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Marilyn Q

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2024

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13 Stories

245 karma pts

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Reflections of Darla

Weekly Contest #378

Jesse’s phone became a reliquary. They never dredged up hers from the lakebed silt, but her ghost lived in his gallery, a collection of pixels he couldn’t exorcise. In the hollow hours past midnight—when silence took on weight and the walls seemed to breathe—he’d trace the glow of the screen, scrolling through the same cursed sequence. There she was, forever seventeen: Darla McKinney, bare legs scabbed and golden, frayed cutoff shorts riding low. Swimming in a stolen varsity hoodie three sizes too big, she clutched that bottle of peach schna...

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Magical Threads of Murder

Weekly Contest #368

The coat remembered the murder before Beth did. She found it on a Tuesday afternoon, three hours before her shift. The shop was wedged between a bakery and a locksmith on a narrow downtown street she’d driven past a hundred times without noticing. Its front window held three mannequins in handmade coats—deep red wool, midnight blue velvet, cream cashmere—with a small brass sign among them. MAGICAL THREAD and THORN. Beth stopped for the red one. Not bright red. Wine-dark. The color of blood after it has dried on linoleum. She should have kept...

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One Wrong Wish

Weekly Contest #368

Abby woke to the sound of Daniel screaming. Except she wasn’t awake. Not yet. Rain hammered the windshield. Not like weather, like a warning. The car spun sideways through the intersection, tires shrieking against wet pavement, and Abby braced one hand against the dashboard just before the truck struck Daniel’s side. Metal folded. Glass burst across her face, each shard catching light for one impossible instant before the world flipped once, twice, then slammed to a stop. Abby hung against the seat belt. Blood in her mouth. Rain everywhere. ...

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A Final Goodbye in the Snow

Weekly Contest #366

The nights were growing colder, and frost settled over the city earlier with each passing day. Martha had always dreaded winter, but this year felt different. The cold seemed more unforgiving, the nights longer, and every biting gust of wind stole a little more of her strength. One evening, after another fruitless search for food, Martha and her only companion, Shadow, found themselves in a small park at the edge of the city. It was a quiet place, often overlooked amid the traffic and crowds, and Martha had come to think of it as a temporary...

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The Things We Buried

Weekly Contest #364

At eighty-one, Ruth Calder thought the police station would feel different—more austere, more official. Instead, the lobby reeked of burnt coffee, damp wool, and the sharp lemon disinfectant used in nursing homes. A telephone shrilled unanswered behind the counter. A printer coughed out paper in agitated bursts. The young officer behind the glass looked over the rims of his wire-frame glasses. “You want to report a crime?” Ruth’s gloved fingers tightened around her cane. “I want to confess to one.” His expression flickered. Perhaps conf...

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The Room Beneath the Stairs

Weekly Contest #364

She was certain she hadn’t seen the door there yesterday. She stood at the basement stairs, staring at the narrow door beneath the steps. Its paint blended into grimy concrete. For four days she’d cataloged Evelyn Cole’s life—chipped teacups, yellowed receipts, and lavender-scented shawls. She’d emptied drawers and closets. Yet she had never laid eyes on this door. That morning she hauled the oak bookcase aside. The wood screeched against concrete, revealing its secret: scuffs in straight lines, as if something heavy had been dragged back...

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THE LAST FERRY

Weekly Contest #363

For forty-three years, no soul had dared cross Blackwater Bay. That truth struck Thomas Reed like an ice shard against his ribs. He nearly dropped his coffee when a string of glowing lights drifted into view. At first, he told himself it was a fishing skiff battling the squall. Winter winds played cruel tricks here—turning distant buoys into towering lighthouses, abandoned cabins into phantom ships. He wiped the frost from the lantern window with his sleeve, clearing the glass. Far beyond, the lights held fast. Not one. Not two. A full proce...

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What the River Remembers

Weekly Contest #363

Mara Vale stood in the pelting rain, her coat plastered to her body, and watched the river strain to remember her. Each torrential drop pelted her face like icy needles while the dark water gnawed at the muddy banks—edging closer to her boots, curling around exposed roots, dragging fallen branches into its hungry depths. Twenty years had passed since that night, but the hollow bend where the current vanished into shadow looked unchanged—the same gnarled sycamore leaning precariously over the water, the same splintered fenceposts rotting into...

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The Eye of the Storm

Weekly Contest #363

Chapter 1: Setting the Scene Before a single raindrop fell on Windridge, the storm announced itself in the suffocating stillness. The air pressed down like a living weight, squeezing every breath from the town. An undercurrent of tension twisted through empty streets, as if the wind carried secrets more dangerous than wind and rain. Leaves danced in agitated spirals across cracked pavement. Shutters rattled in their frames. Somewhere beyond the low, dark silhouette of the hills, a loose sign clanged wildly against a post, then all was still...

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The Story That Shouldn’t Have Been Read… Until Now

Weekly Contest #310

The Story That Shouldn’t Have Been Read… Until Now When I finally pressed “publish,” I had no ending in mind. I’d stitched this story together over twenty-four frenetic months—rough sentences scrawled on coffee-stained napkins, creased receipts, the backs of old court filings. Every fragment was soaked in midnight panic, swollen with grief so raw it clawed at my throat, laced with an anger I tasted on my tongue. It was, I told myself, pure invention. A safe exorcism about the day my little sister, Callie, vanished without a trace. I didn’t...

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The Girl in the Funhouse Mirror

Weekly Contest #308

The Girl in the Funhouse Mirror They never recovered her phone, but the images lingered on Jesse’s screen like ghosts he couldn’t swipe away. In the dead hours—when the world softened to a hush—he’d scroll through them, compulsively, as if proof might undo the nightmare. There she was: Darla McKinney, legs bare in ragged cutoff shorts, cocooned in a stolen varsity hoodie, clutching a bottle of peach schnapps like a talisman, grinning as if nothing in the universe could touch her. That night was billed as a victory lap: junior year done, s...

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The Society Below; Classified: Academic-Military — DO NOT FILE

Weekly Contest #307

Chapter 1: The Root of Silence Dane’s breath fogged the frigid air, each exhale a warning siren in the night. His boots skidded over loose gravel as he and Mercer tore through skeletal woods. Behind them, the Society’s hunters thundered like vengeful ghosts wielding unseen hammers. The trees devoured the echo of their flight, but not the terror. “You sure it’s here?” Mercer hissed, chest heaving. Dane didn’t answer. He felt it—an electric wrongness ahead, the place Dorian had whispered of before they left him bleeding in the chapel’s shad...

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The Silence of the Unforgiven

Weekly Contest #268

Chapter 1: The Arrival James pulled up to the house that had once been his sanctuary, a place of childhood memories and laughter. Now, it was a mausoleum of regrets and silence. The weight of what he had done gnawed at him as he approached the front door, every step feeling like a burden he could barely carry. James noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Just beyond the porch, partially buried in the dirt at the edge of the property, something metallic glinted. His heart skipped a beat. The object was half-hidden under a tangle of w...

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