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Jane Andrews

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

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93 Stories

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Heart Broken

Weekly Contest #56

I sit on a vinyl covered chair, my gaze resting on the tiny form in the clear, Perspex cot. It’s not really a cot – more a box on top of a trolley. Wires dangle from a bleeping machine that measures my baby’s heart rate and tracks the oxygen saturation levels in his blood. He looks heartbreakingly fragile, his clothes dangling off a body too tiny to fill them out; his sparrow-thin legs like little twigs. A cannula attached to his skull delivers life-sustaining ‘maintenance’: a sugar and water solution that is helping to keep him alive. I wat...

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Jolt From The Blue

Weekly Contest #56

“Can I come over?” Lizzie asks as I answer the phone. “I’ve got some really exciting news.” It’s easy to guess that this news probably has something to do with a boyfriend – Lizzie’s twenty-four and she’s never had much luck with men until now; but the way her voice fizzes tells me that she’s found someone special, and I have a feeling she wants to come round and tell me all about him. * It’s almost seven when the doorbell rings. I open the door, my face already wreathed in a smile at the thought of seeing Lizzie happy, and then I falter ...

21 likes 9 comments 9
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Friday Night Date With Death

Weekly Contest #56

First of all, let me make it clear that I’m not one of those people who does online dating. I’ve heard of ‘Tinder’ – most of the young singles at work use it – and I know you have to ‘swipe’ right or left if you like the look of someone; but meeting a complete stranger for a date just isn’t me. I do, however, have a sort-of-blind-date for this Friday. Steve, a guy who recently joined my work team, has asked me out. Well, I think he’s asked me out. It could be a date or it could just be a two-people-who-happen-to-be-single-at-the-same-time-an...

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Polite Conversation

Weekly Contest #55

Sidney was the only one who could see the elephant in the room. All around him, people sipped wine or nibbled hors d’oeuvres, grateful for their first opportunity to mingle in a social gathering (whilst retaining a 2 metres distance from anyone else of course). Conversation ranged from the usual banalities concerning the weather (“So hot ... Marvellous for the strawberries ... Could do with a bit of rain now, though”), family life (“Of course, the kids are completely feral by now after missing so much school – every day, I feel us getting c...

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The Initiation

Weekly Contest #55

Dolores Clayberg taps quietly on the unassuming front door, hoping that she hasn’t been followed. Seconds later, the door inches open and a voice whispers “Password?” “Gucci.” It’s a ridiculous password, but some of the others had insisted they needed a link with their everyday selves and so this simple five-letter word has become their entry ticket to a sleazy world where they indulge in their most shameful pleasure away from the judgemental gaze of anyone else who knows them. Dolores struggles now to remember which one of her fellow secr...

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Car Crash TV

Weekly Contest #54

“Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready to play Second Chances with your host, Larry Loveheart!” The voiceover sounds as huge screens slide apart to reveal a set dressed as a bar. The six contestants sit on stools facing the cameras, drinks in hands, while the assembled throng dutifully applaud. From behind the counter, Larry Loveheart – yes, it’s his real name: he changed it by deed-poll – strolls out to greet the audience, his gleaming white teeth unnaturally perfect. He gives a huge wink to camera and begins his introduction. “How many peopl...

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The Rhythm of Life

Weekly Contest #54

I’m someone who has made clumsiness an art form. Dance was never really a part of my life. Despite growing up in the 1970s, disco passed me by. My parents were God-fearing Methodists who attended a tiny church with a congregation that barely made it into double figures and consisted mainly of old ladies in hats. Due to the advanced age of the latter, strenuous social activities were out – with the result that my weekends were spent not at dances but at Beetle drives. Even someone with my total lack of co-ordination could manage to shake a...

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Potter-y Lessons (with apologies to J K Rowling)

The crowd outside the classroom looked less than enthused. Delilah Fayle regarded the motley crew and sighed. Going back to school to try to pass her Ordinary Wizarding Level in Basic Magic had seemed like a good idea at the time, but most of these squibs looked as if they would be even more hopeless than she was herself. She hoped the teacher would be patient. She had already picked out the class troublemaker – a flamboyantly dressed would-be wizard with a raucous laugh and an apparently limitless supply of stories. “So what I was trying t...

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I Never Stopped Loving You

Weekly Contest #54

Past: Everyone at school called us The Golden Couple – not because he was the star quarterback and I was the head cheerleader, but because everyone who saw us instantly said that here were two people in love. Our yearbook marked us out as the ‘Couple most likely to get married’ and, at the age of eighteen, that’s what Todd and I thought too. When we said goodbye as we left for our separate universities, both of us meant it as an ‘au revoir’ and not an ‘adieu’: we were full of promises to write and call and to visit as soon as possible. We m...

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Misfits

Weekly Contest #53

College is a time for new beginnings, for reinventing yourself and being the person you couldn’t be in Middle School or High School. Even if you change your image when you hit 15 or 16, in everyone else’s eyes, you’re still the shy girl with glasses and skinny legs or the fat kid who sits by himself in the lunch hall every day because he has no friends. But no one else at college knows who you used to be and that’s what I was looking forward to – until a long-forgotten book made me change my mind. * “Jen! Can you clean your room out for me...

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Roses by Gaslight

Weekly Contest #53

Trigger warning: depictions of rape   “Do you like it?” Tim asked as they pulled up outside the cottage. Rose stared at the surprise her husband had planned for her, noting the honeysuckle round the door and the way the late afternoon sunlight caught the windows, and smiled. “It’s beautiful,” she said. It really was a picture-perfect place to spend the weekend. “What time do the others arrive?” she wanted to know. Tim consulted his phone. “The last message I had from Mark said they’d be here by six. That gives us plenty of time to chris...

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For A Time, You Meant Everything

Weekly Contest #52

Violet was only fifteen when she first met Ruby’s brother, Jack, but she fell for him on that first evening. Of course, she didn’t tell Ruby that she was in love with him: although her best friend felt proud of her brother for enlisting in the RAF, just because he was now eighteen and about to go off to serve his king and country in the war against Hitler didn’t mean she’d forgiven him for any of their childhood squabbles. So Violet kept her feelings a secret; but from time to time, she casually asked how Jack was getting on, hoping that he ...

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Angel Heart

Weekly Contest #51

It was gone six when Marie finally finished her shift at the homeless centre. Wrapping her scarf around her neck for protection against the chill November air, she left the building, longing for the warmth of her tiny flat and the companionship of her cat. She loved what she did at the centre, but it wore her down sometimes. It was good to know she was providing a service for people who needed it, but it could be a thankless task – lots of rough sleepers would far rather be given a bottle of whisky than a mug of hot soup. Nevertheless, she t...

28 likes 8 comments 8
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Written in the Stars

Weekly Contest #51

Above my head, thousands of stars wink and twink, clustering together in the familiar constellations I’ve known since I was small. Beside me, my mother points them out, telling me the same stories she always has done, her voice calming and hypnotic against the sound of the ocean in the background. “See that large star over there? And the three smaller ones that form a diagonal line running down to another larger one? That’s The Hare – see? His head... and his back... and his haunches. He was a trickster, but he was also the cleverest anima...

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A Fridge Full of Bacon

Weekly Contest #51

I gazed at the fridge in disbelief. A week ago, I had emptied the kitchen of food before my husband and I went on vacation, but the fridge was definitely not empty now. Upon the previously bare shelves sat a packet of butter (we only ever buy sunflower spread), a block of lard (ditto, olive oil) and what looked like enough bacon to set up a truck stop.            “Did you buy any soya milk?” My husband joined me at the open fridge door and peered inside. “What the hell is that?” he asked...

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