Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog

Jessica Higginbotham

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2025

Stories
Comments
Library
32 Followers
64 Following

6 Stories

143 karma pts

?

Summer Is Not Dead: The Seasonal Killer

Weekly Contest #372

The cicadas screamed so loudly from the trees that Mark could barely hear himself think. REEEEEEEEEEEEE. He didn’t mind. It was the sound of summer refusing to leave. REEEEEEEEEEEEE. “Pumpkin spice. Yuck.” Mark spat onto the sidewalk and watched the brown glob sizzle in the August heat. Ninety-four degrees. That was what the bank sign had said three blocks back. Ninety-four damn degrees, and somebody had just sold him a pumpkin-spice coffee. “I don't get it.” Across the street, the family had been decorating their house for Halloween for the...

10 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

REWIND OR BREATHE

Weekly Contest #371

JUNE'S MOVIE flashed across the screen. There she was, dancing for the whole world to see as Chamber of Reflection echoed through the empty theater. June watched herself spin between the rows of seats, arms stretched wide, hair falling loose behind her. She was putting on a show for the entire world. Her world. And there wasn't a single person in it. No sick grandparents waiting for her at home. No children calling her name from another room. No one asking where something was, what was for dinner, whether she'd remembered this or forgotten t...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Luna's Lunar Breakdown

Weekly Contest #354

Loneliness. It waxes and it wanes. I look around at all that I have. All of the moon is mine now. I had friends, but they turned into aliens. Since they have been gone, I howl at night, where it's always dark but somehow bright enough for me to see what I lost. From my sight, I've disassociated from earth, but I sometimes feel as if the stars aligned for this path. What seemed so big and all that mattered is now a spec in my eye. Now here I am, the true loner wolf who howls at the moon, day and night. Months go by. Why did I try to take my l...

10 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Take Care

Weekly Contest #348

Carol's mother had always been mentally unstable and needed someone to take care of her. "You're like the mother, and I'm like the daughter," her mother said when Carol was only a child. The pressure made her into a pearl. "You okay?" the elderly woman said, grabbing Carol's arm with cold, trembling fingers, pulling her out of her thoughts and back into the moment. "Yes, just thinking about my mother. I'm sorry, it's time to change your colostomy bag. Sit here." The pearl she had become trained her to care for others, and she did it with pas...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Kissing Cindy

Weekly Contest #334

TAUGHT YOUNG Happily ever after was never what she was chasing. Cindy’s stepmother made certain of that. Jealous of a child who still believed in rescue, she taught Cinderella early that princes were not saviors; they were opportunities. That love, once offered, became leverage, and in a kingdom built on power, leverage was everything. She was taught to break hearts the way others broke bread: deliberately, without apology, and always to survive. The woman who taught her to wield love as a weapon would later frame her as a sunset of darkness...

23 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

An Unexpected Gift

Weekly Contest #331

The gift wasn’t wrapped in paper or tied with ribbon. It didn’t come in a box left on a doorstep or inside a card slipped under a door. It arrived quietly, like a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, released just in time. It wasn’t anonymous; I know exactly who sent it, but it was unexpected. A kindness from a higher power I had spent years pushing away. God, patient as ever, must have looked at me in all my stubbornness and said, “She’s still mine. Watch what I can do.” I’d spent a long stretch of my life running, numb, reckless, and ...

19 likes 2 comments 2
Read story