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Avery Sparks

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2025

Stories (52)
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137 Followers
19 Following

52 Stories

1896 karma pts

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Dragon's Bread, Thistles and Just Holding On

Submitted to Contest #294

Dear Erin, I told your the story again today. It's not your story, even though it is a story of you. I can't start thinking like that. Maybe you saw me? BBC Breakfast, no less! If you'd have asked me a year ago why I thought I’d be on there, I would have said - God knows - doing a bloody charity walk, or singing on a novelty Christmas single, or something. Not this. Me and you, love. We’ll never be known for what we were. They were gentle with it, mind. I got tea beforehand - shouldn’t have had it, I was busting for a wee the whole time. The...

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Goodbye to Grimeford

Submitted to Contest #293

Percy Thistlethwaite slumped into his seat, staring out the coach front window. Forty-five minutes of peace. The return trip was always better - kids too drained to cause trouble, their bloodstreams no longer fizzing with caffeine and anticipation. He glanced at Stella, Head of Year, tapping away at her phone. If anything kicked off, she could deal with it.Ten years at Grimeford Academy. History Teacher. More Able Coordinator. Titles came and went with fashions in education (“Gifted and Talented”, “Aspire and Achieve”), but Percy remained. H...

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The Death of the Artist

Submitted to Contest #292

People file though galleries like they’re waiting in the queue at the pharmacy. “Ooh,” I hear someone say, “I like that one,” pointing at a depiction of the artist being ripped to shreds in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam, like it’s a new type of corn plaster she’s thinking of taking for a spin. Most people move at a bureaucratic pace, past each frame: tick, tick, tick. It makes sense, if you want to see as much as you can. As the factoid goes, if you looked at each painting in the Louvre for just thirty seconds, it would take over eight day...

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The Realisation Consultant

Submitted to Contest #291

Nora lay back in the chair in the small waiting room, stretching out her arms and legs. The chair was cushioned but scratchy, with the padding flattened by the impression of many thousands of sitters. The furniture’s rust-orange complimented specks of mould creeping in the corners of the ceiling. In the window someone had hung a glass pendant which threw the summer sun across the room in rainbows. A girl she would have guessed was about her own age, sixteen, emerged from the corner doorway. She trilled a goodbye to the room’s occupant and im...

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Infinity Nights

Submitted to Contest #290

The dance floor crashed blue and black with the stamping of feet: students, newly free. Everyone in the centre of the room was only shades apart in age. Eighteen and semi-learned. Everyone had a reason to celebrate, and not one among them was grounded by the glaze of drinks and bodily fluids on the floor; sugar and salt offerings to whichever bruising god guides kids through school. Now there’s a deity who drew the short straw.  Skin tingled; the air was acidic; lemon and lime sliced on the acute certainty that nothing existed beyond th...

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Through a screen, Christine, darkly

Submitted to Contest #289

Stanley Whitmore: Good evening. Kristina Taynychenko: hello, Mr. Whitmore. How are you doing this evening? SW: Please forgive the lateness of these replies; I am not well equipped, as you might say, to type as quickly as the youngsters. I am very pleased to “virtually meet” you. This evening I am sitting at my computer, looking out onto my garden. My daughter thought it might be nice for me to have a more verdant view as I sit here, I suppose to give some kind of illusion that I am not simply sitting before a machine. I must say, it is rathe...

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You always make things better

Submitted to Contest #288

Honestly, what is the point of an umbrella? thought Lena, as she grabbed at hers, threatening to blow inside out. As she raised her arm, raindrops raced gleefully down her sleeve before immediately soaking into her shirt. The wind surged against her, not only flipping the umbrella frame, but breaking and collapsing it. The canopy detached and flew down a side street. Lena growled but chased after it regardless.She should have left work before the storm hit, but when Charlotte had come to her desk and said that since it was a rare day th...

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