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Bernard Henry

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2025

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6 Followers
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6 Stories

54 karma pts

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The Promise The Forest Kept

The first time Daniel noticed the forest watching him back, he convinced himself it was the wind.It was late autumn, the kind that stripped the world down to bone and shadow. The trees behind his grandmother’s house stood skeletal and still, their branches clawing at a gray, unmoving sky. He had been standing at the kitchen window, hands wrapped around a mug gone cold, when he felt it, that prickling awareness along the back of his neck, like breath that didn’t belong to him.He looked up.The forest was not moving.No rustle. No sway. No drift...

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Seasons out of time

Weekly Contest #351

Goodbye to YouThe words came to Eli Carter as if from another life.He sat alone in the dim hush of his childhood bedroom, with the words, Goodbye to you, my little one... in a notebook open on his knees, a pen suspended above the page. The room had changed only in the small, painful ways time allows. The trophies still stood on the shelf, dulled by dust. The walls still held the faded outlines of posters long surrendered to sun and age. Outside the window, spring had returned with its usual indifference, filling the branches with birdsong a...

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The House That Remembered Wrong

Weekly Contest #347

The heat wasn’t gradual.It hit all at once.Not like standing near a fire—but inside one.I jerked my hand back from the doorknob, but the hallway behind me was gone. Replaced. Folded inward into something tighter, narrower, breathing.The door opened anyway.Inside, the room burned.Not violently. Not chaotically. The flames moved with a strange patience, licking along the wallpaper in slow, deliberate strokes, as if they had all the time in the world to finish what they started.A bed sat against the far wall.Small.Child-sized.Smoke curled from ...

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In Honor of Lauren Kay Echoes of the Past The Letters at the Edge of Everything

The Letters At the Edge of Everythingby Bernard Thomas Henry Jr. Dear Future Me, If you’re reading this, it means we didn’t give up.I’m writing from the wobbly little desk by the window, the one that’s half desk, half rescued-from-the-sidewalk miracle. There’s a coffee ring burned into the corner, which I keep pretending is symbolic instead of proof I never use a coaster.The manuscript pages are a mess. The novel is a mess. I am a mess.But I’m writing anyway.If you’ve moved on to better spaces with real chairs and a window that seals properl...

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The Memory of Cinnamon

Weekly Contest #339

The kettle's whistle cut through the dawn like a filament pulled taut, a shrill invocation that dragged Mara from sleep's reluctant shore. Pale February light sliced between the blinds of her Tucson kitchen window, gilding the scarred Formica countertop where coffee rings from better mornings ghosted like tattoos. She gripped the handle with oven-mitted care, steam rising in warning curls, and tilted hot water over the teabag nestled in her favorite mug. Cracked white porcelain cradled a blue bird, its wings faded to a spectral blur, a hand-...

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2026 Last Notice

Daughter: You’re pacing again.Father: They’re late. If you’re going to steal a man’s house, you’d think you’d at least be on time.Daughter: That’s not how this works.Father: Don’t start with me. I’ve read every letter, every “notice of intent,” every “final warning.” Funny word, “final.” They keep finding new ones.Daughter: You know this isn’t your fault.Father: The papers say otherwise. “Failure to comply.” “Failure to remit.” “Failure.” They use that word a lot.Daughter: Lawyers like labels. Makes it easier to forget you’re a person.Father...

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