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Erica Bunker

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2025

Stories (11)

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10 Followers

2 Following

11 Stories

212 karma pts

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It Was Just Supposed to Be a Fun Summer

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #336

Meghan adjusted the rearview mirror of her SUV, tilting it just enough to catch what she’d been dodging for weeks.Her own eyes.Dark. Kohl-lined. Lash extensions laid by the gods. Fatigue she couldn't escape settled into her features. Resentment lingered, familiar as an old tune. She was tired of carrying it, tired of pretending it didn’t weigh anything.Traffic on I-85 crept forward. Meghan couldn’t wait. Athens called her like peace does when you finally stop arguing with it.Her suitcase lay quietly in the trunk. Not packed for escape, but f...

12 likes

Dried-Up Tenderness

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #333

Annaliese didn’t cover the chicken.That was the point.She had done everything right. She stood at the meat counter longer than necessary, scanning the trays, looking for the right chicken—not too small, skin intact. She asked questions. Organic. Air-chilled. She wanted something that could hold heat without falling apart.She’d seen the recipe on TikTok that morning. The woman’s voice had been calm, reassuring. This one always brings them back to the table, she’d said.Annaliese wanted that. The table. Them.She bought everything. Real butter. ...

7 likes

The Quiet That Cut

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #326

LaurynMen always think the punchline belongs to them.Mark was six-five of “you-should-smile-more” confidence poured into an Old Navy hoodie. Bald head, neat beard, hands big enough to palm my whole life. We matched on Bumble while I was killing time in the break room, pretending the cappuccino machine was a coastal escape and the leasing CRM wasn’t a vampire feeding directly on my soul.Three years divorced, both of us. We trauma-bonded so fast the metaphor should’ve come with seatbelts. The messages were therapy-lite with thirst-trap underto...

11 likes

The First Lady Who Found the Pulpit

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #318

David and Monica Whitaker had built the kind of life people pointed to and said, “Now that’s a good marriage.” Not glamorous, not the stuff of reality TV, but steady in a way that drew admiration. Thirty years of marriage had smoothed their edges, dulled the sharp arguments of their twenties, and carved out a rhythm that was equal parts habit and devotion.They were college sweethearts who had weathered leaky starter apartments, sleepless nights with colicky babies, PTA meetings, and mortgage payments. They had emerged with two grown children...

14 likes

Filtered

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #316

I was trending again.Not for the reasons I was used to. Not because of my signature #GlowWithAlex serum, or the Vogue cover shoot where I was draped in a Valentino cape the color of crushed garnets. It wasn't even because I’d just been named to the 2025 Sephora Squad, a career pinnacle that had my followers ecstatic just two weeks ago.No, this time the trending was different. It was an ugly, burning sensation in the pit of my stomach. Someone had posted a blurry photo of my husband, Gavin, at a dinner at Delilah’s with a woman who was not me...

8 likes

Heat Lightning

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #314

Title: Heat LightningThe oppressive Atlanta heat had a personal vendetta against Josie Davenport. At fifty-two, she was no stranger to a fight—she’d gone toe-to-toe with teenage rebellion and won, buried her parents with a grace she hadn't known she possessed, and walked away from a man who treated fidelity like a suggestion. But this August heat? It was different. It felt like it was trying to suffocate her, to beat her down with its sheer, relentless force, a sticky, suffocating blanket of misery.Josie leaned against the cool marble of her...

3 likes

This Can’t Be Real

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #312

The first time Sabrina Hill downloaded a dating app, she was forty-eight and freshly divorced, still full of hope, still believing in the power of good lashes and a strong Wi-Fi signal. The first time she deleted a dating app, she was forty-eight and three-quarters, barefoot in her kitchen, watching a grown-ass man in a muscle tee tell her via FaceTime that he “wasn’t looking for anything serious” while his toddler screamed in the background and someone—presumably the baby mama—threw a hairbrush at his head. She poured herself a glass of win...

5 likes

Unwritten Consequences

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #310

The glowing cursor blinked at her, a silent witness to the irreversible act she was about to commit. Nadia Simmons told herself it was an exorcism. That’s what she told herself the night she pressed Publish. A purging.She was sitting on the floor of her bedroom—if you could call it that. A mattress on the floor, a thrift-store dresser, a single lamp with a bulb so dim it made everything look like an old photograph.The laptop glowed in her lap, the cursor blinking next to the final sentence: I let him go, but I never really let go of myself.S...

14 likes

What We Could Have Been

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #309

Camille met Julian on an unseasonably warm evening in early March, at a fundraising gala in Buckhead. The event was hosted in a restored mansion—polished floors, tall windows, everything scented faintly of roses and old money.She’d come alone, representing her firm—she was a senior partner in a boutique public relations agency—and she was tired in the way only the very successful can be, when every achievement feels like a carefully balanced performance.Julian was standing by the bar, holding a glass of bourbon, surveying the room with the t...

13 likes

The Summer of Merrick

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #308

Shauna sighed, a soft, wistful sound, like a memory fluttering loose from a long-sealed box. Forty years. Forty long, sometimes awkward, sometimes wonderful years since she’d been Shauna Peterson, age thirteen, and completely certain the world turned because Merrick Jones smiled at her.It was the summer of 1984—New Edition on the radio singing "Cool It Now" from every boombox, neon scrunchies in every girl's ponytail, and the fizzy, heart-thumping sense that anything could happen. That summer, Shauna believed in first kisses, in magic coinci...

6 likes

The Silence Between Crashes

Erica Bunker

Submitted to Contest #307

Eryn didn’t realize how much of herself she’d given away until the silence started to feel like peace. For years, she had lived tethered to an invisible string, constantly anticipating the next yank, the next sharp correction. Her days were a series of calculated maneuvers, each word weighed, each action filtered through the unspoken question: How will Anthony react? The quiet she now inhabited was not the oppressive, heavy silence that followed Anthony’s scathing remarks, nor the hollow echo of unspoken grievances that permeated their share...

19 likes

Author bio

Erica Bunker writes the kind of stories that linger—psychological, emotionally raw, and steeped in truth. As an author, she specializes in peeling back the layers of complex relationships, exploring the spaces between love and survival, silence and eruption, perception and reality. Between Truth and Damage marks a bold turn into domestic suspense and psychological drama, reflecting her gift for navigating the gray areas of human connection.

By day, she works in property management; by night, she tells the truth through fiction. Erica is passionate about giving voice to women who are told they’re “too much” and men who mistake control for care. She lives in the South, drinks her coffee strong, and writes the kind of fiction that dares to say what others only think in the dark.