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Heather Ann Martinez

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2020

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64 Stories

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Walking Along the Edge of Heaven

Weekly Contest #55

Walking Along the Edge of Heaven By Heather Ann Martinez Can you keep a secret? I never could. I always felt like I was catapult across the stage whenever my great aunts interrogated me about something they knew I had a hand in. They knew I broke the vase in the sunroom, cracked the ceramic cookie jar and ate all of my grandmother’s strudel in one sitting. I would tell my friends in school I was trustworthy and loyal to their well-hidden stories, but I was not. The minute our teacher asked if I saw or heard something, I confessed albeit ve...

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Bottled

Weekly Contest #54

Bottled By Heather Ann Martinez Where do you find peace? When do you lay all of your cards on the table? It can be so much easier to hold a poker face. Does anyone really have to know about our secrets, the skeletons we keep hidden behind the clothes in our closets? Do we really need to share what's been bottled? Of all the things I've done, this is the mistake you hold against me. It is a doozy. I won't deny that, but it wasn't like I was settin' out to hurt anyone. I didn't mean for things to go the way they did. You know that. I can't...

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Wyatt's Legacies

Weekly Contest #53

Wyatt’s Legacies By Heather Ann Martinez Noah Wyatt’s fudge popsicle was melting on the city park bench. Lilly was desperately trying to mop up the chocolate with a small napkin she received with her ice cream cone. This was her first outing with her grandson in a couple of years. She forgot how messy ice cream and popsicles were in the summer heat. It was August and the leaves had not changed color as she thought they would by now. She longed for September. She liked the cooler temperatures September offered. It had been four years since ...

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I Thought You Left the Dance Floor

Weekly Contest #52

I Thought You Left the Dance Floor By Heather Ann Martinez Lilly had not been in good health since her mid-thirties. She hid the pain as best she could while raising Matt. The pain never left her. It had been the uninvited guest that became a constant companion. Lilly spent much of her time dreaming of a day when she didn’t have to think about it. She never thought it would be around her seventieth birthday. Where others might curse at the thought of reaching seventy, Lilly embraced it. She did not feel pain or stiffness as others her age ...

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Bootlegger's Creek

Weekly Contest #51

Bootlegger’s Creek By Heather Ann Martinez Wyatt looked up at the stars. He unloaded the last box from the moving van. He still could not believe that he and Lilly were well enough to live away from the hospitals. He couldn’t believe that their odyssey of check-ups every three weeks and monthly scans were now over. He couldn’t believe they could finally move on with their lives and decided to go to where it all started-Walton County. Wyatt wanted to visit Walton County creek as soon as possible. Walton County creek lay between the Georgia...

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The Creaking Tree House Floor

Weekly Contest #50

The Creaking Tree House Floor By Heather Ann Martinez After rounds of needles, experimental treatments, new drug trials and thickets of paperwork, Wyatt and Lilly moved back to their hometown. Lilly’s father built a tree house in the west end of their property well over thirty years earlier. It was the most shaded area of where she had grown up, and it was here that she and Wyatt first met. With their luggage and prescriptions sitting in paper bags on the stoop of Lilly’s family home, they raced to the tree house realizing that they were n...

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Dancing With Wyatt Randolph Gates

Weekly Contest #49

Dancing With Wyatt Randolph Gates By Heather Ann Martinez The doctor’s waiting room was sterile. There weren’t any magazines on the table. No television or music playing. There weren’t any children or toys or lollipops on the counter. The receptionist did not smile. Her chestnut hair was in a tight knot. Her hazel eyes were attached to the screen. She didn’t try to make eye contact. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow when he walked up to her side of the oval counter. “Name, please.” She said as she adjusted her keyboard to type. “Wyatt Gat...

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Jukebox Baby

Weekly Contest #45

Jukebox Baby By Heather Ann Martinez Broken glass. Broken teapot. Broken cookie jar. Mister Arthur stood at the doorway looking at the cookie jar pieces all over the kitchen floor. The boarding house had just celebrated Mr. Arthur’s 70th birthday the night before. Mister Arthur did not regret eating the last of the cookies a few hours earlier. He still had a bit of chocolate on his mustache. No one had the heart to tell him. Miss Diane cautiously tiptoed behind Mister Arthur. Her hair was in curlers and she clenched onto her bathrobe for d...

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A Sonnet in Needlepoint

Weekly Contest #44

A Sonnet in Needlepoint By Heather Ann Martinez It was the end of spring and the beginning of summer. Evie said good-bye to Linus as he boarded the plane. They both wanted different things. That was what they told themselves and one another. It was not what their parents hoped for them. They knew they could have stayed in an assumed engagement for another year to appease their parents and the society they had grown accustomed to. Linus decided his talents were better served in under developed countries. He had been a doctor for several yea...

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The Time Box

Weekly Contest #43

The Time Box By Heather Ann Martinez Round were the snowflakes that fell on Sue’s eyelashes as she climbed the front steps of her uncle's stone mansion nestled far into the forest. Sue and her brother Timothy were to stay with their Uncle Stan until their father returned from the war. Uncle Stan had a butler and a housekeeper that were asked to look after Sue and Timothy. Sue was almost fourteen and Timothy had just turned seven. Their mother had recently passed away from a strain of influenza no one was familiar with. (Sue’s diary entry....

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Tersumbunyi (Hidden)

Weekly Contest #42

Tersumbunyi (Hidden) By Heather Ann Martinez Candles. Big pieces of chocolate fudge. Boxes of powdered donuts sitting on a long blanket overlooking the ocean. This was how I was going to celebrate my birthday if I were alone. If I had not opened my heart, I might not be experiencing the joy that I have. I’ve learned that not all secrets are meant to stay hidden. They have a way of surfacing and setting us free even when we don’t want them to. For years, I did not utter a single word. I knew how to form words. I watched people move their j...

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Shoulders

Weekly Contest #41

Shoulders By Heather Ann Martinez Voices could be heard crying out from the tallest mountain to the deepest cavern. Doubt spread like a merciless virus no one could control or contain. The Master heard the pleas of each one. The Master cried alongside them. The Master sent them a comforter and yet the Master’s children could find no peace. The children struggled. They feared. The children thought they were abandoned from time to time. They could no longer feel the presence of their Master. They eventually stopped trying and if anyone asked...

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A Cheating Husband's Wife

Weekly Contest #40

A Cheating Husband’s Wife By Heather Ann Martinez It was all over on a breezy May evening. Shell called me. I knew she would have to do something to stop her husband from losing everything they worked so hard for, but I never expected this. I never expected that he would still be alive. I never expected that she had a plan from the day they met at the casino in Reno. She asked me to come over to talk about her dilemma. I was prepared for that to be to bury his body, but it was not what she had in mind at all. No, that was not what Shell ha...

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If You Can't Find the Answer Here, Look to the Stars

Weekly Contest #39

If You Can’t Find the Answer Here, Look to the Stars By Heather Ann Martinez The evening sunk in. I was looking at the stars. My dad always said, “If you can’t find the answer here, look to the stars.” Dad was always convinced that some of the world’s toughest questions could be answered by looking at the Little Dipper. He always reminded us that we humans are part of a much greater cosmos. He would always look at our bright sun in the sky. He was humbled by what God created in the vast cosmos and was grateful to have a part on the univers...

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In Focus

Weekly Contest #38

In Focus By Heather Ann Martinez It was midday. Sunday. Day 106 of isolation. Forced to stay inside, away from everything and everyone I love. I became the recipient of an unwanted gift called time. I preferred to be at my job in sales and marketing to camping out in the living room eating chocolate streusel coffeecake looking at hourly news reports. I promised to be productive with this ‘time away.” Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Who could that be? I wasn’t expecting anyone. I was still in my pajamas with curly undone bangs boun...

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