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Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2021
Submitted to Contest #326
The laughter came first, easy and bright. It carried across the warm air of Crystal Cove, rolling over the graded sand, catching the edges of sunlight like a bell. Mark and Amber Bennet ran hand in hand, half drunk from the bottle of chilled white wine they’d downed during lunch, letting their footprints dissolve in the tide washed sand. The wind off the Pacific smelled of salt and seaweed, dry driftwood, and the faint tang of something else, metallic and hidden. Above them, the small rental cottage perched like a fragile ornament on the cli...
Submitted to Contest #322
The late afternoon sun filtered through the Presbyterian Hospital blinds, casting golden stripes across Lucious Stewart's massive, weathered hands. At eighty-seven, he still had the strongest grip Anna Belle had ever known, though now it trembled slightly as he held hers. The machines around him beeped softly, a digital lullaby that couldn't quite mask the weight of sadness infused in the moment. "Anna Belle, sugar," he said, his voice carrying the same warmth it had when she was seven and scraped her knee on the front porch, "there's someth...
It was a quiet Saturday night, the kind of twilight hour when most of the world wound down. But in a secret alpine compound accessible only by individuals whose net worth exceeded “astronomical,” something unusual was brewing. An unmarked jet landed on a private strip carved into the mountain’s side. Out stepped the titans of modern wealth: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. They had been summoned, at the behest of an unnamed “ultra-wealth manager to the gods,” to...
The Turf Battles Begin Whitwood Mall was not just a shopping mall in eastern Los Angeles County in 1987. It was a kingdom. A cathedral of consumerism. A shrine of shiny tiles, fluorescent tube lights, and the eternal perfume cloud that hovered between Millers Outpost, JCPenney and Sears like holy incense. And in this kingdom, there were the rulers. Not the mall cops, not the shop owners, not even the teenagers in ripped denim with teased up Aqua Net infused hair. The true rulers were the mall walkers. Every morning, before the stores opened,...
Submitted to Contest #321
Before you ask, yes, I live in the corner. Don’t you go judging me now, corners are prime real estate, thank you very much. They offer privacy, a good vantage point, and one wall at your back, so no one sneaks up on you. For a spider, it doesn’t get any better than that. Hello, my name’s Bobby. Yes, that’s right, I said Bobby. You think spiders don’t have names? Of course we do. It floated to me unexpectedly one night while I was dangling upside down, which is when all the best ideas arrive. I share my park side apartment with Ronald. Techni...
I’m not much of a storyteller, not really. In fact I'm not even sure why I'm sharing this story with you. I’m a simple man, a working man. I’ve spent twenty years in the same joint, the Greenleaf Gentlemen’s Club. It's a little dive on the side of the 605 freeway in Whittier that glows like a dirty broken tooth in the dark. I’m the kind of guy who does what needs doing. Bouncer, DJ, manager, short order cook, are some of the titles I’ve had there. If the fryer breaks down and the girls are hungry, it’s Mario who makes sure the mozzarella sti...
Submitted to Contest #320
The woods did not announce themselves. One moment there was a street, concrete, a bus stop with an advertisement about roofing, and the next there was only green, an immediate and soft silence that folded around Jerry as if he had always been part of it and simply forgotten. He put a hand to his head as if to press the memory back inside. The pulse under his thumb was steady, younger than it felt. He was sixty. He looked fifty, people said, or younger, that odd kindness used to buoy him in grocery lines and classroom doors. The face in the ...
Submitted to Contest #319
I was in the middle of a nap of great consequence. It was the kind of nap where you flatten yourself into the exact dimensions of the uppermost ledge of the bookshelf, so the humans wonder if you’ve actually dissolved into the furniture. That’s when the storm began. Michael was pacing. He had worn a path between the window and the sofa, sighing like someone who just got bad news from his doctor. His hair stuck up at angles from too many nervous hands raking through it. I’ve seen less theatrics from squirrels falling out of trees. Marie, on t...
Submitted to Contest #318
Johnny Reyes had lived most of his thirty-four years quietly in the background. In college, he was the roommate who proofread essays and fixed laptops while his friends pursued relationships and adventures. At work, he was the quiet software developer who cleaned up messy code bases without taking credit, who trained new hires without the title of “senior” beside his name. Second best. Second choice. Always close, but never the first name on anyone’s list, is how he always felt. He told himself he was fine with that. Someone had to carry the...
Submitted to Contest #301
The hot, scratching sensations from the constant bee like stings of the tattoo gun on her forehead and cheeks went unnoticed, as Susan slept soundly through it all. It was one last shot of tequila, after the many that preceded it, that had her so completely removed from what her body was experiencing. At one point, she was actually snoring, deep, rattling vibrations that only someone fully blackout drunk can produce.FRENEMY, that was the word being tattooed on her face in a tribal fashion, complete with curved lines and spiral shapes for goo...
Submitted to Contest #191
The small bedside lamp gave off just enough light for April to knit without disturbing her boyfriend's sleep. It was a little past three o'clock in the morning as he snored the night away. But his guttural sounds could not pierce through her earbuds as she listened to her stories. Night after night she nursed an empty void of suppressed emotions, as they mixed with insomnia inside of her. But she got through it with the voice of the same author. His name was Charles Aplomb, which was clearly a nom de plume. Charles wrote and gav...
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