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Marcia H.

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020

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170 Followers
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150 Stories

2098 karma pts

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The Storm Before Goodbye

The weather report had promised thunderstorms before midnight. Eliza was not worried about the dark clouds gathering over the hills. She had lived through enough storms to know they always always came with plenty of warning. The winds changed. The birds disappeared. The air became thick enough to taste. People could always prepare for storms. They could buy umbrellas, coats, rain boots, rain jackets and sandbag their houses. It was the other kind of storm that frightened her. She stood on the front porch of her old farmhouse she had inherite...

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From Ashes to Love

Weekly Contest #351

I remember the moment I became a man. Not in the way other men remember it. They might remember it with a first kiss, broken bone, winning the ball game, or with the weight of their father’s expectations on their shoulders. No, my beginning was quieter than that and softer. It was threaded together in a hush of heartbeats. I remember the darkness at first and then her voice. “Stay with me.” She said. As if I was already capable of leaving. “You don’t get to fall apart before you ever begin.” Her hands were warm. They were warmer than anythi...

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The Great Apartment 3B Incident

If you ask anyone in Apartment 3D what happened on Saturday morning you will get three very different answers, one apology, a firm denial, and a story involving a rubber chicken.But as in most stories the truth lies somewhere in the middle.It all started, as most questionable choices do with a text message.8:02 amLena: “I think that I broke the washer.”Marcus: “Define broke.” Lena: “It’s making a kazoo sound, a broken kazoo sound kind of.” Marcus stared at his phone and blinked twice as he rolled over in bed. He had two choices. Ignore the m...

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Curl Up This One Dances A Little

My name is Valentine and I know this because that’s what my humans call me and my cage is positioned perfectly. It is high enough to see the living room and low enough to hear everything. Angled enough just so that the moonlight slides across the floor like an invitation. The humans call me just a hamster. They say things like, “He probably sleeps all day.” “He’s so calm.” They are wrong. I sleep in shifts. I observe. I remember.And every night, every single night after the last light clicks off and the house exhales into silence, the Nutcra...

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The Summer We Definitely Didn't Have

By the time Mario brought up the third imaginary event before lunch, his cousin, Hanah was quietly Googling early onset memory loss on her phone. “You remember.” Mario said casually, “balancing a forkful of potato salad, the summer we spent at Nana’s cabin and we trained the raccoon to steal popsicles from the ice cream truck.” Hanah froze. The fork was halfway to her mouth. “What? The What?” Mario blinked at her. “Don’t act like it wasn’t a whole thing. Training the raccoon and we laughed until we cried.” They were sitting at their Aunt Lor...

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The House That Listens

The house had a way of listening. Not in the way walls should, no creaks answering footsteps, no pipes knocking before running water but with patience that felt deliberate. As if it waited for voices to finish speaking before deciding what to do with them. Mara noticed it first on a Tuesday evening when the sky outside of the kitchen window dimmed a little too early and the clock on the stove changed from 6:12 to 6:19 by itself with no explanation. She stood at the counter, hands wet from washing the dishes staring at the clock as though she...

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Gravelhand Cane

I have been called many things in my long life in the mountains. But I will tell you my name first because names matter in the word especially when the world has forgotten yours. I am called Gravelhand Cane, because the palms of my hands are as rough as a river filled with rocks and as dusty as the mountain bones I live near. I was already old when I met Snow White when she showed up at my door. I was still older when she left although I didn’t know I would be when she left.We dwarfs don’t count time the way everyone else does. Our days ar...

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Raindrop Memories

Weekly Contest #332

Raindrops have a way of making the world feel quieter even when it rains sheets that drum on the rooftops and drenches everything in its path.Tonight it felt relentless in the slanted lines that blurred the streetlights into glowing halos turning the whole city into a bright water color painting. Lila stood in the middle of it. Her thin blue and gold jacket was plastered to her arms. Her hood covered her from the rain and the cold. The water ran down her cheeks which made her look like she had been crying although her eyes were dry, at leas...

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The Shards of Stillwater

When the last moons sank beneath the violet and orange horizon, Eira knew the tide would not return. Stillwater Bay had always obeyed the moons, three silver orbs that rose and fell like clockwork. They drew the waters with them. But that morning the sea was motionless and flat and looked like glass stretching into infinity. The fishermen gathered along the docks and mumbled prayers to the Tide-Mother. Their nets sagged and were dry in their hands. Even the sea gulls had flown away. Eira touched the hilt of her mother’s dagger, a silver thin...

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The Waiting Shore

The wind smelled like salt and thunder that night. A taste that Jango had come to know like his own breath. He stood at the edge of the world where the gray sea of the cliffs of Orden’s Reach unfurled endlessly. It looked silver under the moons. The ocean below signed in its sleep, the slow heave of a thing too ancient to care for mortals. And yet Jango waited for it to speak. He always did.For twelve years every evening since the Sky Gods had vanished Jango had climbed the cliff and watched the horizon. His mother said that it was complet...

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The Visitor

“Hey you got her really fast.” “Yeah, I was close by.” “Lucky me. I guess. I needed someone to talk to before I lost my mind.” “You have been carrying a lot of weight on your shoulder’s lately.”“That’s the understatement of the century. Feels like everything is falling apart all at one time. Mom’s health. Dad’s death. Chrissy’s pregnancy. Work. My head just won’t shut up.” “I know that is why I am here.”“Yeah, seriously, thank you. You are really the only one that I can talk to.” “I know.”“Do you? Because I really haven’t told you everything...

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Mrs. Halfpenny and the Martian Spider

Mrs. Halfpenny was not the sort of woman who liked adventures. In fact, she spent most of her sixty-two years avoiding them altogether. She had never been on an airplane, cruise ship, boat, raft, or a train and she had never even tried sushi or lobster. The most exciting thing that she had ever done was buying a used convertible in a reckless moment while on spring break with her best friend, Millie. Spring break to Mrs. Halfpenny was different from the spring break all the rest of the college students enjoyed. Her spring break consisted of ...

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Back to Home

Weekly Contest #319

I woke up dead again.The sun is too bright. It hurts my eyes like someone shoved shards of glass inside of them, forcing me to squint through ragged slits in my eyelids. Or maybe it is just rot. It is hard to tell anymore.Something smells sweet. Sweet like meat. I try to remember what meat is. But the memory slides around in my rotting brain like fish in oil, too slippery to catch. I used to know a lot of things. I knew words, faces, laughter. Oh yes--laughter. That memory sparks in the very back of my skull for a moment but then it’s gone....

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The Stars Remember

The night air was warm and it tugged at the hem of Lila’s sweater as she climbed up the familiar hill behind her grandfather’s house. The crickets sang in the tall grass and the scent of the wildflowers drifted to the edge of the orchard. She stopped at the top of the hill and caught her breath from the climb.The sky above was just beginning to fade from the dusty blue to soft indigo. The stars were winking like old friends. A year had passed since her grandpa passed away. He used to take her stargazing every summer as soon as she got out ...

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The Smell of Thunder

The first thing Claire noticed was the scent, wet and the sharp electric smell that always comes before the storm. It was raining yet but the air held its breath the way it always does before the sky breaks open. The earth smelled as if it had been awakened after a long nap. She stood barefoot in her grandmother’s garden. Her toes curled into the muddy grass. She let the scent of thunder settle over her body. It was the smell of her childhood. The mornings and afternoons were spent hunting worms with her cousin Mica who was more like a broth...

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