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Laura Specht

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2024

Stories (13)

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73 Followers

4 Following

13 Stories

521 karma pts

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C-1697

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #334

OFFICE OF NARRATIVE INTERVENTION: POST-EVENT FILINGDOCUMENT ID: REV-77-CIND-1697FILING AGENT: O-99 (Field Designation: "Godmother")SUBJECT: C-1697 (Resident: Estate 4, Northern Province)EVENT TYPE: Tier-2 Social Integration / Royal GalaTOTAL DURATION: 04:00:00 (Active Phase)STATUS: CLOSED – SUCCESSFUL I. PRE-INTERVENTION COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS REVIEW1.1 Authority and Legal FrameworkThis report is submitted under the mandates of the Central Narrative Bureau (CNB), specifically the Fairness and Equilibrium Act of 812. Field Agent O-99 was dispa...

8 likes

House Red

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #333

She woke at 5:14 AM. Her body, conditioned by fifteen years of early morning cellar runs, didn't care that her calendar was empty. For a long time, she had tried to fight the habit, but today she just lay there, cataloging the house. The refrigerator’s low-frequency thrum. The way the radiator hissed—a wet, metallic sound. The dull, grinding ache in her left shoulder, a souvenir from a decade of carrying heavy wooden cases up narrow stairs.She stared at the ceiling. Usually, a sommelier’s mind is a riot of sensory input: the sharp citrus of ...

29 likes

Windchill

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #332

MARA The first flakes fell soft and lazy, like ash from something already burned out. Mara watched them melt on the glass before Alex’s wipers could touch them. It gave her somewhere to look that wasn't his profile."This weekend went fast," she said.She tried to sound light, like someone who hadn't spent three days waiting for a conversation that never happened."Mm."Alex kept his eyes on the road. His voice wasn't cold, exactly. It was careful. The same buffer tone he had used for months.She tucked her fingers into her sleeves. The heat...

32 likes

The Sound of Ice Growing

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #331

Part One – The Frost Winter in Eirik’s Landing isn't just cold. It’s quiet. By December the lake freezes solid, and the old folks say the ice gets hungry. They claim if you shout near the lakefront, the sound gets pulled down. Trapped. I always thought it was just a lie to keep kids off the thin ice.I don't think that anymore.You have to be careful what you say here. Because in April, when the thaw hits, the air screams. Arguments, confessions, prayers—three months of noise releasing at once. It sounds impossible. It is. But I’ve heard it.I...

43 likes

Seven Seconds

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #330

The station groaned at 0400. It was a thermal contraction, the titanium ribs of the hull shivering as Kalindi-4 passed into the shadow of the dead star it orbited. The sound wasn’t a creak; it was a deep, resonant boom that vibrated through the floor grates and up into the sleep restraints.Vesper didn't wake up because of the noise. She woke up because the silence that followed was heavy enough to crush her.She unbuckled the sleep webbing with fumbling fingers. Her hands were numb again—peripheral neuropathy, the medical database called it. ...

60 likes

The Glass Between Us

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #329

The apartment was too quiet for sleep. Wait, scratch that. It was the wrong kind of quiet. The kind where you can hear your own thoughts bouncing around like pinballs, each one lighting up another worry you'd forgotten about during the day.Susan lay in bed staring at the ceiling. One-thirty in the goddamn morning. The radiator was doing that clicking thing again, tap-tap-tapping a language she didn't speak. The bathroom door was open just a crack because she hated sleeping with it fully closed (childhood thing, don't ask), and the mirror in ...

16 likes

The Witch Who Loved Me (A tale of devotion, delusion, and one superior cat)

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #327

I wasn't always this intelligent. Once, I was merely clever: clever enough to pry open stubborn cupboards, twist doorknobs with precision, and feign sleep during ridiculous human arguments about bathwater temperature. But cleverness is ordinary in my species. What I am now is something else entirely.It began, as most catastrophes do, with love.My witch, Lucy (though I've always called her "She Who Trips Over Her Own Shoelaces"), decided one gray morning that I didn't love her enough. I had apparently failed to purr with sufficient enthusiasm...

34 likes

The Crossing

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #324

The first thing is the silence. But it’s not empty. It's full, thick, humming in my teeth like the pressure of held breath underwater. It’s not pretty, it just is.I wake up and there's sand everywhere. It goes on forever, or maybe it doesn't, maybe I just can't see the end because the light is so weird. Is it morning? It doesn't feel like morning. It doesn't feel like evening either. The sand is pale, an extravagant, crushed-pearl white. The sea does nothing but breathe. In and out.There are people here. They’re moving around and weaving thi...

32 likes

July 32nd

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #314

The heat. God, the heat. It's like being wrapped in wet towels, except the towels are made of air and you can't take them off. The asphalt's doing that shimmer thing again—no, wait, that's not right. It's night. Why would asphalt shimmer at night? Unless the streetlamps are hot enough, which they probably are. Everything’s hot here, even the moon looks like it's sweating.The moon looks tired. Like it couldn't be bothered to show up fully tonight.Del pushes through the back door and immediately regrets the wine. She doesn't really regret it. ...

14 likes

Terms and Conditions Apply

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #312

Sixteen months. Sixteen? God, has it really been that long? Eli stared at the cursor—that smug little line just... blinking. Mocking him, like it knew something he didn't, something he couldn't grasp."New Novel – Final Draft." What a joke. Final draft of what? Nothing. Air. The great American void.His hands were shaking again. God. Coffee? No, anxiety. Definitely anxiety. And the cold brew wasn't helping, though he kept chugging it. Fourth one today. Or was it fifth? Didn't matter. Nothing mattered when you were— "Clock's ticking, Eli." God...

19 likes

The Echo Deal

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #310

Tamsin uploaded her video at 2:14 AM. She stared at the screen, holding her breath..Seven views. Seven.It was excellent work too - those vintage overlays took hours. The story about that Prague subway station where people vanished? She'd researched for weeks. Added her own field recordings. Analyzed the folklore.But seven views.She cracked open warm cider, took a swig. Her eyeliner had smudged under her eyes. The ring light made her look half-dead."I'd give anything for people to finally hear me," she muttered into the can.She laughed bitter...

30 likes

Something like Grace

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #302

Miles Harrington was not accustomed to confusion.At twenty-four, he was the youngest senior acquisitions analyst at Ryland & Keane, a financial firm so elite it didn’t advertise, didn’t recruit, and didn’t tolerate delay. He moved through life with the same clipped efficiency that he brought to his spreadsheets: swift, clean, confident.Which is why he found the entire situation in the Marrakesh medina so intolerable.He told his driver to wait outside the souk, arrogantly assuming he’d be in and out in ten minutes. Instead, Miles stood in...

27 likes

The Guardian of Forgotten Things

Laura Specht

Submitted to Contest #285

The Guardian of Forgotten ThingsI used to be the king of the living room. Every family’s cherished companion. My sleek black casing reflected the glow of afternoon sunbeams and late-night lamplight. My buttons—a small row of proud, functional soldiers—clicked with the authority of progress. I was the gateway to worlds, the bridge between mundane days and epic adventures.I was the VCR.But now, I sit in the shadowy depths of a cardboard box, my glossy surface dulled by dust. The world doesn’t need me anymore. A streaming stick dangles smugly f...

28 likes