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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2023
Submitted to Contest #334
One of Kaylie’s earliest memories was of her mother, staring at her from across the kitchen table, an intense burn in her bright blue eyes. It was a chilly winter morning and Kaylie and her mom had just built a lopsided but enthusiastic snowman on their front lawn. Now they were sipping from mugs of hot chocolate overflowing with marshmallows. Kaylie was maybe 4 or 5 years old, and was warming her hands by wrapping them around the steaming mug when she suddenly had a thought. “Mama?” She had asked. “What is in the woods on the end of Junipe...
Submitted to Contest #333
Jaritza Jaritza and Amaya were running late for school again. This time it wasn’t even her daughter’s fault. Amaya had laid out an entire outfit the night before, shoes and all. Her book bag was packed and she was finishing a piece of toast at the kitchen table before Jatiiza had even changed out of her pajamas. “Mom we are going to be late. Again.” Her daughter looked up from her phone long enough to shoot Jaritza a judgmental frown. “I have a spelling test today. If I miss it Ms. Namor will make me do it at lunchtime.” Jaritza quickly thre...
Submitted to Contest #331
“Life is the sum of all your choices.” Albert Camus Saturday December 7th11:55pmOrchard Street Nora was startled awake by the ringing of the doorbell. At first she thought she was still dreaming, but when she saw her husband also rubbing his eyes groggily, she sat up in bed. “That is the doorbell right? I am not imagining it?” Max nodded. He pulled the curtains back from the bedroom window and peered out at the front lawn. Snow was still drifting down, it had been slowly falling all evening. the streetlights casting an orange glow over the n...
Submitted to Contest #330
“Congratulations! Its a girl!” Even through the haze of exhaustion (she had been in labor for over 24 hours at that point), Amelia heard the doctor’s words. A girl. She had just given birth to a baby girl. Amelia had looked down in amazement as a tiny baby wrapped in a pink and white blanket was placed into her arms. The little girl’s eyes were wide open, already exploring the world. Twenty years later, Amelia would get a call from Paris; her daughter, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, all of the city spread out below, and she would think of t...
Submitted to Contest #249
I often have this reoccurring nightmare where I am desperately trying to catch some form of transportation. The method changes; sometimes I am running through the airport, a heavy backpack bouncing up and down on my shoulders, other times it is the train doors sliding shut right before my foot hits the platform. I am sure a psychologist would nod knowingly, say something about never quite feeling good enough, or about the fear of falling behind. I mean, missing a train is a fairly obvious metaphor isn’t it? I actually went to a therapist onc...
Submitted to Contest #245
CharlotteWhen Charlotte was 11 years old, she met a boy named Jimmy by the lake. Jimmy had blond hair and blue eyes, and a smile that was as bright as the sun. He was carrying a stick with a fishing line and a hook attached to it. It was not a fishing rod, as those were expensive, for the families who owned the boats docked by the larger lake over in town. The big lake people lived here year round, had winterized homes and generators for the months where the entire town was buried underneath three feet of snow. The people at Smoke Rise Campg...
Submitted to Contest #243
Sometimes, while he was watching his team work, Nikolai wondered what the world had been like before the Retreat; 9 to 5 jobs, long lunch breaks. He would wonder, while staring at the screen in his home that showed all of his employees dutifully typing away, how anyone could get anything done in 8 hours. Right now his team was working in Real Time. In about 20 minutes an alarm would sound all around the office indicating it was time to go On Retreat. When that happened, each one of his employees would pull out the small device that...
Submitted to Contest #240
Trigger Warning: Makes reference to violence. The sun was just beginning to lighten the sky when I slid into my car. I tossed my backpack into the backseat and rolled the windows all the way down, relishing the damp, earthy scent of the grass, the cool morning breeze on my skin. It reminded me of going camping as a kid, of waking to sounds of birdsong and quietly unzipping the tent, my bare feet on the cool ground. Occasionally there would be an animal, a chipmunk perched on a log nearby, a bird catching the proverbial worm, and if I were re...
Submitted to Contest #239
On the end of a plain, unremarkable street in Queens sits JHS 212, a typical public school by NYC standards. Only at some point the very active PTA of this typical public school had decided to put a whole lot of fundraising money toward its music program, multiple classes, real instruments, the real deal. So if your kids went to school here, they would have the option to be in band, and not just any band, one of the most impressive middle school bands in the city, run by one of the best teachers your pre-teen could ever hope to have.********...
Winner of Contest #236 🏆
Trigger warning: Contains underage sexual content, mentions of assaultYou know the movie Dirty Dancing? The one where Baby goes off to that fancy resort with her parents for the summer, and in the beginning she is a good, sweet girl who loves her daddy, and then by the end she is still a good sweet girl who loves her daddy but now she is kinda sexy too and can dance like a pro and is totally in love with that beautiful dance teacher. Why doesn’t anyone talk about how that teacher is clearly much, much older than Baby, and despite Patrick Swa...
Submitted to Contest #198
Trigger warning: Contains references to substance abuse and violence.Its funny how you don’t ever really appreciate things until you no longer have them, until they are gone. We were 16. What 16 year old appreciates anything really?I remember there was this one morning, I must have gotten a total of like 3 hours sleep the night before. I show up for first period like I have just crossed the finish line at the NYC marathon, all breathless and sweaty and full of teenage drama. I slide into my seat just as the final bell rings and lay my head d...
Submitted to Contest #197
As always, Hallie woke up right before her alarm went off. Despite this, she still set the alarm every night before bed, just in case. You never knew when something that was routine might suddenly change.Although if Hallie was being perfectly honest, not much ever changed around here, not unless there was a accidental bug in one of the Network updates, and even those they usually fixed within minutes.She sat up and slid her bare feet into the fuzzy brown slippers that were always on the floor right by her bed. She then yawned, did a few quic...
Submitted to Contest #195
I’m going to tell you a secret about Rebecca Broadstone, something that is going to shock you. She hates coffee, absolutely, positively despises it. Now, I know what you are thinking, the warm mug, the steam, the contented sigh. Well the mug and the steam are real, but the happy look on Rebecca’s face…fake as a Gucci bag from Chinatown!How do I know this, you ask? Because I know everything there is to know about Rebecca. I know that she started YourWay in 2021, when she was a lowly student at FIT and wanted to create clothing that every woma...
Submitted to Contest #193
“What do you mean you are quitting?” Two of the other woman in the hallway immediately turned their heads to stare at her. Alicia took a deep breath and made an effort to lower her voice. “No, I understand what quitting is. Its just that most people give some notice. They don’t, out of nowhere, say hey I am not going to pick up your kid today, good luck.”Alicia stuffed Chloe’s pink backpack into the small wooden cubby hole outside her classroom. “Yes I understand that, Becky but you made a commitment to do a job. No, of course I value y...
Submitted to Contest #192
The hardest thing about divorce for Ana wasn’t that she was ending her ten year relationship with Mikael. No, the thing that was the most frustrating, the thing that was currently keeping her up at night, was all of the stuff. “Literally,” Ana said to her best friend Isabelle, over coffee and French toast on Saturday morning. “It is literally keeping me up at night. Like I was up until 2am last night cleaning out a closet.” Isa laughed. “Ten years is a long time,” she replied. “That’s a lot of Amazon packages.” Ana agreed. Mikael...
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