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Daniel Brown

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (46)
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210 Followers
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46 Stories

883 karma pts

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Love in the midst of contagion

Submitted to Contest #53

Day 1 In the din of the apricot sun, my skin is melting into my couch. I’m sprawled across it like chocolate on a scalding leather car seat. A burst of central air whips around my face, short and sweet like my girlfriend Tahira who emerges from our room dripping sweat. Her mouth contorts to form words but nothing leaves except a wispy “My God, this virus” before slapping my hairy thighs to vacate a space. She releases a heavy sigh against the base of my stomach and this is the first day of life beneath the shadow of an airborne virus.&nbsp...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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A Star Named Amber

Submitted to Contest #51

The stars above me shine as if they don’t do it often. They flicker from my porch chair and maybe they’re too tired to shoot across this dark expanse we call the sky. I know I would be if expected to sit up there glistening every night for people I won’t ever meet. Even if the same people watch me, none of them would feel familiar and it wouldn’t matter if they thought about me or not. Maybe if they wanted to transport themselves by my side telepathically, I’d be endlessly grateful but then they’d grow lonely and annoyed with the same plagui...

21 likes 0 comments 0
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Boredom is my weakness

Submitted to Contest #48

I like to view myself as a connoisseur of arts and crafts that take considerable degrees of time and effort such as constructing sandcastles, screenplays, or the perpetual nightmare that is a house of cards. Everyone depends on me to restitch torn jeans, file taxes, babysit birds of paradise, and numerous balancing acts that can’t be managed by them. Naturally, when I finish a time-consuming project, I face a nigh-impenetrable wall in front of me named Boredom.  I don’t get bored often but when it happens, it absorbs the magical gifts...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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Delphine at the Supermarket

Submitted to Contest #47

Somehow, you drag your suitcase to the station with your face and clothes as worn-out as the wheels on the luggage. Your smile fades as the sun does into the horizon not unlike the plaid on your suitcase because Delphine is gone back into town, back to stocking supermarket shelves and checking out customers. Her smile faded before yours in her big black truck as she tucked soft fingers into your cheeks to push your smile up a little longer, unsure if this memory won’t be more yet sure that the memory will be a lasting one.  You arrive...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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Clementine

Submitted to Contest #42

The day hasn’t been a shade over grey in the sky, on the ground, in this house which gives way to an obnoxious assortment of colors. The grey is coming from a heated disagreement at the dining room table between Kenny and his girlfriend, Caroline over the length of a denim skirt. Kenny, with his blood orange tan and hair, soft features, and pale overalls, feels the length is too short while Caroline, whose skin and hair are as mahogany as her eyes in a plain off-white t-shirt that drapes to her knees, believes the length meets socially accep...

5 likes 3 comments 3
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In Here, The Tears Taste Like Ice Cream

Submitted to Contest #40

“Aiden, it’s a little odd being in here like this again; at least without you.” The parlor, with the ice cream in different shapes and sizes and flavors, is tiny when you’re not here but that’s life when your close friend is a little distant these days. I met you in the middle of a junior high school summer where the sun melted anything cool before it touched a fridge. You wore polos and jean shorts like me which made me think our mothers shopped with the same brain or we were secretly long-lost brothers. What made things weirder w...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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Paper Kisses

Submitted to Contest #36

Dear Diary/Journal,In the time of this virus, I didn’t think I’d be taken with anyone given the social distancing going on. Everyone is holed up in their homes or they’re swamped with work. I figured I’d go grocery shopping because the beer is low and I need some way to cope with being temporarily away from my retail job.I kid you not, I ran into the most gorgeous human being I’ve ever seen in my entire life. There I am, cleaning the handle of the cart before I wheel it around and there she is, smiling and waving at everyone from behind her ...

4 likes 1 comment 1
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Sad Portrait of a 20-Something Doing Laundry

Submitted to Contest #31

There are no fucking idiosyncracies with doing laundry. A spin cycle will always be a spin cycle, you’ll always wash your uniform with your bed sheets and towels and washcloths on cold and low spin for 23 minutes. You’ll dry the massive amalgam of wet things for 40 minutes or 55 if you aren’t doing laundry at the last minute as usual. You’ll fold clothes at your latest convenience while you're enthralled with music or some 20-minute video about a quirky big city girl with biting wit and short brown hair moving to be a quirky big city gi...

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Withering Heights

Submitted to Contest #27

My eyes flit between the dregs of coffee in this mug and my watch. I’ve spent roughly fifteen minutes or so in this cafe waiting on my briefing and the cappuccino wasn’t remotely worth it. The watch is though, roughly $40,000 worth with a diamond-studded face and gold hands and the charcoal suit, tailored by my employer’s finest from imported silk, makes a solid case for the costly timepiece. The pants are kind of riding up my ass, as the tailor must have taken a wild guess at my measurements without so much as observing my figure in a photo...

2 likes 0 comments 0
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Love Songs in Wartime

Submitted to Contest #26

Ever since North Korea began to demolish the US in World War 3, the general landscape of the country proved as brittle as the hope of its citizens nationwide. President Jeremy Laramie refused to concede and Florida, specifically Aketonka Bay where I’m from, has become a target of North Korean dictator Ji-Woo Hyeon-see. I am a musician who penned mushy love songs for commercials and films for ten years and my lucrative business was leveled in the latest attack by Ji-Woo’s forces. These days, no one could give two shits about a musician, ...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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Spider Hole

Submitted to Contest #21

Serving drinks on Christmas Eve is far from ideal. The bar isn’t exactly the final frontier for the holiday season and yet, everyone is itching to drown in booze whether sprinting away from problems or getting the liquid courage to stare them down. No one wants to cover a holiday shift and I’ve got no family living to spend the time with hence why I’m here providing respite to anyone who needs it unless it’s emotional. I’m tapped out or at least closed up with that. I skip the tradition of making the place seem more festive than it is. ...

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Isabella is Gone

Submitted to Contest #18

“It was just here!” I must have scrounged around in my coat, pants, and jacket pockets for two minutes pulling out my: keys, stray border collie hairs from my the last house I hit for the day, a packet of unused gum, tiny phone book/agenda book, broken sports watch I need to get fixed and a random ballpoint pen. “It has to be here somewhere.” The sole picture I have with Isabella is the one I’m turning the house upside down to find. It’s the one where we’re as high as paper lanterns on a Ferris wheel in a theme park that closed down fiv...

5 likes 3 comments 3
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Heart of Stone

Submitted to Contest #11

I stare into the crowd of familiar faces, scattered laughs rising from their throats as they tear into some blackened chicken, hot dogs, and beans over conversations ranging from scandalous to flat-out boring. Everyone is having a good old time of course and I make a conscious decision to cut through the ocean of family and friends to greet Mom. Of course, my body tenses up, my heart races and my hands turn clammy instantly at the sight of Aunt Malina stepping through the sliding doors to the backyard to nurse a beer beside her. As dizz...

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My Guitar is still weeping...and it's annoying

Submitted to Contest #7

I leap out of bed onto a glass floor surrounded by the boundless universe with shooting stars, planets, and other outer heaven sights I dreamt of admiring through telescopes. The rest of my room is dry concrete painted a rainbow of colors and dressed in ribbons, streamers, confetti, and silly string. I shrug and balance on the balls of my feet towards my closet and two ballet dancers in oversized black denim overalls sashay and pirouette out of it to reveal that all my outfits are winged. “Good morning, Keith.”, they beam and twirl out ...

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Pennie Gets a Life

Submitted to Contest #5

Dishwashing wasn’t the intended end-all-be-all for Pennie Udeba but neither her student loans nor her books for class or rent would pay for themselves. It turns out living in a fifth-floor apartment five minutes from campus has more drawbacks than she previously imagined. In fact, she has realized within her fresh three months she’s lived away from her father’s house has been a succession of heartrending firsts. One of them, in her first month out of her dad’s house, once he drove Pennie to her new place, has been the adrenaline-pumping...

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