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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019
Submitted to Contest #227
TW: although this story is at best speculative, it vaguely references death and loss, so please be mindful. I'm not trying to upset anyone during the festive season. :) Four-hundred years was long time between meetings, Rhys had to admit. The last time he’d seen her, no one in this country even knew what hot chocolate was, let alone how to make it. Thankfully, the acne-scarred kid behind the counter seemed to know what he was doing so Rhys let his thoughts drift. It was hard, he admitted, trying to ignore people’s auras. As the kid behind...
Submitted to Contest #70
I’ve taken to writing by the window, in a makeshift seat made from flattened cardboard and a sofa cushion you picked up from the skip. I’m sitting on my already numb backside, the window glass smeared with post-its about plot and character. The typewriter is crushing my thighs, but I’ve almost lost the feeling in my legs too, so the pain will stop in a minute. Besides, I’m over halfway through. And this time, I can feel it. This is the manuscript. I won’t be throwing this one in the fire or throwing balls of its crumpled chapters at th...
Submitted to Contest #59
She told me to wait here. Here, by the train station, where people in grey coats bustle out of the revolving doors. People with dark looks, with leather briefcases. It’s as if they’re all extras plucked from some London Documentary. Except, we’re in Shrewsbury, and this train station is a few metres away from a castle, the castle around which we took a guided tour. Me and you. My sister. And Dad, of course. Dad, who is off buying you some clothes. Bright pinks skirts with frills. His favourite as well as yours. You two like to play ...
Submitted to Contest #58
Trigger warnings: child abuse, sexual assault She could not remember the last time Uncle had let her out of the house. While he only usually spoke to her once a day, at breakfast where he sat at the head, not looking at her, he would never let her stray without permission or a chaperone. Either one of Uncle’s friends or a married woman that he knew. The girl was named Minerva Edri and she was to be married before she bled. Lying in those humid sheets, in the room that would never be hers, no matter how many times ...
Submitted to Contest #55
2004, Dartmouth “Can you keep a secret?” There were splinters in her palms and the signal on her phone was waning. Margaret Wolf gritted her teeth against the pain and ploughed on through the undergrowth, her tights tearing on the brambles as she passed. At her feet sat a carpet of golden leaves, but she could no longer appreciate Autumn on the Dartmouth Estate. Everything had become so tainted so quickly and it was only the adrenaline rushing through her veins that kept the tears at bay. She didn’t understand how everything had gone...
Submitted to Contest #54
Work ran late, so I didn’t go to the reunion. To tell you the truth, I’d been planning to avoid it since I received the memo on the group chat. I’d only joined the chat because I’d been coerced by the school bully who’d since become a Counsellor for a private company. The irony was not lost on me. All the same, I might have been forced to download an app I barely knew how to use, but I would not go to that reunion, regardless of how many reminders popped up on my calendar. Rather than sitting through hours of porcelain smiles as they remi...
Submitted to Contest #53
I’d been reading the same sentence for three minutes now. I still couldn’t focus. The magazine, depicting landscape shots of decadent granite kitchens, seemed to wilt in my hands. It was some subscription piece, received through my letterbox this morning, where a too-happy woman who was much thinner than me, was standing in front of a newly refurbished manor in the Cotswolds, occupied the front cover. I glared at her, cursing her straight white teeth as they gleamed like my dead Mother’s pearls which sat on my vanity in the bedroom, neve...
She’d stolen his headphones again. Aaron paused on the threshold, peering into the living room beyond the glass doors. Wafting his face with a comic book, he managed to loosen his collar. Even so, sweat pulsed through the pores of his skin, almost drowning his senses in the stench of ammonia. He really wasn’t built for this weather. Panting, he stepped toward the grand armchair which sat adjacent to the bookshelf on the far side of the room. The armchair where his sister, Martha, was typing on her bright pink laptop under the watchful ...
Submitted to Contest #52
The moment I turned into the fruit and vegetable aisle, I knew I should have picked a different trolley. The left wheel squeaked around the corner, the rubber ricocheting off the granite floor. The whining cry reminded me of Harry. All alone with the babysitter. Barely six months old, his thumb in his mouth, suckling with his gummy smile. His hair, ginger like hers had been. Tears sprung to my eyes, but I blinked them away. The funeral had been months ago, and I kept hoping things would change. But I still refused to leave the house most d...
Submitted to Contest #51
Beneath the rubble of a ruined town, a child bride gazed up at the stars. She wasn’t dead, but she wanted to be. She’d prayed for release ever since her parents had been deemed unsuitable and she’d been sent to live with her Uncle, who’d been planning her wedding to his forty-year-old business partner, a man named Shraga Levi. Shraga Levi wasn’t a bad man. He promised he pay for her schooling, that she’d have stables filled with stallions, and that she’d be able to indulge in her favourite hobby – swordsmanship. He would have given her m...
Submitted to Contest #50
Standing across from me, silent from the moment the Nurse walked in, the woman who was pretending to be my fiancée took out her phone. It was a black and bulky – a flip phone. The Nurse frowned at her as he adjusted my IV. Sighing, he pulled the bedsheet closer to my chin. My nose twitched. The sheets were riddled with the stench of iodoform. “Another proposal?” I smiled at the woman who was not my fiancée. If the receptionist or the Nurse had been paying attention, they would have noticed that my hospital visitor wore no ring and she was ...
Submitted to Contest #49
I’m in a stupor the moment I cut the engine. The car park is awash with disused concrete, peeling in the sun. I grit my teeth. It shouldn’t be so sunny, not when I know what I know. The sun should not be shinning, not today. I wipe my eyes and open the door. Slam it behind me. At my side, an ambulance roars through the gates, the driver stone-faced with a five o’ clock shadow as he pulls into A & E. For a second, I fracture. I wonder if that’s her, blood pooling around her broken bones. I blink. Regain my composure. As a Farmer, I ca...
Submitted to Contest #48
Maddy Brooks drifted in and out and consciousness, her mind trying to bridge the gap between awake and asleep. The world was swimming, the sensation of water filling her ears. Blindly, she reached for the shore, but only blackness greeted her. Had she really seen those things? Those impossible things. She tried to shake her head but heard a ringing in her ears. Maybe she’d been hit by a car on her way home from the bus stop. Maybe she’d never made it to the bus stop. Her throat curled up, while her fingers shook. Blackness. She was awake,...
Submitted to Contest #47
One hand to the mirror, as if placating the glass for the intrusion, you carefully prod the bruise on your cheek. Briefly, you wonder if you can truly cover it up with a mere smattering of Foundation. Your hand pauses, gently probing the purpled skin. It is a Coat of Arms, you realise. A Crest. A Crest crafted of darkened lilac hues, blooming like an oxbow lake over your freckles. Perhaps your freckles are the reason he did this. After all, you’ve never liked them either. The mirror offers you a skeleton girl with sunken cheekbones crown...
Submitted to Contest #46
The trophy was laughing at her. The formidable glass sphere sat atop a stand of obsidian, smiling with diamonded teeth. Carved in silver were the words, ‘Best Debut Novel 2004’. A decade later, the Award was still sitting on a shelf above her desk, covered in a sheen of dust. Emma Simmons paused above her keyboard staring, as she had been for the past few days, at a blank word document. The cursor blinked, as if mocking her. Her fingers hovered, teetering over the Caps Lock button. Three days since she’d announced the sequel to ‘A Flower...
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