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CC CWSCGS

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2025

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32 Stories

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John, the Father

Weekly Contest #369

This piece follows Mishka, the Twenty-Year-Old Maltese Mix, and the Blessing of the Animals, submitted for Contest #339 (Grief Carried): https://reedsy.com/short-story/st0tuf/ and Rose, the Mother, and the Leaf That Fell at the Blessing of the Animals, submitted for Contest #340 (Grief Witnessed): https://reedsy.com/short-story/njrb59/ *** “…If you would be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost pal…” I sang along with Paul Simon, louder on the chorus than the verses, tapping two fingers against the leather steering wheel....

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The Ginkgo with Fan-Shaped Leaves and the Aspens Beyond the Yard

Weekly Contest #368

Daniel’s alarm sounded at 5:00 a.m. He turned it off, looked at Meredith asleep beside him, smiled, and got out of bed. Thirty minutes on the treadmill. Shower. Shave. Navy suit, white shirt, gray tie. In the kitchen, he drank black coffee while checking the weather and markets on his phone. Daniel worked in risk management for a financial firm. At exactly 7:35, he left the apartment and walked toward the E train. *** Meredith woke when sunlight reached her face. It slipped through the window in a warm gold stripe, and she stretched beneath ...

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Independence Day Dinner
 - July 4, 2031 - 
The 255th Anniversary of the United States of America

Weekly Contest #362

July 4, 2031 Julian Lewis began with the bread. In twenty-one years cooking for the elite, he had always begun with bread, even for men who expected caviar before they unfolded their napkins. Bread told the truth before anything else did. If the yeast was tired, if the water was wrong, if the room was too cold or too warm, bread said so. It rose, or it did not.Tonight, it rose. The loaves opened at their seams beneath the hard white lights of the kitchen, releasing the breath of flour, salt, and steam. Butter softened in porcelain bowls. Ros...

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Tiny Stars

Weekly Contest #362

From the chair beside the window, the room had one of the loveliest views on the floor. Past the parking lot, past the hard shine of glass and chrome, the hospital seemed to slip away. The trees rose green and full beneath a flawless blue sky, and beyond the branches, where the light leaned low, a slender silver stream caught the sun and carried it quietly on. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, slow and practiced, the way I had taught a thousand mothers to do. For a moment, I closed my eyes and tried to follow that strea...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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Fifty-One Minutes

Weekly Contest #360

Exam Room 6 had no distinguishing qualities. The walls were the same muted beige as the hallway, the floor the same dull gray vinyl, the cabinets the same manufactured wood with brushed metal handles. A laminated diagram of the lymphatic system hung beside the door, its corners beginning to curl beneath the frame. Michael Hart sat in the chair instead of on the table. After years of appointments, he knew which visits required the table and which did not. Bloodwork. Scans. Follow-ups. Today was supposed to be ordinary. He sat alone. At first,...

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Fourteen Thousand Feet Above the Desert

Weekly Contest #357

14,000 Feet: Sky The aircraft climbed steadily through a sky so clear it seemed impossible that storms existed anywhere in the world. Below, the desert stretched to every horizon in shades of rust, gold, and amber. Ancient mesas rose from the earth like monuments carved by a patient god. Rick Harrington pressed his forehead briefly against the window and smiled. Fifty.The number felt strange. For most of his adult life, he had measured time in quarters, acquisitions, earnings reports, and market cycles. Birthdays were obligations squeezed b...

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Ruhe

Weekly Contest #356

October 12, 1823 Samuel Ruhe had spent the morning sorting through his mother's belongings. Outside, the maples had turned brilliant shades of crimson and gold, their leaves drifting lazily across the yard and gathering against the stone wall beyond the garden. The house had settled into an unfamiliar stillness, as though even the walls were holding their breath. It was broken only by the hushed voices of his younger sisters downstairs and the occasional knock of a neighbor carrying a loaf of bread, a pie, or a few words spoken softly at the...

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The Odyssey Vanguard

Weekly Contest #354

1. Time Elias Vale ran barefoot along a cold New England beach beneath a gray May sky. Wind whipped against his face as waves crashed beside him. He kept looking over his shoulder though the shoreline behind him was completely empty. No footprints but his own. Still, panic tightened in his chest as if something unseen was closing in around him. “Hello?” he shouted into the wind. Only the ocean answered. Then the world vanished into white. —- A violent hiss filled the air as the stasis chamber opened around him. Bright artificial light flood...

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The 6:56 Train from Penn Station

Weekly Contest #354

John Mercer sat on the same New Jersey Transit train he had taken home for the past twenty-three years. The 6:56. Same car. Same side. Same window seat if no one had beaten him to it. The fluorescent lights hummed above him. The floor was flecked with dark spots of dried coffee. A forgotten MetroCard trembled near someone’s shoe each time the train lurched forward. The car smelled of hand sanitizer, and the tired end of other people’s days. Two women in their twenties sat near the doors, office badges still hanging from their necks, replayin...

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Rose, the Mother, and the Leaf That Fell at the Blessing of the Animals

Weekly Contest #340

This piece follows Mishka, the Twenty-Year-Old Maltese Mix, and the Blessing of the Animals, which I submitted to the prior competition, Contest #339 in response to the prompt, “Write a story with the aim of making your reader cry.” The original story can be read here: https://reedsy.com/short-story/st0tuf/ *** I wee. It happens while Rose is holding me. She lifts me higher and turns me away from the people behind us. Then we stand there quietly together. “It’s okay, Mishka-girl,” she says. Her voice is level. It is the only voice I know. I ...

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Mishka, the Twenty-Year-Old Maltese Mix, and the Blessing of the Animals

Weekly Contest #339

Mishka tinkles without noticing. A warm spot spreads through the fabric of my sleeve, and I adjust my hold, turning slightly away from the people behind me. Mishka is a Maltese mix, over twenty years old, more than a hundred in human years, and so light I sometimes forget she’s there until I look down. She fits into the crook of my arm without effort. “It’s okay, Mishka-girl,” I say into her ear. She lets out a small yawn and a quiet bark afterward, more breath than sound, like a whisper she wasn’t sure she meant to make. Her fur is thin and...

27 likes 12 comments 12
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Concordia

Weekly Contest #338

Dr. Thomas Whitaker stood beside the narrow examination table and listened. The patient sat on its edge, jacket folded neatly on the chair, a blue tie draped over the back. His shirt was open at the collar, his feet not quite reaching the floor. There was, in his posture, something boyish, a grown man waiting to be told he was all right. The room held the familiar blend of antiseptic and tobacco. Somewhere beyond the door, a typewriter struck a few efficient keys, then fell quiet. The stethoscope was cool against his chest and the pulse was ...

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I Wake Facing the Ocean

Weekly Contest #337

I wake facing the ocean. My name is William. Or at least it once was.I was born to kind parents. I fell in love and married my wife. We had two children. They gave my life weight and direction. At 44, I fell ill, and three months later I died. In my final days I grew weak. My body no longer did what I asked of it. I grieved for what I was to miss but I was not afraid. Near the end, I returned to my faith. It asked little of me. I held it quietly. My breathing slowed. Then it stopped. There was darkness, and then a sudden intensity that is ha...

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Borrowed Time

Weekly Contest #337

Stillwater was the kind of town that didn’t change unless something broke. Main Street was three blocks long, paved uneven, its storefronts looking much the same as they had a hundred years ago. Joe’s Barber Shop still had its red-and-white pole spinning, though Joe himself had died years back and Joe Jr. cut hair the same way: high and tight. Kessler’s Pharmacy still wrote labels by hand and sold milk from a back cooler like it was a general store from the 1950s. The diner still served early-bird prime rib on Tuesdays. Houses in Stillwater ...

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November 8, 4016

Weekly Contest #336

TRANSMISSION LOG Timestamp: November 8, 4016 / 03:17:42 UTCTransmission Number: 1,241,850System ID: TYSONFunction: Autonomous Biosphere Survey - Segment 12Operational Status: NominalPrimary Receiver: ARCHIVE NODE A-0Receiver Status: No response recorded STANDARD ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT Atmosphere:Composition stable within post-detonation baselines.Residual radionuclide traces present.No atmospheric signatures associated with respiration or combustion. Ocean:Thermal and salinity profiles stable.Isotopic markers consistent with historic fallout.N...

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