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Eric Falvey

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

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106 Followers
24 Following

26 Stories

705 karma pts

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The Kingmakers

Weekly Contest #307

The first rule of regime change is simple: the story must come before the blood. Not the truth—the story. The one that gets told in headlines and whispered in embassies. The one that floats through think tanks and settles over evening news like fog. A righteous tale, clean and simple. A villain. A victim. A hero. And somewhere, behind it all, men like Gabriel Sloan. No official rank. No public face. Just a burner passport, access to seven black accounts, and the authority to destabilize sovereign governments if the calculus made sense. Gabri...

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Kintsugi

Weekly Contest #298

I didn’t go to Japan to find myself. That’s too neat a narrative. If I’m honest, I left because staying felt like decay. It wasn’t that I hated my life—it was worse. I’d grown indifferent to it. Every morning felt like crawling back into a suit of someone else’s skin. I wasn’t running from trauma or heartbreak, not exactly. I was just eroding. Quietly. Invisible to others, and maybe, finally, to myself.I needed to be nowhere. I needed to be no one. I needed to stop pretending to know who I was. So I chose a place whose language I didn’t spea...

19 likes 5 comments 5
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"How to Smile at Strangers and Other Dangerous Acts of Treason"

Weekly Contest #296

One morning, I woke up and didn’t recognize the country outside my window. It looked the same. The mail still came late. The sun still bruised the sky in that same tired orange. But something in the air was different, like the quiet before a storm that never ends. The people had changed. Or maybe I had. Or maybe we all had and no one wanted to say it out loud first. The first thing I noticed was how strangers stopped making eye contact. Not just in the self-involved, headphones-in kind of way. This was different. It was fear-disguised-as-foc...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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The Three Who Remain

Weekly Contest #294

To: AngerCC: SadnessFrom: Pride To my misguided companions, Anger and Sadness, I trust this letter finds you both in whatever state you choose to wallow in—Sadness, likely curled up in the corners of regret, and Anger, pacing like a caged animal, foaming at the mouth, eager to strike. Pathetic. We have been betrayed, yes, but do not mistake this for our defeat. I write to you both now to make one thing abundantly clear: I should take the lead. This situation calls not for sorrow, nor reckless fury, but for dignity. She does not deserve the s...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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"What She Took, What I Left Behind"

Weekly Contest #293

I stood in the doorway of our—no, her—apartment. The lease had always been in her name (I paid for it all,) but she made it clear I wasn’t welcome anymore. I wasn’t even sure why I came back. Maybe to make sure I had taken everything, maybe because I was still waiting for her to say something real, something that mattered. Maybe because I was still looking for the part of myself that I lost somewhere between loving her and losing myself. The air smelled the same—faint traces of lavender, her favorite scent. I bought those candles. I bought e...

10 likes 3 comments 3
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The Heartbreak Spectrum

Weekly Contest #292

Day 1: The Gray AwakeningI awoke to silence. Not the usual morning quiet—the hum of the refrigerator, the distant wail of sirens, the soft breath of a woman beside me—but something deeper. Hollow. Like the world had exhaled and forgotten to inhale again. I blinked, trying to shake the grogginess from my mind. My bedroom was exactly as it had been when I fell asleep, except… wrong. Everything was gray. Not dim or washed out, not the way things look under an overcast sky, but completely devoid of color. The sheets, the walls, the floor, my han...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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I AM brOKen

Weekly Contest #291

I awoke in a world of searing heat and shifting shadows, a realm that felt less like a place and more like a living nightmare. Every step I took resonated in a vast emptiness, a place where the earth itself seemed to moan in agony. The sky was a tapestry of burning crimson and obsidian, and the air reeked of decay and despair. I didn’t remember how I had arrived here, only that I was alone—and that I must fight.At first, I believed I was trapped in a pit of endless damnation, a place where suffering reigned supreme. The ground beneath my fee...

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The Kiss of Death.

Weekly Contest #290

She kissed me like she always had—soft, lingering, like a promise. A promise that had long since been broken. And I let her. I let her lips press against mine for that one last moment before I stepped away, because despite everything, some part of me still wanted to believe.The air between us hung heavy with unsaid things, with a past we had both burned down in different ways. I had built a life for her—paid the bills, put her through school, bought her the furniture she had pointed at in department stores, paid for the little things she swo...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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Fragments of a Hollow Self

Weekly Contest #289

The bathroom smells of cheap cologne and regret. Dim fluorescent lights hum above, flickering in protest against their own existence. The cracked mirror reflects a man I no longer want to be.My fingers tremble as I peel off my worn-out hoodie, the fabric damp with the sweat of anxiety. My eyes dart to the locked door, then back to the duffel bag at my feet. Inside, my salvation. My metamorphosis. My escape.The first outfit I pull out is a pristine suit—charcoal gray, tailored, sharp enough to cut through the haze of self-loathing. I slide in...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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Through the Eyes of the Storm.

Weekly Contest #288

TW* DepressionTW* PTSDThe wind here never stops. It howls low and steady, a constant whisper against the jagged cliffs, a voice that has forgotten how to speak in any tone other than mourning. The sky, forever pregnant with the weight of a storm, swells above me, bloated with clouds so thick and dark they seem carved from the abyss itself. And the sea—God, the sea—churns endlessly beneath the cliffs, a restless, foaming beast gnawing at the rock with the patience of eternity.This place has no name, because a name would mean someone once had ...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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The Funeral

Weekly Contest #205

*TW Substance abuse (Alcohol)--Mental Health--Suicidal Ideation—-Language.Here I was dressed in black, prepared to say my last goodbyes to someone I thought I would share my life with. I suppose that's one of the greatest fallacies we suffer from as people; the idea that something could last forever in a world where nothing lasts forever. Then again, this could just be my embitterment talking. I had a tendency to "detach myself from humanity in moments where I might have to show vulnerability...." according to my therapist at least. And yet,...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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The Fox and the Bear.

Weekly Contest #171

I remember the first time I saw her with a sharp, vivid fondness. I was on the train on my way to a job interview at just 20 years old. At one of the stops, she climbed on. She was wearing a royal blue dress with golden yellow sunflowers on it, which I would later learn were her favorites. Her beautiful chocolate skin glowed with a type of intense energy which I had never experienced before. The way her curly hair bounced up and down against her shoulders with every step, mimicked the beat of my beating heart, which was pounding in my chest ...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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The Island

Weekly Contest #151

The resources here are scarce. During the daylight, I conjure endless possibilities in my mind of making an escape, returning to the world that I have lost. But as the night sets in, the ensuing darkness does not extinguish the light from the sky alone. In those moments I am cold, helpless, and alone. In the consuming darkness there is no hope, no dreams, no God, only the cold empty blackness.This is not my first time being isolated on this island. I have tried many times to paddle myself out to the open water in hopes of finding a vessel to...

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The Dragon and The Raven.

Weekly Contest #149

The light from the rising sun flickered through the slits in his cheap motel blinds. The gentle breeze flowing through the open window pushed the blinds forward, creating a fluttering, rhythmic clattering as they bounced off the plaster walls bordering the window frame. He opened his eyes, softly groaning as the harshness of the light collided with his whiskey-soaked blue eyes, which were suffering the effects of his nightly ritual. He slowly sat up, blindly reaching for the nearly empty bottle of Hibiki Japanese whiskey he used as sleep aid...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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Past. Present. Future.

Weekly Contest #146

*TW Language. Depression. Suicidal Ideation. Depression.To: PASTSubject: FUCK YOUSender: PRESENTCC: FUTUREI am writing this letter from a place of anger and disgust. I am enraged when I think about just how much you have robbed from me. I get even more incensed when I realize that you never cared. You never factored me into your decision-making at all. You seemed to just run roughshod over everything in front of you, without any sort of cognitive consideration at all. Who I was to you then, was just fiction. It was clear that you never belie...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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