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Mary Butler

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2024

Stories (25)
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212 Followers
190 Following

25 Stories

1709 karma pts

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The Thirteenth Door

Submitted to Contest #332

I touched the frostbitten cheek of the corpse in the alley, ignoring the rain sliding down my neck. She shouldn't be this warm.The sleet had turned the ground into a gray mirror, and the security light above the restaurant's back door flickered with the desperate rhythm of a dying heart. The air reeked of fish sauce and copper, rotting vegetables and blood. My breath fogged in front of me, visible proof that I was still among the living. Hers didn't. Yet her skin held warmth that had no business being there, hours after death in weather cold...

35 likes 8 comments 8
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The Paper Swan

Submitted to Contest #331

The swan arrives on a Tuesday, which is the day I've designated for falling apart quietly. I find it in the pocket of my corduroy coat, the one my mother used to call my "archive jacket" because I keep everything in its pockets: receipts from coffee shops that have closed, fortunes from cookies I don't remember eating, a ticket stub from a concert I attended alone. My fingers brush something that wasn't there yesterday, and my heart does that stuttering thing it does whenever the universe reminds me it's paying attention. A paper swan. Perfe...

30 likes 9 comments 9
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Cosmic Interference

Submitted to Contest #330

I didn't mean for the kiss to be our last. Mostly because I don't remember kissing her at all. The dead woman on my couch turned another page of my signed first edition of Practical Demonkeeping, using the dust jacket as a bookmark and the actual book as a coaster for what appeared to be spectral tea. I watched a ring of moisture that shouldn't exist form on Christopher Moore's signature. "You're staring," she said without looking up. Her voice carried the particular timbre of someone who'd died mid-sentence and refused to let that stop her ...

22 likes 14 comments 14
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The Blackwood Incident

Submitted to Contest #329

It was a dark and stormy night, and Detective Marcus "Mac" Sullivan was beginning to suspect that whoever designed the Willowbrook Police Department's coffee machine had a personal vendetta against humanity. The bitter sludge emerging from the ancient beast tasted vaguely of motor oil.Thunder cracked overhead, rattling the windows of the small-town station. Mac glanced at the case files scattered across his desk—three bizarre deaths in as many days, all involving what witnesses described as "weird glowing stuff" and "sounds that weren't quit...

21 likes 3 comments 3
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Viral Familiar

Submitted to Contest #327

I once whispered in Cleopatra's ear as she planned Caesar's seduction. Today, I'm being asked to serve looks while perched next to a neon sign that says Witch Better Have My Sage.The flower crown sits atop my head with all the dignity of a funeral wreath. Madison adjusts the ring light for the third time. The apartment reeks of mass-produced sage and crystals from Amazon glinting under artificial sunlight that would make Helios weep.Eight hundred and forty-seven years. I've survived the Black Death, the Spanish Inquisition, and two separate ...

17 likes 7 comments 7
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Toxic Positivity

Submitted to Contest #326

Meredith Blackthorne hummed a melody that existed nowhere in nature as she measured three drops of belladonna extract into a ceramic dropper marked "Clarity & Focus Blend." The morning light filtered through her greenhouse windows, casting purple shadows across rows of plants that any sensible person would avoid touching. Her apothecary table bore the organized chaos of someone who believed chaos itself possessed healing properties.Dale's been far too observant lately, she mused, consulting her leather-bound journal titled "Wellness Jour...

18 likes 16 comments 16
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Last Stop Before Morning

Submitted to Contest #325

When Mick woke up, the bus had changed drivers again.The fluorescent lights overhead stuttered their familiar seizure, casting everything in that particular shade of public-transit yellow that made healthy people look tubercular. His mouth tasted of copper pennies and yesterday's coffee. The seat beneath him groaned with that specific vinyl complaint that belonged to every city bus since 1982.Christ, how long was I out?He rubbed his eyes hard enough to see phosphenes bloom behind his lids. Through the smeared window, streetlights blurred pas...

19 likes 11 comments 11
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Population: One

Submitted to Contest #324

I've always been terrible at reading maps, which probably should have been my first clue that working at a map shop was going to end badly. But Uncle Marvin's Craigslist posting said "Summer intern needed, must be good with people and comfortable with the unexplored." I figured he meant tourists asking for directions to AlcatrazMeridian Maps & Curiosities squats between Chakra Yoga and Boba Dreams on Telegraph Avenue. The shop's narrow face peers out through windows so dusty they could qualify for archaeological study. The bell above the...

24 likes 20 comments 20
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The Amber Culling

Submitted to Contest #321

Pastor Billy "Salvation" Sweetwater had fallen further than Lucifer himself, and that was saying something, considering Lucifer never had to shovel goat shit at six in the morning.The rusted Cadillac wheezed to a stop outside Sunshine Acres Petting Zoo, chrome bumper held on by duct tape and divine intervention. Billy adjusted his tie in the rearview mirror, the silk now frayed at the edges from too many repo men grabbing it. His phone screen showed zero missed calls. The faithful had moved on faster than rats from a sinking ship.Two hundred...

35 likes 32 comments 32
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Namaste(ish)

Submitted to Contest #312

Part 3-Pajamalist™ Investigation series VitalSync's headquarters looked like a yoga studio had a torrid affair with Silicon Valley. I adjusted my borrowed lab coat (still smelled faintly of CryoCore's liquid nitrogen and poor life choices) and checked my name badge: "Dr. Elodie Bliss, Mindfulness Streamlining Liaison." The fake credentials had cost me three protein bars and a promise to feature an Estonian hacker's slot machine designs in my next expose. Speck poked his enhanced snout from the emotional support animal sling across my chest, ...

28 likes 28 comments 28
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The Fine Print

Submitted to Contest #311

Sprint. Don't think. Sprint. My Allbirds slapped against polished concrete as I careened through the WeWork's glass maze, weaving between standing desks and kombucha dispensers. Behind me, the soft click-clack of sensible office shoes maintained a steady rhythm—unhurried, inevitable, terrifying. "Mr. Goldblatt," called a voice smooth as customer service training videos, "pursuant to clause 7.4 of your Infernal User Agreement, please cease evasion. This behavior constitutes a breach of cooperative conduct standards." I vaulted over a meditati...

35 likes 30 comments 30
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The Nine Lives of Gregory H. Barnes

**Origin story for Greg in The Mystery of the Ugly Baker. He is the cat at the post office who is a reincarnated mailman in the town of Piecrust.**Gregory Hiram Barnes died on a Tuesday.Death caught him completely unaware—desperately trying to extract a ferret from a sorting machine. The machine made an ungodly noise, metal gnashing against metal, and Greg's last thought before his necktie yanked him into the mechanical maw was:What kind of asshole brings a ferret to a post office?Death, as it turned out, involved considerably more paperwork...

11 likes 11 comments 11
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Frozen(ish)

Submitted to Contest #301

**Part 2 in the Pajamalist™ Investigation series**The elevator at CryoCore descended with the enthusiasm of a narcoleptic sloth. Seventeen floors down, I adjusted my business-casual disguise: khaki skirt bought from a thrift store that smelled of mothballs and the kind of regret usually reserved for aging boy band members, blazer with shoulder pads wide enough to land small aircraft, and a name badge proclaiming "Dr. Harmony Bliss, Workplace Morale Architecture & Synergistic Paradigm Facilitation."I'd crafted the title by picking random ...

17 likes 15 comments 15
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Dead(ish)

Submitted to Contest #295

I crunched across the frosty gravel of Tillinghast Mausoleum & Gardens in my flannel pajama pants and orthopedic boots, press badge fresh from Kinko's. The March blizzard provided perfect cover – nobody questioned winter attire featuring cartoon sloths with coffee mugs.The security guard, whose neck had consumed his chin sometime in the nineties, glanced at my badge."Elodie Sharp? Not on the list."I sneezed violently, my body's standard response to funeral lilies."BuzzFeed," I mumbled, dabbing my nose with a cactus-embroidered handkerchi...

29 likes 31 comments 31
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Mystery of the Ugly Baker

Submitted to Contest #294

*Title created by Reedsy Title Generator*There are three things everyone in the town of Piecrust knows:Don't ask Madge about her third husband. (It's a long story)The cat at the post office is a reincarnated mailman named Greg.Lester Crumb is the ugliest baker who ever lived—and possibly, the most cursed.Now, it's not polite to call a person ugly, which is why everyone in Piecrust just called him "That Poor Man," or when they were feeling generous, "Lester." But he was ugly. The kind of ugly that made onions cry. His face looked like it lost...

48 likes 59 comments 59
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