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Elle. E. Tee

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2025

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40 Stories

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Elle. E. Tee

The room was a tomb of cool, calculated silence. I lay on my honeycomb-textured mat, the thick insert providing the only support my body could tolerate without the "soldiers" of my nervous system screaming in retreat. A fleece blanket was draped over me, and the fan whirred steadily—a mechanical lullaby blowing a consistent breeze to keep the air from feeling stagnant.I lived for the dark. In the dark, the invisible barbed wire wrapped around my ankle seemed to loosen just a fraction. I had my phone positioned just right, the voices from Chi...

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4% Battery: A Study in Neon and Nerve Pain

Elle. E. Tee

The end of the world didn't come with a bang or a whimper. It came with the sound of a foil lid peeling back—that wet, rhythmic schlorp of foil retreating from plastic—and the smell of synthetic cactus. Sage stood in the centre of Ward 4, her body a biological roadmap of bad decisions and worse luck. To the average observer, she was just a sarcastic hospital worker in stained scrubs. But internally, Sage was a symphony of short-circuits. Her CRPS wasn't just "pain"; it was a sentient, spiteful roommate who lived in her nervous system and fr...

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The Expiration of a Scavenger

Elle. E. Tee

Weekly Contest #343

The Averly Alley Artz hosted its annual Independent Creators’ Gala—a night where painters, poets, musicians, writers, and every flavour of tortured creative crawled out of their damp studios to display their work under dim lights and inflated egos. It was the kind of event that smelled like artisanal incense, generational wealth, and the faint, metallic tang of desperation. It was a room full of people trying to be “someone,” which made it the perfect hunting ground for someone who had long ago settled for being “no one.” Naturally, the scav...

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Forever Lasts Only Seconds

Elle. E. Tee

Weekly Contest #342

CW: Toxic relationship, mental health The command was a sudden vibration against the wood of the coffee table, a digital tether pulling me back into his orbit: “Meet me now.” In the world of online dating, people usually drag things out for weeks. They hide behind curated personas and polite small talk, but Jameson wasn’t "people." He was a gravity well. He was a dom, and I was submissive and compliant, so perhaps that helped the slide into his world, but the truth was simpler: he said go, and I went. I didn’t feel the need to say no. I jus...

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Peace isn't Passive

Elle. E. Tee

Weekly Contest #341

Time is a fickle architect. It stretches a single second into an epoch when you are watching the light leave the eyes of something you love, yet it compresses four weeks of a relationship into a smear of neon chaos. Time has always been a trickster in my life—obedient to emotion, not logic. It freezes when I am begging it to move and sprint when I am trying to catch my breath.I used to love love. I loved the “warm and fuzz” of it—the specialty of a feeling people treat like an endless tap. But somewhere between the trial-and-error of my twe...

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My Lamb at the Devil's Door

Elle. E. Tee

Weekly Contest #339

The garage in 2016 didn't smell like a beginning; it smelled like the end. I remember the weight of the air, heavy with the exhaust and the even heavier silence of a soul that had simply run out of reasons to try. I was a casualty of a four-hour nightmare with Xander—a brutal, gruesome fight that had left me alive in body but extinguished in spirit. I sat there, thinking, I’m just so tired. I’ve fought enough. I am done!Then came the miracle.He was four weeks old, a tiny, brindle scrap of life rescued from a crack den. When the vet told me h...

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Almost Is Never Enough

Elle. E. Tee

Almost is never enough. It’s a hollow place, a minimal space where chivalry and mannerisms go to die; a landscape where the possibilities of love, of connection, of something real, always fall at the feet of "so close, yet so far." I’ve learned to see these things in real time. It’s like fast-forwarding through a movie I’ve already watched—I see the ending while we’re still at the beginning, watching the cracks form before the weight is even applied. Some people call that pessimism. I call it pattern recognition. The day began in a graveyard...

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The Long-Distance of It All

Elle. E. Tee

Weekly Contest #337

Long distance is a funny phrase. People hear it and think kilometres, time zones, airports. I’ve learned it’s not that literal. Sometimes the longest distance in the world is sitting across from someone who thinks they know you. Sometimes it’s the space between a message sent and a message ignored. Sometimes it’s the silence someone uses like a leash. I never signed up for a long-distance anything. I don’t have the patience for digital romance or the stamina for emotional hide-and-seek. I like things real, in front of me, where I can see the...

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Close To The Skin

Elle. E. Tee

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being a woman with a "history" in a world of men who have only ever had a "lifestyle." It’s not just the physical toll of the CRPS—the way my nerves feel like they’ve been replaced with frayed copper wiring—it’s the mental gymnastics of trying to be "low maintenance" for someone who wouldn’t know how to maintain a pot plant, let alone a human being with depth.Our story didn't start with a spark; it started with a series of muffled thuds. I told him, clearly and in plain English, that I’m...

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To The Nearest Exit

Elle. E. Tee

The kitchen floor was a lake of shadows and spilled grief. Isabella stood on the coal-black tiles, her tears making small, shimmering pockets across the faux-stone surface. In the oppressive 40-degree heat of a Perth afternoon, the air was so thick it felt like water, and in that haze, she saw her.A figure, woven from the dim light of the hallway, stood across the kitchen."Oh, you startled me," the figure said, her voice a soothing ripple against the mechanical hum of the air conditioner. She pointed to the wet trail Isabella had left behind...

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The Saviour’s Tax: The Final Breath

Elle. E. Tee

Weekly Contest #335

CW: Mental health, substance abuse I. The Stranger in the Hallway They don’t tell you that when a White Knight saves you, he might eventually send you a bill. They don’t warn you that some rescuers only pull you out of the fire so they can keep you in their own private cage. The first lesson I learned—the one I am still swallowing like glass—is this: the price of "free" help is often your soul.I stand in the dim, grey light of the hallway, leaning heavily on my cane. The air in this house is thick, smelling of old wood, stagnant laundry, an...

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The Light of the Forgotten: Lamb’s Last Christmas

Elle. E. Tee

Once upon a time—not in a castle, nor in a land of dragons or kings, but in a small, quiet home by the sea—there lived a woman named Rosemary and her old brindle dog, Lamb. It was December, the month where time becomes both a thief and a gift. For Rosemary, this was the "last good month." The cancer was a silent squatter in Lamb’s body, but for now, it allowed him a temporary truce. His eyes were still clear, his tail still held the rhythm of his soul, and his spirit was hungry for one last adventure. Rosemary was determined to fill the spac...

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A HUNGER FOR ABSOLUTION

Elle. E. Tee

Henry VIII is incorrectly remembered as the king who chopped off all his wives’ heads. The myth is neat, dramatic, and easy to teach: six wives, six executions, a tyrant who devoured women as casually as he devoured banquets. The truth is messier. Only two of his wives were executed—Anne Boleyn, his second, and Catherine Howard, his fifth—both accused of adultery. The others were divorced (or rather, their marriages annulled), died in childbirth, or survived him.But history prefers its villains simple. A king who killed two wives is complica...

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Eighteen Minutes in Limbo

Elle. E. Tee

The engine is off. The silence is thick, but it’s not the cheerful hush I remember. The car park once echoed with the cooing melody of magpies, a melodic signal of a new, promising day. Now, the silence is thick, smothering, and utterly uncomfortable, frozen solid. It’s the moment after a sound barrier has broken, and my ears are still ringing with the shock of release.My finger is hovering over the 'Sent' folder on my phone screen. It's done. I have sent the email to Emily, the one meticulously listing every betrayal, every lie, every bound...

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The True Inheritance

Elle. E. Tee

The True Inheritance The night ritual is sacred. Not just the final, deliberate pull of medication from the bong—a necessity to quell the internal rave of CRPS—but the quiet, dark peace of knowing the day is done and the world has, mercifully, shut up. I, Isabella, am thirty something years old, and my current life—structured, quiet, and largely spent not screaming—is a fortress built meticulously over ten years to keep the noise and chaos of my family outside.It was 9:02 p.m. The clock on my phone shone the absurd time. Who, in the name of...

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