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Amer Malas

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2025

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9 Stories

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The Aroma is Enough

Weekly Contest #339

I’m making coffee for two, and outside, the rain starts.Not heavy. Just enough to blur the window, to make the kitchen feel smaller, warmer. I pour the water and watch steam rise, and for a moment I let myself believe the universe is paying attention.Three days ago, we both reached for the same book.The bookstore was quiet. Thursday afternoon, the kind of grey light that makes you want to stay inside and read. I was in the self-help section—manifesting, neuroscience, the intersection of belief and biology. My fingers trailing spines until I ...

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THREE FLAMES

Weekly Contest #334

She lights the candle before I’ve even finished my coffee.I watch her do it—pull the match, touch it to the wick, shake it out—without once looking at what she’s doing. Like breathing. Like something so automatic it doesn’t require attention.Vanilla-scented. The label says something about self-care or serenity. One of those words that didn’t used to need saying.She sets it on the table between us and goes back to her laptop. Doesn’t glance at it again. The flame just burns there, unwatched, doing nothing.“What’s that for?” I ask.She looks up...

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What the Hands Remember

Weekly Contest #333

The paper plate bends under the weight of it.Grease seeps through, translucent, pooling near my thumb. Maya eats quickly, counting bites out loud, cheese stretching and snapping as she pulls away. Somewhere behind us, the Armenian festival’s music rises and falls—unfamiliar, percussive, a language carried by drums.The pastry is shaped like a small boat.Open at the center.Holding cheese, herbs, something that tastes like heat and salt.She smiles with her mouth full, grease on her fingertips. I watch her hands—the way they know, already, how t...

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The Narrow Space

Weekly Contest #330

Erik had three rules he lived by, the kind that kept a man sharp and ready for anything.Rule One: Always sit facing the exit.Rule Two: Drink the coffee black; sugar creates a comfort you shouldn’t get used to.Rule Three: Never linger once the cup is empty.He was currently sitting at a small, wobbly table in the center of the café, aggressively adhering to Rule Two while violating Rule One. He wasn’t facing the exit. He was facing the corner booth—his usual half-shadowed sanctuary—which was now occupied by a woman who seemed entirely unaware ...

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When the Lights Go Out

Weekly Contest #329

The mop made small circles on linoleum, steady as breath.Elias worked the third-floor west wing the way he’d worked it for six years—starting at the nurses’ station where the night-shift coffee always left rings, moving counterclockwise past the supply closet, ending at the window that overlooked the parking lot.He emptied his industrial yellow bucket into the utility sink, rinsed it twice. Some of the other janitors left theirs cloudy with diluted bleach, but Elias kept his pristine.“You’re still here?”Amara stood in the doorway of the brea...

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Two O’Clock Cake

Weekly Contest #328

A week after the funeral, the air had gone still, as if even the walls were waiting for permission to let go. I worked room by room with cardboard boxes and black marker, sorting what could be given away from what I wasn’t ready to look at. By late afternoon, the kitchen was the last untouched place. I kept putting it off. Grief lives in kitchens. It settles in tile grout and cabinet hinges and the places where hands once moved without thinking.The table was bare except for one thing: a shoebox with its lid slipping off, as if someone had op...

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The Eye of Amber

Weekly Contest #327

The cupcakes had taken her three hours to make.Mara arranged them on the kitchen table in a careful circle—seventeen of them—because that’s what you did when you turned seventeen and wanted to pretend someone might care. She’d piped frosting rosettes in lavender and cream, colors her mother had loved, according to the single photograph she kept hidden in her drawer. Silver and purple tissue stars hung from the ceiling, cut by hand the night before while her stepmother’s television droned through the wall.Her phone sat face-up beside the cupc...

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The Echo Between Messages

Weekly Contest #326

Before the message arrived, Adrian’s days moved like gray water—slow, functional, without glimmer.He worked from a small apartment that smelled faintly of coffee and printer ink. Each morning began the same way: open laptop, scroll through headlines he barely absorbed.Journalist Detained for Inflammatory Speech.New Surveillance Protocols for Messaging Apps.His thumb moved past each one, dismissing what he couldn’t fix before the weight settled in his chest. He called it protecting his mental health. Mostly, it was self-preservation.Then one ...

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The Space Between Breaths

Weekly Contest #325

The breeze finds him first—cool across his forearm, carrying thyme through the open window.He opens his eyes. Morning light. The mug on the counter is still warm.He crosses the room, wraps both hands around it. Still too warm—like her hand once was, now distant, warmth recalling its source. He sips. Chamomile and honey. Perfect—two spoonfuls, just as she always made it.He sets the cup down carefully, almost reverently, as if it might spill something more than tea. “Thank you,” he says.The curtain lifts and falls once, as if answering.He chec...

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