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Frances Goulart

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2024

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69 Stories

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ON ICE

Weekly Contest #369

The line of people stretched all the way around the block, under huge sun hats, baseball caps, updated do-rags and those new-fangled sun helmets Lululemon was turning out by the thousands, made to resemble bespoke animal heads. The crowds were no surprise. Who didn’t want to be frozen for future thawing in a far better (and cooler) future? The enthusiasm all started with those neighborhood cold plunges that had replaced old-fashioned swimming holes and pools in 2027.What the hell, being frozen (“cryosized”) was free, wasn’t it? Well, unless ...

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NOW YOU SEE IT

Weekly Contest #367

I should have stayed in South Beach, I thought as the car service rolled up to the curb at 86th and Fifth. Effing UES! Even the Upper East Side of Manhattan now seemed grungy and chaotic after two slothful weeks with toes in the water and plenty of half-naked women to look at. At least I had come back with an honest-to-God tan, not one of those $200 quickie Bronze Boutique jobs (The secretary special).And I had to come back, I had to!” Grant Cantor, cool your jets, man”. I was muttering to myself like a homeless person as I rushed out of the...

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HAVE YOU HEARD THE RUMORS ABOUT BRINEHAVEN CLIFF?

Weekly Contest #365

“Casey, thanks for making the trek out here to check out the house. Too bad the weather is kind of a shit show. We’ve had a lot of rain and wind, more than usual for Rhode Island in late spring. Watch your step in that mud. What the hell are you wearing ?”“These? Prada sneakers. Nice, huh? It’s ok. You’re talking to Casey, the guy who hiked Mount Washington last year, all 6288 feet of it in near hurricane weather. You’re talking to the dude who ran a full marathon in Oahu in 3 hours of pouring rain on New Year’s Day, 2019. Remember me, Ca...

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THE SECOND RAINCOAT

Weekly Contest #363

It was raining. Hard. It felt like the sharp, biting drops were headed just for her. Lindsay shivered inside the cheap Amazon-brand rain cape that felt like wet tissue paper around her shoulders. It really wasn’t keeping the rain out. And anyway it stopped at her waist where the rain continued to assault her, sloshing around her bare ankles. “Rain rain, go away, she muttered. And don’t come back another day.” Not that Lindsay didn’t have a real raincoat; she did. It was rubber duck yellow, one of those old-fashioned numbers that you’d find...

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LAST SUMMER OF MY NINTH LIFE

Weekly Contest #361

August, as it came to an end, was beginning to feel like the cruelest month of all. When summer was over, so was I . I, Felis cactus, would be no longer here, vanished, that’s all, folks!But that’s the existential problem with being a cat, isn’t it? Whoever is in charge (probably some big unneutered Doberman in the sky) only gave us nine lives. Why nine? What would have been wrong with ten, or how about life everlasting for good behavior?? By August 31, summer would be over and my ninth life would be over, as in used up . But ,I had o...

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HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

“Damien, hey, man, I’m glad you could get free for the afternoon. I wondered if the bosses would give you a hall pass, so to speak. I mean, that’s a pretty demanding job you’ve got yourself. I won't even ask you to explain how it's possible to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen; that’s what you do now, right? But like they say about morticians, I’m glad somebody does it.” . “Morticians, Ted, ha ha. That’s old school! No, hell, I would always take time for you. Especially considering how far you’ve come. Coming here, it’s not like jumping on a G...

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ERNIE, YOU ARE NO MURDERER

Weekly Contest #358

ERNIE, YOU ARE NO MURDERER! Nobody believed in me. Was that their first mistake? It isn’t like what I proposed was rocket science or brain surgery exactly, but it might as well have been. I mean, judging from the way they looked at me this afternoon in the executive conference room. It was the way Clemson cocked his head, and the rest of them just folded their arms in silence. Not in “I’m thinking it over” silence, but in “Is this dude crazy or what?” silence. All of them except for Crystal.Maybe you expect a girl with a name like Crysta...

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HONEST TO GORKY

“You, whoever you are, are standing on Gorky’s doorstep!” I said “ And I am Gorky.” “Gorky? You’re a ladybug and you're named after the Russian socialist novelist Maxim Gorky?” Of all things on an early Monday morning in the Wild Wild Woods, what should I find standing outside of the paperbag that is my house and home, but a brown bear creature with big snowshoe-sized feet, “Gorky’s my undercover name. I saw the name on a paperback in the library's trash bin. What’s your name? Are you a grizzly bear ?” “No,I’m a desert kangar...

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ALL THAT GLITTERS

Weekly Contest #356

“Maddie, look! Down there, “ he said, excitedly pointing at something in the lower depths of the leaf- covered pond at our feet. “Something glittering. Like gold. But it’s so far down. What do you think it is?”“Glittering? Maybe it’s a big fat good luck goldfish. Duffy, you are the eternal child. How can you see through all the gunk and muck in a pond that hasn’t been properly dredged since, I don’t know, the Neanderthals were stomping around Franklin County .” “Neanderthals? Don’t make fun of my rustic pond, and by the way, Maddie,...

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LEAVING MY SWEET BEAUTIFUL HOME

Weekly Contest #354

LEAVING MY SWEET, BEAUTIFUL HOME There are untold numbers of very famous people whom I am not. For instance, I am not Emily Dickinson, although I think Emily and I could have been friends over her edible flower-decorated gingerbread and tea. I am not Georgia O’ Keefe, although I can imagine sitting on one of her flame-red couches and watching her sketch gorgeous fruit bowls and shimmering sunsets. I am not Jane Austen, although I can summon up the image of me, listening in on her 18th-century gossip girl commentaries over a tureen of Mr ...

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COLOR ME GREENBACK

COLOR ME GREENBACK “Mmm…“It smells like yellow. Mellow yellow.”“Get your nose out of the bowl, Craig. It’s just a bowl of ramen noodles..”How can it smell like a color? Colors don’t have smells.”“They do for me, Max. You see that little robin’s egg blue tea cup over there on the next table. Next to the cute little blonde in the pinafore? I can hear it. That blue cup. It sounds like D minor, the chord, D nor.”“Craig, that's looney tunes. That’s just a coffee cup and this is just a bowl of noodles. And now you’ve spoiled my appeti...

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THE LITTLE RED BOOK

Weekly Contest #351

“Everything you can imagine is real”---Pablo Picasso “Take it back!” Sam shouted at no one in particular, waving the gift book over her head. Everyone had left the room anyway. Everyone, being her mother, her stepfather, her clueless friend Angus from next door, and baby Linus (what good was bringing a baby to a birthday party? A six-month-old who pooped his diapers right in the middle of the cake-cutting?) Sam reflected on how much she hated babies, starting with her little brother. Babies were so worthless. They couldn’t eat cake or brin...

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DEXTER, GOOD DOG!

Weekly Contest #349

Their car backed out of the garage and headed down the driveway. It was early morning. There was still a sliver of moon in the sky. But I could see Alison’s little pink face pressed against the rear window as it drove away. Then they were gone, and I was alone again, just like that time long ago. What did I do wrong? My name is Dexter. You can call me Dexter. I am just a dog, but don’t call me Doggie or Rover or Paws, because you think that I don’t care what you call me, because you think I am a mutt. I do care. I am just a dog, not a ...

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WHO'S CALLING?

Weekly Contest #348

“Who’s calling?” Who is this?” There was silence at the other end.Well, not total silence. Someone was breathing into the receiver. The mouth(his, hesr, or its) creepily close to the receiver.But there were no wordsThen the breathing stopped. And a muffled voice mumbled “203” enunciating the two, zero, and three. As though it might mean something to me? “Speak up or hang up!” I shouted into the receiver of my landline.Silence again.Why didn’t have caller ID ? I wondered, besides wondering what I was still doing with a landline in 2026, a...

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THE FLASH AND THE KID

“Call me The Flash, kid.” Sure. The name fit. In fact, I knew the first time I met Ezra Garfinkel outside the Three Squares Diner that Ezra wasn’t the kind of guy to be taken for granted. Or to get taken. Not even once. You only had to take a good look at him to know you weren’t going to squeeze an extra nickel, word, or favor that he didn't owe you out of him. I may be a high school dropout, but that much I knew that first rainy afternoon I ran into The Flash. I wasn’t dressed for the encounter. Seventeen-year-old me, knockabout Lonnie G wi...

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