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

Malcolm Twigg

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2023

Stories
Comments
Library
31 Followers
15 Following

23 Stories

504 karma pts

?

Esther

Weekly Contest #258

The thing is, when you start researching family history, like it or not, you often find that you end up knowing far more about your ancestors than you do your close family. Not that my own family is particularly close, for various reasons best not explored.I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. My name is Bailey, Robert Bailey, and the story I am about to tell is, quite frankly, weird … if not disturbing.As I said, my immediate family is not very close, stemming from the fact that my father was illegitimate with all the stigma that attracted ...

15 likes 16 comments 16
Read story

Midsummer Night's ... Nightmare

“Are you sure we got the right place, Moragh? The note didnae specify a location.”  Moragh peered again at it. “Aye, it did, Eilidh. The most important thing is the weather, and there is nae thunder and lighting, nor rain, so …” “And I should bloody well hope not,” the third member of the group broke in, with some acerbity glancing up at the lowering skies. “Not yet. Does anyone actually know why we’re sat here on this blasted heath when there’s a perfectly good bothy in the valley? I don’t fancy being a lightning conductor for anyone. ...

1 like 0 comments 0
Read story

Carpe Diem

Weekly Contest #226

Archie Wellbeloved was a mess, emotionally and physically. His name didn’t fit for a start. Exasperated at his lack of get up and go, his girlfriend had got up and gone herself. That same day he’d been laid off work; some hacker had raided his bank account and he was skint until the bank sorted it out; his hair was a mess; his clothes unkempt, and his trainers looked like a pair of exploded tyres. Much like the deflated tyres on his car as he gazed down at them in undisguised bile, an unfortunate product of the neighbourhood in which he live...

11 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Tibbles: Saviour of the Universe

Weekly Contest #224

No matter what the time, Fred Fothergill, fat, forty and fed up, had always been able to wake up on the dot. It was like pressing a mental alarm button. Early plane to catch? He was there before it was wheeled onto the runway. Ungodly work call? Blear-eyed onscreen before anyone else had zoomed in. So, early rising was not a problem. In fact, it was something of a boon because, even living close by the sea where the gentle susurration of the waves was ever-present, there was a preternatural quiet in the early mornings that was a welcome reli...

7 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

Is there anybody there?

Weekly Contest #221

When Madam Lapinsky first founded The Ethereal Phone Company (or EPiC as the later conglomerate came to be known whilst she was living in the lap of luxury on her private yacht) it was just a con. She had always made a reasonably comfortable living from the vulnerable and deluded by rapping on tables and ectoplasmic manifestation, but when A I came on the scene she hit on the idea of getting the technology to actually ‘speak’ for the dead through the medium of the telephone.  For the sake of appearances (cell phones somehow detracting...

11 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Red Boots

Weekly Contest #221

The caravan site is almost deserted now. From where mine is sited,  I can see the lighting stanchions lining the access way like sentinels guarding the empty pitches, daring anyone else to pitch there this season. This part of the site is actually closed for camping now until the last of us goes - mine is almost the last here. It’s how I like it and why I only come in the shoulder months. There is just one more caravan on this part of the site, as far away from mine as it is possible to get, and not many others elsewhere as the site rap...

19 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Essence

Weekly Contest #218

Essence. There was no other way to describe it: it was an explosion - a revelation. The smell that had, quite literally, stopped him in his tracks this very moment was that same smell that had eluded him for 50 years but only now, in this instant, identified. Gorse! That sweet, intoxicating perfume that was almost tangible. And it only increased in intensity in the warm spring sunshine as he trudged further up the hill towards the monastery, along with the other visitors who had disembarked from the boat with him. He had never, ever, known...

3 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Dragon Power

Weekly Contest #217

DRAGON POWER The interior of the ‘Bucket and Firkin’ was a pleasant fug of woodsmoke, ale fumes and smoking weed, and also abuzz with incredulous conversation. “Dragon? No such thing!  Last dragon was yonks ago and that was a fart-arse affair. Not enough breath to light a fag with.” The speaker quaffed his tankard and banked it down on the bar by way of emphasis, looking hopefully into the dregs.  “I’m only tellin’ you what I heard,” the other speaker said. “Carried off Fred the Forester’s little girl, Amelia.  Fred said...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story