foot poles, for all the steel I inject into my nerves as I dangle on the flimsiest of wires above long and winding stretches of aspha...

53 likes 60 comments 60
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The Fighter

Submitted to Contest #261

CW: Mentions of suicidal ideation, mental health struggles, anorexia nervosa**First of all, I very much know how much it hurts. Quite literally, it does.You sit in your wheelchair as they push you bumpily and help you up the maroon leather-backed banquette at the very front of a coffee chain’s branch in the hospital’s lobby. You’re fully aware that the mobile chair is but standard operating procedure for leaving the medical centre, yet the mere idea of your willpower being excised along with that gangrene bit of your small intestine the surg...

61 likes 83 comments 83
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Chez Moi

Submitted to Contest #260

3 May 2024Mon très cher ange Jeremy,Well, first of all, oh my goodness! It’s happening!Next week, I will be picking you up at the Gare du Nord. Then, in a month’s time, you and I will be marching to city hall --- 11 a.m., on the dot, precise as a timetable – so the mayor could officially wed us. (I know. It’s not very romantic, but yes, that’s the way things are done chez moi.). Of course, just a fortnight after, I can finally walk down a tulip-lined aisle towards your joyfully tearful hazel eyes at the ceremony we’ve planned to the minutest...

49 likes 70 comments 70
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Radio Romance

Submitted to Contest #259

This is the Philippines’ most romantic station, Radio Romance 101.9, where love comes to you in a melody. It’s been a lovely three hours, but I’ve got to go. Don’t worry, though, Caroline is next to take care of the music. This is Henry. Catch you tomorrow.***5 January 2024Dearest Caroline,Gawd, every single time I close my show with that familiar spiel, I just feel my heart drum right out of my chest.The routine has been etched into my head like grooves on an LP. You would wave at me from behind the glass, your large cocoa eyes scintillatin...

63 likes 77 comments 77
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Focused on You

Submitted to Contest #258

13 July 2021Dear Lucas,Yes, I know. How did I find out your name?Look, I’m so sorry. I know this may sound a little strange. Part of me wonders if I should just leave this letter in the shadows, shutter off any attempts to approach you before I embarrass myself. I can’t help it, though. Like a moth drawn towards a beam of Klieg lights, I discovered that my entire being just has to hover around you. Ever since I saw your stunning hazel eyes in a post from 2017 on your blog “Frames”, they have been constantly playing in my mind like a slidesho...

52 likes 67 comments 67
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The Untaming of the Shrew

Submitted to Contest #257

CW: Gratuitous swearing (including Renaissance swear words)Let me set the record straight, first and foremost: No, contrary to what that doddypoll William Shakespeare wrote in his dramatic work, no, I have not been tamed. In fact, if I may clarify, I will never ever be tamed, not then and not now.(Oh, let me repeat that in a language, a bunch of lines, you understand.)That’s right. Good ol’ Willy Shakes all played you, shut off the spotlight of the truth about me and illuminated a fabrication in the brightest of ambers and deep cobalt blue. ...

43 likes 67 comments 67
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A Shot at Happiness

And now, let’s give it up for your three-time NBA champions --- and trying for a fourth today --, your very own Dallas Riggers!The crowd of 21,000 hooting mouths rise to their feet, thumping their chests like a legion of Roman gladiators ready to fight to the death. Their hollers as the jersey-clad boys come out of the dressing rooms pierce my eardrums like the leaden bullets of a sport rifle. Keenan Murphy, the Riggers’ star player, extends his large, solid hand to the screaming spectators, who gamely give him a high five. As he and his boo...

24 likes 42 comments 42
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The Homecoming

21 June 2024Dear Mr. Kettering,You were right, after all. Despite the soliloquy I declared in front of you after my graduation ceremony two decades ago, the one where I used such choice adverbs such as “never” and “begrudgingly”, your little bit of ribbing predicted me grabbing my suitcase and filling it with the most superlative of my clothing in my closet. It’s true: I, Nellie Perkins-Todd, am flying off from London for a two-week visit to Homer, Louisiana. Technically, you could say that I’m coming home, much like Odysseus did in the epic...

25 likes 40 comments 40
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A Need to Dance

Submitted to Contest #254

“I need to dance to this with you,” you demanded, your chartreuse eyes an inextinguishable flame that bored into my soul and burnt through my defences.Need! That’s not a need. A need is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as something requisite or necessary. Dancing to “I’ll Be Around” by The Detroit Spinners is certainly not something that one requires to live…Zoe, I can’t dance.My brain spun and sputtered out all its reasons as if they were drops falling down a plastic tube. However, even it knew that it was helpless in the face of yo...

38 likes 60 comments 60
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Her Song

Submitted to Contest #253

Author's Note (1) : This story uses the lyrics of Elton John's 1971 track "Your Song". I do not own the rights to this song or its lyrics. That would be him and the brilliant Bernie Taupin.“I feel my heart beat out of time,” Ryan Bernard whispered to himself whilst he blankly stared at the beat-up, black stereo system at the other end of the marketing office he worked in.He grasped at the juniper green silk tie that hung on his neck, as if his large, muscular hands were following a rhythm only he could hear. A shrill, pervasive tone rang in ...

38 likes 59 comments 59
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The Purple Wave

Submitted to Contest #252

CW: Abuse, swearing“Oh my God! It’s happening,” Melissa Alton sputtered out in a breathless whisper, her well-modulated television journalist voice drowning in a wine-dark sea of nerves inside her. As she sat on the stool of the cedar dresser set, painted her favourite lavender, she bought from a rummage sale seven years ago, she felt her entire body tremble like a purple maple leaf in an autumn breeze.She stared at the mirror and broke into a slight, polite grin, her facial muscles tightening as it settled into the familiar quiet little smi...

37 likes 49 comments 49
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