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Kalenga Mulenga

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2025

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9 Followers
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16 Stories

285 karma pts

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Fragments of War

Weekly Contest #303

In the fractured city of Vyrn, where spires of glass and steel loomed over slums of rust and despair, Elara Varn was a beacon. To some, she was salvation—a revolutionary who dared to challenge the Council of Ascendants, the oligarchs who hoarded power and left the lower districts to rot. To others, she was chaos incarnate, a wildfire threatening to consume everything Vyrn had built. Kael Tormen, a wiry seventeen-year-old with eyes too bright for the grime of the lower districts, saw her as the former. At least, he did at first.Kael had grown...

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Ivory and Shadows

Weekly Contest #303

Lungi had always been the rule follower.As a junior wildlife ranger at The Kruger National Game Park in Mpumalanga, she kept to schedules, tracked rhino movements with religious precision, and recorded every finding in her green field journal with neat handwriting and tidy margins. Her late father, a ranger before her, had once told her: “Love the land, but never lose your head in it.” She had taken those words to heart—until her brother Thabiso disappeared.Thabiso, the boy with stargazer dreams, had always pushed the boundaries. He wanted t...

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Ashes of Mercy

Weekly Contest #303

The sky over Limpopo was a strange gray that morning. Not the quiet calm before a storm — no, it was the kind that clung to your clothes and whispered of something unclean. Themba Moyo noticed it as he locked the front gate of his late father’s house. It was the same house he grew up in, the same house he buried his mother from, and the same house that had stood silently the night it all burned down — not in flames, but in trust.He slung his rucksack over one shoulder and turned to the cracked road that led toward the bus depot. In his pocke...

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The Signal From Eris

Weekly Contest #302

The dwarf planet Eris hung in the viewport, a pale, icy speck against the void. Dr. Laura Voss adjusted her glasses and squinted at the data streaming across her console. The research station, Aurora, orbited Eris in a lonely ellipse, its crew of six tasked with studying the Kuiper Belt’s most distant denizen. Laura, a linguist specializing in computational semiotics, had joined the mission to analyze potential patterns in cosmic background noise—patterns that might hint at extraterrestrial intelligence. It was a long shot, she knew, but the...

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The Wayward Instruction

Weekly Contest #302

In the labyrinthine corridors of the Nexus Corporation’s headquarters, where glass walls reflected ambition and secrets alike, a single email could alter destinies. It was 9:47 a.m. on a crisp October morning in 2032, and the air buzzed with the hum of servers and the click of keyboards. At the heart of this digital empire, in a cubicle barely large enough for her dreams, sat Priya Sharma, a junior data analyst with a knack for noticing patterns others missed.Priya’s inbox pinged. She glanced at the screen, expecting another routine report r...

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The Man On The Platform

Weekly Contest #302

It was the final train of the night.Zola Ndlovu stood on the dimly lit platform of the Johannesburg Park Station, her suitcase handle clutched tightly in her hand and her heart beating a little faster than normal. She had been visiting a friend in the city, and after a long day that ended with a missed bus and a lost phone charger, she was eager to get home to Soweto.The train screeched into the station, its headlights slicing through the fog that had started to roll in. The few other passengers waiting scattered along the platform began to ...

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The Misdelivered Message

Weekly Contest #302

In the quiet hum of a late autumn afternoon, Clara Hensley sat at her cluttered desk in the back office of Willow Creek’s only post office. The small town, nestled between rolling hills and a lazy river, was the kind of place where everyone knew each other’s business, or at least thought they did. Clara, a meticulous woman in her mid-forties with a penchant for order, was sorting through a pile of packages and letters, her fingers moving with practiced precision. The post office was her domain, a sanctuary of routine in a world that felt inc...

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Between The Lines

Weekly Contest #302

Elena Santos gripped the armrest of her seat as the plane descended into Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The hum of the engines vibrated through her, amplifying the nervous energy that had been building for weeks. In her lap, she clutched a sleek translation device, its screen glowing faintly with Japanese phrases she’d practiced during the 14-hour flight. She’d taken a crash course in Japanese before accepting this one-year assignment as a cultural liaison for an international education exchange program. But as the plane touched down, she realized ...

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This Isn't What I Signed Up For

The clock on the cracked wall of Elijah’s cousin’s apartment read 11:47 p.m. He sat on the sagging couch, scrolling aimlessly on a borrowed laptop, the blue light carving shadows under his eyes. Johannesburg’s skyline blinked through the window, a city that felt both too big and too small for his dreams. At 24, Elijah had a communications degree, a battered Nikon camera, and a growing sense that his life was slipping through his fingers like sand. He was tired of crashing with his cousin, tired of the same instant noodles, tired of promises ...

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The Thirteenth Floor

Weekly Contest #301

Mikal had always believed that fear was a choice—until the day it became a cage.As a boy growing up in Lusaka, Zambia, Mikal had been fearless in most ways. He climbed mango trees with reckless abandon, raced his friends through dusty streets, and laughed off ghost stories told under flickering streetlights. But one summer afternoon at the Lusaka City Library changed everything. He was nine years old, chasing a book on architecture—his budding passion—when he stepped into the library’s ancient elevator. The doors clanged shut, and the lift j...

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The Good Intention

Weekly Contest #301

Musa always meant well. That was what his mother would say whenever he fumbled something up. “Musa has a good heart. He just doesn’t think things through.” And it was true. Whether it was helping a neighbor or trying to impress a teacher, Musa’s good intentions had a habit of backfiring.So, when he saw the envelope lying on Mr. Dube’s desk that rainy Thursday afternoon, sealed and marked “CONFIDENTIAL – SCHOLARSHIP DECISIONS,” he didn’t think. He acted.Mr. Dube, the headmaster, had been talking about the scholarship for months. A full ride t...

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The Best Laid Plans

Weekly Contest #301

Elena Martin had spent months orchestrating what she believed would be the perfect proposal. Every detail was meticulously planned, from the words she would say to the setting where she would say them. She had rehearsed her speech countless times, standing in front of her bathroom mirror, her reflection a silent audience to her nervous excitement. The ring—a delicate gold band with a small emerald that mirrored the deep green of Gabriel’s eyes—had been chosen after weeks of searching, a symbol of their unique connection. She had reserved the...

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The Weight of Trust

Weekly Contest #301

In the small coastal town of Greyhaven, where the fog clung to the cliffs like a lover’s embrace, Lila Marrow lived a quiet life. At twenty-seven, she was neither remarkable nor unremarkable—just another soul tending to the rhythm of the tides. She worked at the local bookstore, her days filled with the scent of old paper and the soft chatter of regulars. But beneath her calm exterior, Lila harbored a restlessness, a yearning for something beyond the predictable cadence of her days.It was on a damp October evening, as the bookstore’s bell ji...

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Gate 17

Weekly Contest #300

Airports are chaos wrapped in glass and steel, a symphony of hurried footsteps, rolling suitcases, and garbled intercom announcements. For most people, they’re a necessary evil—queues that snake endlessly, overpriced coffee that tastes like regret, and the constant dread of delayed flights. But for me, they’re something else entirely. They’re cathedrals of possibility, humming with the promise of elsewhere. The moment I step into Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, a weight lifts from my shoulders. My lungs expand, drinking in the...

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The Compass Rose

Weekly Contest #300

When Lena boarded the 7:45 a.m. train from Pretoria to Durban, she carried with her a single suitcase, a folder of resignation papers, and a bitter sense of relief. After ten years in an unfulfilling marketing job, she was finally leaving it all behind for a fresh start—a six-month volunteer program building eco-homes along the Wild Coast. She’d chosen it on a whim, craving escape more than purpose.“I’m not running,” she’d told her sister the night before. “I’m walking away. There’s a difference.”The morning train hummed steadily along the t...

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