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Diamond Keener

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2022

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50 Followers

43 Following

32 Stories

454 karma pts

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Baby Jane

There is a peculiar orange stain on the wall near the window that I have been staring at since Mom left. It is either orange soda, or, it is the last remaining fragment of the paint that was previously on the walls. Before it got covered over with the slate gray it is today. It would make sense that in the 1950’s a clementine color would have been the selection. They wanted to go with something bright but unique, none of that mossy green, cloudy blue or powder pink that the other motels. The Dunes would have chosen the orange, orange like a ...

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Not the First, Not the Last

Weekly Contest #366

He is clutching on to her hand for dear life in the grocery store. Their palms are sweating against one another with a fervor that speaks of summer even though it’s been no hotter than sixty degrees all year. If she should let his hand slip from hers he could die. She is his life line. Just eight days earlier she discovered him on a park bench, crying his eyes out and insisting all the while that he was fine. She sat down next to him, this stranger, and after listening for a few minutes knew that he needed her. The open heart in him beat so ...

8 likes

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7 Years Bad Luck/7 Years Good Luck

Weekly Contest #342

I hear the sound of it falling right as I am finally drifting back to sleep. Like a foley sound in a corny old movie, the glass explodes with force. “Why would anyone put a mirror right here?” he questions from the bathroom. Some of the pieces have shattered into such tiny parts it looks like glitter is covering the floor. It would be almost magical in another context. Like you could step on them and be transported to a new world. The reality is, there are shards of glass covering the bathroom floor. The hand mirror has broken. He’s the ...

25 likes

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Henry Rising

Weekly Contest #339

“Looks like rain.”Someone Henry could not identify said. “Snow.”Miss Madigan choked. “It would be good if they cancelled it. For Henry.” “We’ve never cancelled.”Principal Lawrence called out from the doorway. Henry crouched with his back against the cold brick and his hands knitted together in a tight ball. Something was falling from the sky. It could have been snow three hundred feet ago. “Doesn’t matter. He’s just not going to make it. It’s like sea turtles. You know.”The cigarette smoke curled in the air as Miss Madigan spoke. It crept ar...

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Magic 8 Ball

Concentrate and ask again The magic 8 ball gives relatively spooky answers for being so kitsch. It feels like the most Hasbro form of sorcery even though I’m pretty sure that title belongs to the ouija board. Despite the commercial qualities, I’ve trusted it more than I’ve trusted myself based on an experience I had some time in the future from now. When all seemed lost it was my guide. I asked it again if I was going to be happy. Ask again later It was just another way of saying no. The old witch lied to me when she told me how to rewi...

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Scene From a Bad Crime Movie

Carl counted down from ten. When he got to zero and didn’t hear the door opening, he started over,“Ten, nine, eight, seven six, fiiiiiiiivvvvveeee…”Not even the sound of footsteps outside. The car door had opened. The sound of the lock, the double ‘beep beep’ had sounded. She could have gone to the neighbors. But he had assured Mr. Milde that there would be no problems. If she came back with someone else, or if she didn’t come back at all, there would be a big problem.He opened and closed his fists inside the fake leather, stretching the glo...

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Vision of a Sorrow Eater

*TW, allusion to self harm and abortion Here I am lying spread open on the table. Except I’m not on the table, I’m in my own bed because I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital and lie on the table. It costs twice as much to lie on the table as it does to lie in your own bed. On the table the procedure takes ten minutes. In my bed I will spend six hours riding waves of pain that feel like the ocean on its worst day. There is someone to hold your hand if you lie on the table. There are women there. They tell you that everything is going to ...

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An Ode to Tybee Island

It is so early that no one else is around except a few fishermen high up on the faraway dock. They wouldn’t hear us unless we both screamed at the same time. Their floppy hats swaying in the breeze and their lines quiet and still. Mom’s waving her hands back and forth in the water. She's watching how the foam from the gentle waves bubbles over skin upon contact. “Now the pink is fading.” I say as the sun breaks over the top the line of where the ocean ends and the sky begins. My swimsuit is a one piece pink which is the same color as the ...

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How to Reappear

Weekly Contest #321

Tomoe Shingun holds the power of invisibility. It isn’t from the use of a cloak or some practiced ability. It’s a gift that lives inside her. One day she woke up in the middle of the forest and it was just there. That’s actually how the game starts. Her waking up and being pursued by a group of ronin. Not powerful people, but still she’s outnumbered. So what does she do? She hides behind a tree and closes her eyes. One of the pursuers circles the tree just as Tomoe opens her eyes. If you know what you’re doing, then the ronin won’t see her. ...

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Immaterial Automata

“Hey Brinley?” He called from across the kitchen. The volume from the speaker didn’t lower, the Cuban jazz radio station blasted along. He lifted his hand with the knife still in it. He held it in front of him and waved it in the signature circle to try to get her attention that way instead. The blue pilot light did not so much as flicker.“Brinley? Can you please not do this tonight?”He continued chopping the onion at a frenzied rate. She was not going to tell him the next step in the recipe. She was not going to answer him at all.It had got...

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There is No such Thing as Losing

The building was on fire. And I stood on the other side of the street watching as the old diseased walls crumpled into shapes like burning paper instead of burning wood. It shrunk so quickly that it was almost anticlimactic. Almost.There was no time to save it. It’s not the building I’d like most in the world to burn down, but it was a good close second.When filming The Sacrifice which was his final masterpiece, Andrei Tarkovsky staged a scene in which a house slowly and beautifully burns to the ground. The house started burning down, big bi...

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The Little Pill

Weekly Contest #304

“Pill time.”He said under his breath. Three seconds later the whining alarm sounded and Sandy rushed to turn it off. Dick didn’t look up from his newspaper as he unscrewed the cap and popped two tiny blues in his mouth. Washed it down with the last of his afternoon coffee from the Universal Community Bank mug he’d gotten from the raffle in 1995. He’d been using it everyday since. It went in the dishwasher on Friday nights, which was the night they ran the dishwasher. In 2012 it cracked when Sandy dropped it on the front porch. She should hav...

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Wilting

Weekly Contest #279

Content warning: Themes of substance abuse and mental illness.“Just because a dog doesn’t have a soul, that doesn't mean you get to treat it badly. You still pet it, feed it, and take care of it. Isn’t that right Martin?”Simon put out his menthol which was only half smoked and then gave his dog a wink. Atop the empty sardine can with all the other butts, the cigarette sat smoldering. A dog so plump next to a man so withered, they made quite a pair.  Martin did not respond to Simon’s question. Instead he rolled over and showed the ...

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Roadkill

Weekly Contest #250

“Is she dead?”  “She sure is, poor thing. I hate to see that. She shoulda listened to her momma.”  The older girl standing with the bus driver was waiting to get off. The girl's purple backpack had bright chains of beads hanging from it. They made a swishing noise as the bus passed over the bumps along Cherry Street.  It was the first day, so everyone’s clothes, their shoes, their bags, all looked new and uncrumpled. And there was a certain smell in the air inside the classrooms and even now in the old bus. Like a fresh coat ...

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Denial of Devils

The opening notes of Some Velvet Morning tinkled in from a source that sounded far away. The black cat padded down the long dingy bar and silently leaped to the sliding feet of his owner. There was something strange about the cat even before he uttered a word. And I didn’t remember the cat being at the play, no one mentioned it, and they invariably would have. But then again, I didn’t remember walking into the bar either. Or why we had chosen it. The cat’s golden eyes were round and shining. Saucers that made him look like more of a cartoon ...

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