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Iris Silverman

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2020

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198 Followers
119 Following

28 Stories

894 karma pts

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What We Take To The Grave

Weekly Contest #294

TW: This story contains themes of sexual abuse and substance abuse Grandaddy was a 70 year-old rail-thin, one-legged chain-smoker born and raised in Red Bay, Alabama and one of the meanest people I’d ever met. He’d wake up each morning around 7am and hobble into the kitchen on his crutches. Then, he’d take a swig from his flask and chase it down with a pork rind or a Little Debbie cake, whatever was closest in reach. He never wore a prosthetic - just dirty blue jeans with the end tied off on the left leg. I knew his routines like this becau...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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Inflatable Green Pools, Scotch, and the Summer of 1985

Weekly Contest #292

Georgia told me that the humid air in our small Arkansas cabin made her have nightmares for that entire summer. She said the emerald green leaves that cushioned the tree branches outside were trapping the heat in, suffocating her. She acted like I didn’t know that what she really hated the most was the fact that the air conditioner had broken a couple of months back and our dad had never bothered to get it fixed. We’d wake up every morning with droplets of sweat glistening on our skinny backs, doing its best to dry while it was confined to o...

19 likes 16 comments 16
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The Kidney and the Stray

Weekly Contest #290

CW: Contains themes of chronic illness My kidneys were failing. I shouldn’t be sitting in a dialysis chair at 21 relying on a machine to remove the toxins that everyone else just pisses out. I should be putting toxins in my body: vapes, hard Kombuchas, vodka cranberries, marijuana, and cigarettes. But even with the impulsivity I still possessed, I wasn’t about to take that risk. The nurse at my nephrologist’s office told me that dialysis centers are the equivalent of nightclubs and house parties for people with end stage renal disease. I th...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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Cherry's Pickings

Weekly Contest #289

I cringed as I wiggled into the cherry-red leotard, fishnet leggings, green headband, and black pumps. As instructed, I pulled my auburn hair into a high ponytail that was so tight I could feel the blood vessels in my scalp start to pulsate. It was a sharp contrast from my faded cotton T-shirt that read “Cherry’s Pickings,” blue checkered apron, and loose jeans that I entered in. I looked at myself in the mirror of the bathroom and saw a ghost of myself. My eyes wandered over to the window, where the only lights were the dim ones that barely...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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Plastic Flowers

A couple of plastic flowers fell out of Fatima Meader’s pocket as she bent over to check the price of a ripe mango from a street vendor, her diamond-shaped beige birthmark exposed on her lower back. She had been arranging the flowers in the casket of a petite elderly woman who had died from metastatic breast cancer. The velvety red petals created a sharp contrast with the concrete covered in speckles of urine, dirt, and fruit juice. She paid for her mango and hurried to the subway platform. It was nice to be among the living, even if it mean...

3 likes 6 comments 6
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Fate's Twist

Harmony Peters stood in line at the ice cream shop, looking at the threatening dark clouds in the November sky outside. What an awful day for ice cream, she thought to herself. She perused the flavors as she waited for a man with three screaming children to proceed to allow them to sample at least 2 flavors each. He looked back at her and intermittently smiled sheepishly. She didn’t smile back. The flavors created a stunning display of colors: mint chocolate chip, pumpkin pie, lemon icebox pie, blackberry jam, key lime pie, chocolate covered...

2 likes 0 comments 0
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Florid Affairs

Mitchell She was wearing a square-cut black dress and black heels. She still had that toughness in her eyes and that sexy athletic build, but she seemed smaller than she used to be. I saw her looking at his photos from where I stood in the back entrance of the church. It made me want to punch the glass out of the picture frames but also wrap my arms around her and never let her go. I’d gone back and forth when I heard the news about his death. Was it appropriate for me to go when I hadn’t spoken to her in 8 years? Would she even want to see ...

2 likes 0 comments 0
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Be Good for Goodness' Sake

Weekly Contest #75

Before this year, I wouldn't have paid much attention to people’s laziness. I wouldn't have dwelled on the crowded chats in the lunchroom about the latest story on The Daily Mail or a patient they shouldn't have been talking about. And I would have turned my back when I saw staff treating break-rooms like private bedrooms— in a couple of different ways, if you know what I mean. It was just what people did. And I figured that nothing could really change people. But this year, people’s laziness began to cost lives, un-masked chats in the lunch...

18 likes 3 comments 3
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Imagine That

Weekly Contest #75

The door opened slowly with a creak. With caution, I looked around. It looked to be half-bookstore, half-coffeeshop, and something straight out of a Harry Potter novel. The—barista?—was wearing a crimson beret and a lemon-yellow scarf, his skeleton-like hands pursuing a newspaper. The customers were odd, too. One woman reeked of onion but smiled pleasantly. Another held a ferret in his arms daintily, letting the creature venture along his back and arms. A third seemed to be whispering to herself and rocking back and forth in the wooden chair...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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Looking Back Lemons

Weekly Contest #61

The flight has been delayed another 30 minutes. Outside, the clouds are more like thick winter comforters than summer throw blankets. Renee Luke looks at the clock. She thinks there might be just enough time to get a meal in before she has to give the next update to the passengers. Behind the desk she squeezes a fresh lemon over her chicken piccata. The capers swim in small wading pools of butter atop the perfectly browned chicken. Renee’s nose is tingling. She looks around anxiously. Eating in public makes her nervous. Like a ripple effect,...

19 likes 17 comments 17
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Where There's Water

Weekly Contest #60

Leeroy Altman was on his fourth Mountain Dew of the day. All he had to drink was that sickly yellow liquid. It dribbled down his chin and settled on his protruding collarbones, with a stickiness that could only be removed with a shower. Too bad that wasn't an option either. He had the major hots for his neighbor, Fiona Royal, but he smelled too gross to approach her these days. He tried drenching himself in cologne, coating himself with a hefty layer of Fabreeze, and even rolling around on dryer sheets. But nothing can take the place of a l...

21 likes 11 comments 11
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Matters of the Heart

Weekly Contest #59

The subway station is no more crowded than usual this Friday. The smell of diesel mixed with dough from bagels wafts through the air. The grime on the floor is a mix of donut crumbs, dirt, urine, pizza grease, and soda. Saxophone notes penetrate conversations and demand space. A string breaks loudly on an electric guitar. A man with a long red beard talks to himself. Children scream at their parents. Karim Saleh isn’t hearing, smelling, or really seeing any of this today. He feels a tightness in his chest. He’s 25 years old and has just been...

26 likes 15 comments 15
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The 1st Step

Weekly Contest #58

I was once again floundering, faced with the dread of adulthood looming over my head. It started with the black pumps I had to buy at JC Penny’s. The smell of the grey carpet and vacant-like atmosphere reminded me of a long-lost childhood, memories I kept grasping for but could never seem to reach. Then it was the the blisters the pumps gave me and the bagginess of my eyes. My face suddenly seemed strikingly asymmetrical. If beauty was symmetry, I felt uglier than I’d ever felt in my life. I walked in the glass doors, wincing as my ankles we...

17 likes 4 comments 4
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