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Fletcher Fox

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2024

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63 Stories

286 karma pts

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A question and alternate universe answers

"Have we met before?""No?" What a weird question to be asked while browsing a book store. You definitely would have recognized the woman asking you that question if the two of you had met before, as she was not someone who's appearance was easy to forget."Or, if we have, you might've looked different when we knew one another because I don't recognize you. Sorry," you apologized, realizing just how rude outright admitting to not recognizing someone who believed she knew you was. Honesty and rudeness were unfortunate siblings, you thought to y...

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wrong turn

At the intersection, I could go right and head home — but turning left would take me to the cemetery. Seemed like a meaningless, unimportant decision - both turns would take me somewhere with death haunting the area. Home just felt worse, gloomier because of how impersonal everything was - my aunt asking for funeral costs, my mom on the phone with insurance over hospice care. Death would be found everywhere regardless of which direction I walked.I turned left. I walked down the road, entered the cemetery. Mom would be at home, wondering wher...

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perils of pet store employment

Nobody who loved animals intentionally would take a job at a pet store chain. No, that was untrue, but that's what Briar told herself as she smiled and scooped crickets out of egg cartons for reptile owners, watching them watch the animals in terrariums with sad eyes. Briar told her corporate disapproved lie when informed by one said customer that one bearded dragon was struggling with shedding."I'll give him a bath later, we always do at the beginning and ending of a shift. Do you have a bearded dragon?""No, leopard gecko, but struggling wi...

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Drawing through time

She had seen him on the train more than a few times, always with his backpack. Sometimes he was reading a library book, sometimes sketching in what appeared to be a calendar or datebook type of book. This time, he was been in such a rush to leave that his datebook fell out of his backpack, onto the floor of the train. She was frozen, the way being too long around strangers often froze fellow public-transit goers as the rhythm of thevtrain lulled them into laziness, but by the time most people who had gotten on at the stop she had had goten o...

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you didn’t trust

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS VICTIM BLAMING, BOTH FROM OTHERS AND INTERNALLY, SIBLING INCESTUOUS RAPE AND DISSOCIATION AS A COPING MECHANISM. You didn't trust anyone. Or maybe you just told yourself that, a comforting lie while in reality you held onto that fragile pathetic little thing called hope. Hope that this time, some boundaries might remain intact. This time, he would just stop at whispering, at threats, at wanting without actually taking but you should have known words become actions eventually. You shouldn't have trusted ...

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From roots to shoots

A seed sprouted between the cracked cement slabs, beginning by growing its taproot before stretching up and up towards the sun, the shallow crack between sidewalk slabs creating just enough room for a determined sprout to begin its photosynthetic journey. It had lain dormant for months, waiting out the frost. But spring was here, and with the lengthening days, the seed sprouted, roots before shoots. Its embryonic leaves began creating sugars as its stem elongated, as did the roots underground, spreading beneath the concrete. The plant was gr...

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The Weight of Consent

Weekly Contest #298

This story contains themes of incestuous sexual abuse, coercion, and disability being used to excuse nonconsensual acts. It also explores the victim’s inaccurate view of consent, fear of criminalization, passive suicidal ideation, and dissociation. Please take care while reading. "Hey, you alright?" Alana could see exhaustion in her friend's face, his tired eyes, tensed shoulders almost to his ears as he stared in wide-eyed embarrassment at being questioned about his emotional state."Yeah, just... no, I'm not alright. Do you ever feel like e...

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illegally loved

Warning: This story includes themes of criminality and legal consequences, inability to understand consent, incestuous sexual abuse enabled by authority, internalized victim blaming, dissociation, emotional manipulation, and passive suicidal ideation (not wanting to exist). No portrayal in this story is meant to demonize any specific disability.Physically, there's no acute threat to sitting on the couch next to my brother. Physically, his hands on me, one around my shoulder, the other resting on my knee, are warm, a weight that in a normal f...

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Mom-ster

There's a hidden weight in every banal breakfast conversation now. It looks normal, seems ordinary, occasionally I can even convince myself nothing has actually happened. The only difference is where I wake up beforehand, which bed I'm leaving, but I shouldn't feel so much about it. Mom says I'm the man of the house now, and men love women, and I love her, so I'm supposed to love her. I do love her, I just don't love when she kisses me goodbye before I get on the schoolbus, the kiss is long and on the mouth. I just don't love what happens at...

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the library that looked like an apartment complex

The brick buildings are typical of Boston - old, with metal balconies where sparrows balance and perch, before flying elsewhere in search of food or a puddle to drink from. The building was tan, bricks weathered, not that anyone paid much attention to the architecture where they were headed, anyway. These were rarely those sorts of travels. That wasn't to say nobody ever went there in search of architecture studies - libraries housed all sorts of scholars, after all. And this brick building, in spite of what the balconies might lead a pedest...

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nobody will listen to what you say, so write

What's the point of talking if nobody will listen to what you say? That's generally my philosophy, and very rarely does anyone want to listen. Like the loser blowing me kisses and calling me slurs on my way to class, he doesn't give a damn if I'm actually a lesbian. Still, words are better than actions, and I'm grateful we're not in the same English class. I'm grateful the agonizingly long day of harassment by peers and ignorance by grownups is almost to an end. Almost, but not yet. The assignment is written on the board. Mr. Brown shows us ...

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When Too Much Isn't True

TW SEXUAL ABUSE, DISSOCIATION, INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS, INTERNALIZED VICTIM BLAMING "I've said too much." My heart pounded against the prison bars of my ribcage. My mouth was dry.  "You haven't said anything!" She shouted, but that wasn't true. If that was true, she wouldn't be frustrated with me, would be entirely unaware anything was wrong in the first place. Nothing was supposed to be. Nothing was supposed to be wrong. On paper, my life was ideal. I lived rent free with my parents, I have a disabled older brother, sure, but he adored me. ...

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Inside Closed Eyes

The mystery was why. Why create this sort of a painting? This dark, melancholy portrait of the artist with black pits for eyes, only for the artist to later paint over them altogether, leaving a black bar across the eyes like they were the patient in a medical case study. Only the sheer variety of colors in the background as well as the stylization of the painting made clear this was not a photograph from a medical case study. No, this was indeed a work of art. The paint was mixed by hand on a palette. In a world with more and more digital c...

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unloveable, message received, loud and clear

James wasn’t procrastinating. He was perfectly happy staying up late. He wanted to be lying in bed, playing spider solitaire on his phone. His dreams sometimes included spider solitaire, that’s how late he stayed up playing it, but there wasn’t any nefarious reason for it. There wasn’t any dread in his gut, fear somehow living in his neck, hands - no, James was living his waking life as though he would fall asleep eventually, and he had no reason to care about that, to avoid it, he didn’t. He fell asleep around four in the morning, his phone...

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transformative teenage rebellion

My mom dropped me off at the restaurant, convinced I was just meeting with a study group. They were somewhat correct, just not the type of studying nor group my mom would approve of. My backpack did not contain books, but rather clothes, clothes my mom would scream at me if she knew I would be wearing in public, but this was not just anywhere in public.  No, I knew this restaurant, this event, was safe, so I undressed in the single stall bathroom, taking care to zipper my skirt and button my blouse, applying makeup the way I had taught ...

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