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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2021
Submitted to Contest #290
There was something about the man’s body; it intrigued him more than the others lying there. The curve of the lumbar region above his buttocks was covered just below its tan line by faded orange linen trunks, and it seemed the focal point of the entire afternoon for some unknown reason, as if the world had shrunk to a fisheye lens and at the center lay the small of his back. Every time Marc glanced up, peering over the frames of his sunglasses, his eyes found strange comfort in that singular spot, as the rest of the beach spun unknowingly ar...
Submitted to Contest #255
There wasn’t much use in flagging anybody down. Only two or three cars had passed by at full speed in the last ten minutes, momentarily illuminating the sad little patch of grass where we stood, hands on our hips and solemn looks on our faces. “Still no service,” he announced as she shoved his phone back in his pocket and examined the blood and fur on the headlights. I said nothing and stared at the black night. I’d never seen so many stars in my life - it was like an enormous wet paintbrush had been shaken out across the w...
Submitted to Contest #238
In Wyoming, the undersides of the leaves were bright silver. I never understood why, it was just something I had noticed, but I always chalked it up to the fact that they didn’t start growing on the trees until the first week of May, like they never had enough time to become the same deep green as elsewhere in the country - places that were much closer to sea-level. The trees in Laramie were tall and wild-looking, like giants with long arms, cradling the road to create a tunnel for the sparse parade of cars rolling back and forth down...
Submitted to Contest #216
I must have only been dreaming, all that time away from him. Perhaps it’s within the revival of the forgotten that appears one’s true question of what living really means. In Clissold Park I sat alone and waited for him to show. The sharp, jagged shadows of pine trees stretched out infinitely on the lawns as the sun set, and a gentle wind carried the flitting swallows up and down as though strings were attached to their fragile bodies. Autumn’s first chill had passed over London so noticeably you could feel it in your bones, somehow p...
Winner of Contest #209 🏆
I tied and untied my Converse in the passenger seat, knees tucked close to my chest and sitting very still in the empty Southwest High School parking lot. One by one, snowflakes fell from a gray and motionless sky, only to land and melt instantly on the windshield, transforming into nothing but a dot of clear liquid, almost as if it were raining. It was New Year's Eve, my last year of school, and I was miserable. Suddenly the driver’s side door flew open and a burly man holding a clipboard leaned down. The driving instructor. “Co...
Submitted to Contest #193
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “It’s a 90’s minivan isn’t it? Those use gas like crazy, it’ll cost you fifty bucks to get me to O’Hare and back.” He scratched the back of his neck, fluffing up the tuft of hair sticking out in a bout of bedhead. His smile was warm like wool. “I don’t mind,” he said, still grinning. “Really.” I glanced out the window at the limoncello La Croix cans on the wooden railing from the previous evening, before we’d gone out. It was only the fifth time I’d seen him. “I can get my friend to do it...
Submitted to Contest #149
It was the last night of the sodium lights, and one by one they were dying out. How fitting it seemed to be, almost as if they knew their end was in sight, and rather than be snuffed out by the harsh unscrewing of a bulb, they flickered themselves, edging the quiet street closer and closer into the blackness of early-morning June. Exhausted as he was, Silas went out walking, alone in gym shorts and a white tee shirt, his flip-flops slapping the pavement as he stared up at the dancing leaves. They became fractals of shadows at his feet, cast...
Submitted to Contest #144
Click. I always wished I could take a real photograph just by blinking, my eyelids acting as camera shutters, silently fluttering closed and open again in a split second, the image projected and then frozen into the darkness of memory – permanent and only mine. Sometimes, on days when I spent all day outside of the apartment, I pretended to do it. I would capture my friends, grinning with their teeth sparkling and eyes catching the warm light. I would pause an unknown stranger waiting for a train, staring out at the road and the cars...
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