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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2025
Submitted to Contest #334
Once upon a time, in a kingdom where the days were harsh and colorless, there lived a boy who did not fit.His father was a man of storms, unpredictable, dangerous, the kind who filled rooms with thunder even on clear days. The boy learned early to make himself small, to move quietly through the house, to wish he could disappear entirely.And so, like many children who grow up in houses made of fear, he made himself a promise:I will never be like him.It was a good promise. A protective promise. The kind that keeps children safe when the adults...
Submitted to Contest #333
When I called my mother to ask for the recipe, the silence on the other end lasted long enough for me to wonder if we’d been disconnected.Then: “Why?”Not the warm, nostalgic why you’d expect when someone asks about a childhood favorite. This is why it carried the weight of confusion, maybe even a little horror.“It’s one of my favorite memories from childhood,” I said, already sensing I’d stumbled into unexpected territory. “I want to make them again.”Another pause. Then my mother’s voice, quieter now, caught somewhere between disbelief and a...
Submitted to Contest #330
Hello, Addiction.Growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father, I made myself a promise early on: I would never drink.I didn’t whisper it or carve it into my memory like some dramatic revelation. It lived inside me quietly, the way children make private vows to protect themselves when adults fail to. A secret oath shaped out of fear and bruises, made in the silent spaces between slammed doors and sobbing breaths.Alcohol, to me, was the monster under the bed—except my monster lived in the kitchen, in a glass bottle that clinked like a warning ...
Submitted to Contest #331
Waiting is something most people learn to dislike, but for my childhood friend Tyson, waiting became a way of life—a quiet, steady rhythm that shaped the past thirty years. If blessings often come in pairs, his tended to arrive only after valleys of hardship, wrapped in disguises no one would willingly choose. Yet he carried his burdens with the kind of faith that feels old-fashioned, the kind you read about in stories rather than see lived out in real time.Tyson grew up as the son of a minister, tucked into the rhythms of Sunday sermons, We...
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