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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2023
Submitted to Contest #248
Reality wasn’t real when she did it; it was cold and empty. People don’t understand that, though, do they? Reality wasn’t real when she did it; it was a phantom of sorts, absurd in its stubbornness like a little boy declaring himself to be a doctor. Why? Because your father’s white dress shirt reaches your knees? And where’d you get that stethoscope? Did Daddy give it to you?Reality wasn’t real when Rachel did it. The knife, sure, it felt tangible, but this too was just another absurdity. She’d adjusted her grip on the handle, laughing at th...
Submitted to Contest #247
For as long as I can remember, I’ve not been allowed beyond the fig trees. Heck, I’ve not been allowed around them. Every harvesting season, I watch our people pluck the big, purple beads all the way from my window. Dad says I’ve called them that ever since my first vision. I was six when it happened, and it was fig-induced. Mary says my eyes turn purple when I eat them. Like twinkling gemstones, she says. I wouldn’t know. Dad doesn’t allow mirrors in the prophecy room. Something about light refraction. Not that I’d be able to see myself, an...
15th April, 2024Monday08:30 a.m.How presumptuous of me to think the recesses of the human heart is unexplored territory! How presumptuous to think my experiences are unique! But I did, I do, sometimes. I’m a coloniser declaring terra nullius where generations of feet have trodden before – culture, customs, stories.We’re all a bit like Lu Xun’s Ah Q or Voltaire’s Candide, our ignorance a child’s newspaper hat—roll it up and you’ve got a telescope! —as we frolic about wreaking havoc with a toothless grin, adult teeth yet to grow in. Want to pl...
Submitted to Contest #239
To gawk, to ogle, to stare; there is more to looking than meets the eye, hence our nuanced language which allows for distinctions. Now, he wasn’t merely looking at me, but leering. He licked me up and down like an ice lolly, and every time I glanced up from my novel, or from the window and the rolling hills, those cloudy eyes were on me, something was rumbling, and lightning was bound to strike.I’d later come to find that his name was Jose Luis and that his grip was uncomfortably warm.Jose Luis looked to be in his late fifties, twice my age,...
Submitted to Contest #236
My dearest Nineteen, There’s a boardgame on my shelf gathering dust. Last year, I lugged it up and down the French Riviera in my suitcase—squeezed between summer dresses, Daisy Dukes and dreams—and finally, here, to Alicante. I’ve opened it once to read the instructions; you need at least three players, and that’s two too many. And yet it strikes even me as peculiar. Why did I buy it? knowing that I have nobody with whom to play. I must have dreamt something up that day, for it’s never the coat on display that we buy, but the self we imagi...
Submitted to Contest #235
She hadn’t meant to kiss her, hadn’t meant to make her cry, and she very well hadn’t meant to leave without saying goodbye, but the train—an hour late—was pulling into the station, and if Bella was any good at anything, it was running away. “It’s a cliché but are you running to or from something?” asked Amelie. They’d met a half hour ago, both affected by delays, and now sat on cold tiles just outside the news agency, Bella’s legs around a small backpack, Amelie’s propped up on a green 80L rucksack as though it were a footrest. “I don’t know...
Submitted to Contest #231
Hope is not big, momentous, grand; it is not a plumed picture hat, not a coat, not a bag. It is as modest as the boring, old underwear beneath all that glamour, the underwear we somehow manage to change (almost) every day, despite being glued to our beds, losing lovers and friends, and despite unemployment. Margaret rolled over and turned off her alarm, picking out a painful wedgie. She was wearing Tuesday’s pair of underwear for the second consecutive day, one of the six pairs her ex-mother-in-law had sent her for Christmas (Monday was miss...
Submitted to Contest #223
His sister’s hand-me-downs hung from his small frame like… a curtain? The halls were quiet, save for a distant cough, the turn of a page, and the click clack of a keyboard. Nora dried her hands on her trousers, and re-entered the warm embrace of the library, its warm lights, and green carpeting. She sat down at her laptop and scanned the room, the hunched shoulders, the black, brown and blonde heads lowered over books. And there on the red couch lay Chloe, eyes closed and legs outstretched, balancing her laptop like breakfast in bed. She wa...
Submitted to Contest #221
The elevator hiccupped up to the third floor, the light flickering on cue as though a stagehand had flipped a switch. Nora was used to the rattle, the hiccups, of dwelling in the throat of an unoiled tinman who would hock her up onto the third floor like phlegm. She grimaced at her pallid and ghostly reflection; her lips were a purplish blue from the cold outside, and the sterile light made holes of her eyes. She wiped at her smudged mascara with her free hand, a bag of crisps tucked under the other, and the doors screeched open behind her. ...
Submitted to Contest #218
I squat on the shower tiles, blue and white, and zip open my wet makeup bag. A floral pungence wafts out and overwhelms; it blossoms in my nose, my head, my heart, like a sweet, throbbing migraine. I pluck my eyeshadow palette from the wet mess, and mourn the smudged and sparkling petals of burgundy; they too smell of manmade flowers. I dig precariously through the bag and find the culprit with an ouch; a broken perfume bottle pricks my finger like a thorn, and déjà vu smells of Gucci Flora. I pluck the pink shards from the bag like petals—h...
Submitted to Contest #208
Nora knew not to seek refuge in others, and yet this stranger—we’ll call him Louis—provided some kind of solace lying there beside her, shoulder to shoulder, each of them with their arms wrapped around a blue pillow. She was happy to lie here in his company, in his bed, for there was no family to hold her, no friends, no partner, and the only semblance of love she’d ever found was in the arms of men with ulterior motives; and so, she willingly mistook mud for chocolate, weeds for flowers, and blood for wine. But this time, she mightn’t hav...
Submitted to Contest #207
It is here in a lamplit living room, surrounded by pot plants and self-help books, where we meet our protagonist, Marta. She sits in a cloud of cigarette smoke, ashing it every few tokes in a red metal tray painted with gold elephants. Her daughter brought it back from Thailand—another toke of her cigarette—and, as always, had thought of her. Thank goodness someone does, otherwise she might go mad; no amount of pot plants and self-help books can compensate for a child’s love. They do, however, silence the scream of solitude for a while. She ...
Submitted to Contest #206
We don’t know what’s the matter with me, but we know why I’m in bed and not at work. I lie here staring up at the white gotelé ceiling, but I can’t be sure it’s white; I can’t be sure of anything, really. Maybe the ceiling is like the green curtains that still glow purple no matter how hard I look; I could glare a hole through these dreadful, frenetic curtains, and they would never be green. I glance up at the lifeless clock on the wall, the limp hands forever indicating six o’clock. I don’t know why I still look, why I anticipate change. H...
Submitted to Contest #205
The year is 2027 and Maureen finds herself back in Rishikesh, back on the shore by the Ganges, with yet another pouch of rice. A cow sleeps on the sand a few metres away and a scruffy, white dog—that’s been following her since she left the astrologist’s—sits beside her. She’s quite sure it’s a stray and yet it has no fleas or injuries and is smiling up at her with an endearing silliness, its tongue dangling from the side of its mouth as it smile-pants. There’s a smudge of orange dust on its forehead, the orange glow of the sunset in its spar...
Submitted to Contest #204
White walls, white chairs, white gowns, white noise. Melissa sat cross-legged on a single bed, on cool, silk sheets, sea surf emanating from a little grey speaker on the bedside table. A long glass of water sat atop it, clear and pure, enclosing the white walls, chairs, gowns in this reflective and rippling universe. Melissa took a sip. “Are you sleepy?” asked Nora. Melissa nodded, adjusting her eye mask. “Yield. We need you in Theta to bypass the left hemisphere.” Nora leaned back in her chair, running a bare foot through the flu...
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