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Submitted to Contest #331
The man couldn’t feel his feet. He was wearing flimsy thongs, the rubber cold and hard and frozen between his toes as he waded through the snow. His knuckles were white and bloodless, his skin covered in tiny peaks and ridges, goosebumps. A shiver crawled up his spine, like an icy finger tracing the curve of his back. As he stepped onto the porch, ice crystals drifted from his thin beard. He heard the doorbell reverberating inside, a resounding ding dong. He slammed his fist into the hard wood, over and over, hoping the occupants of the hous...
Submitted to Contest #330
‘Hi, my name’s Zahra. My mum’s got cancer. Want to be my friend?’ I was only seven at the time, and felt the need to send every potential friend a snapshot of my life, a glimpse a picture I didn’t know they didn’t want to see. I didn’t notice the other girl, the other seven-year-old, perfect blonde hair stripped back in a neat plait, wrinkle her nose and writhe in discomfort. ‘What’s cancer?’ One of them asked, with such an inflection that it seemed like she thought it was contagious, a disease that could be passed on by word of mouth. Anoth...
Submitted to Contest #328
Aaron lived in a ghost town. Nestled on the side of an endlessly long road, with more houses than people and overrun by foliage. Reclaimed, more like. Grass was knee-high and barbed like tiny harpoons, vines crawling up the side of buildings, slowly edging out the mortar from between bricks until they lost their structure, one by one. A thick canopy blocked so much sunlight it was hard to differentiate between night and day. His own house hadn’t escaped the grip of nature. The windows were boarded, they always had been, but they did little t...
Submitted to Contest #327
CW:T his story contains themes of death, grief, and disturbing psychological elements. The car rumbled, the engine spluttering. The seatbelt was too tight across my neck, jutting painfully into my throat. I pressed a hand beneath it and felt my skin scratched raw. There was already a crimson stain on the fabric, that had grown progressively darker every time someone sat there. I’d lost hope that soap and water would ever be able to get it out, had I even tried.‘Damn engine,’ Mum muttered. She was driving, hunched over the steering wheel like...
Submitted to Contest #325
The gate creaked. It was heavy, metal, with twisting protrusions of rust jutting out between flecks of peeling paint. I clicked it shut, the mechanism groaning in protest, as if this wasn’t exactly what it was made to do. I wasn’t leaving, but closing it for the night. No one in. No one out. The night was quiet. The sky was a dusty black, a light smattering of stars like galactic freckles, winter freckles, dulled by the city’s light pollution. I wasn’t that close to the city, but close enough to see the tips of skyscrapers looming above the ...
Submitted to Contest #324
‘Rinse your feet before you come inside,’ the fisherman growled. ‘Don’t go tracking sand all over my clean floors.’ ‘Clean’ was an overstatement. The inside of the fisherman’s house was almost exactly how the boy had expected: too-small rug, stained with salt water, covering mottled tile floors. Wooden furniture, two chairs sitting around a circular table. A pitched roof, walls littered with hooks and ledges holding antique clocks and black-and-white photos of things the boy didn’t recognise. ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy obliged, turning a rusty meta...
Submitted to Contest #322
Dear Jordan,If you are opening this, it means I am no longer alive. It means my cancer finally got the best of me, and I’ve been put to rest. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. But I could never tell you. I mean, would you? You’re so full of energy and life and vigour –how could I ruin all that? Anyway, now I’m gone, there’s no one for you to compete with. But I want one last game: my dying wish, if you will. The prize? If you win, you get to beat me, forever. You outlast me. You finally get to triumph over me, even in death, even when ...
Submitted to Contest #321
When people hear the phrase, ‘meet your maker,’ usually they mean to die, to return to a place of emptiness and nothingness where they came from. I was not like other people. I have met my maker. We were friends. He was an old bloke, thinning, white hair atop a head criss-crossed with deep wrinkles, bags fleshy and dark beneath his eyes, like they were made of melted wax. A hunch in his shoulders, like he was carrying a backpack stuffed with weight and had adapted to its bulk. Kind eyes of a man who looked like he was a father, but I knew h...
Submitted to Contest #319
The girl was crying. Fat, salty tears were streaming down her rosy pink cheeks, coloured by shame, regret, remorse. Her sandy brown hair was clumped together in matted bunches, hanging like rose bushes around her shoulders. I wondered when the last time she’d brushed it was.‘I –I didn’t mean to,’ she was saying. Blubbering, really, chin wobbling, voice shaky and throat bobbing. ‘I didn’t think he’d –he’d get away. I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know who she was apologising to. Me? The world? The one she set free? Anyone who would listen. Not many peop...
Submitted to Contest #317
The man was young. A stubble darkened his chin, a small cobweb of creases forming in the corners of his eyes. Dark purple shadows bracketed his eyes, making them look like they were bulging in their sockets. His clothes were tattered –skinny jeans that had long since gone out of fashion, a plaid shirt worn open over a plain grey t-shirt. The man was dead.‘Arden,’ I said. My voice boomed. I hadn’t used it in quite some time.The man looked up. He carried a backpack with a keyring attached –the letter ‘N’ now faded clashed against his metal wat...
Submitted to Contest #316
I heard the cars collide before I saw it.A scream. A sickening, gut-wrenching, grating sound, low and guttural. The groaning of metal as it contorted and twisted into a shape that looked nothing like the front of a car. Glass shattering and tiny fragments scattering, tinkling as they landed. Then: bright lights. Blurred shapes and ringing in my ears. I checked myself –dazed, running my hands across my arms, my torso. Nothing more than superficial injuries, nicked skin from the glass fragments sitting on the dashboard. Smoke, coming from some...
Submitted to Contest #315
The box was dusty, its sides moist and soggy, draped with shadows and cobwebs that were nestled in the back of my wardrobe. The bottom almost gave way as I hoisted it into my arms, dust tickling my nose, burning my eyes. A tiny handprint was visible, layered beneath particles and dirt, barely an outline, a shade lighter than its surroundings. Dust (or nostalgia) made my eyes water. It had been a long time. The name, Emery, was still scrawled on the side, in thick, black letters, but had faded over time. It didn’t need to be there. Who else w...
Submitted to Contest #314
It was hot. The hottest day in a decade, at least. The sun was an unforgiving ball of fire, beating down on my shoulders, licking my pale skin until it peeled and blistered and turned darker. Unrelenting for a week now. My parents now prayed for rain every night before bed, in hushed voices, sweaty hands clamped in front of the only fan in our house. My hair was glued to my forehead, beads of perspiration merged into a sticky swamp on my skin. I was wearing the smallest, shortest clothes I had –my sister’s old school uniform, a shirt that ba...
Submitted to Contest #311
I can make things levitate. Sure, you might be thinking, as you sit in the audience of one of my magic shows, coat strewn across your lap, crumbs of popcorn or whatever greasy overpriced food you’ve been persuaded into buying clinging to the corners of your mouth. Sure, you can. I can use thin string and background workers too. Not that impressive. But then how do I take your green-rimmed glasses right off your face, lift them into the air, then place them right back down on your head again? How do I peel the leaf off of you that’s been clin...
Shortlisted for Contest #310 ⭐️
I couldn’t tell if the words I was typing were from me or borrowed from someone else. That’s how unoriginal I was; a mosaic of authors, pieces extracted from my favourite novels and forcefully injected into my own work. Never truly my own, simply a puzzle made from fragments of books I’d picked up here and there –a sentence I’d seen in a magazine, a quote from a non-fiction book I’d forced myself to read. At thirty-two, most successful authors had already been established, and those who didn’t make it had dropped into mundane nine-to-fives a...
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