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

Michael Heavener

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2021

Stories
Comments
Library
16 Followers
1 Following

18 Stories

360 karma pts

?

Losing Edward

Weekly Contest #342

Charleston greeted me with jubilation. The war was over. Ships crowded the harbor again like gulls returning to a familiar cliff. I stood at the quarterdeck rail, searching the wharf for Edward’s familiar figure, already rehearsing the words I would say when my hooves touched land. I did not even make it down the gangplank.A customs clerk approached, hat pressed flat to his chest. He spoke Edward’s name carefully, as if it were fragile glass.Edward Merrill had died three weeks earlier. Fever. Swift. Final. I had been somewhere between contin...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Tessa Quickstep

Weekly Contest #334

They call me Tessa Quickstep. Not because I run fast—though I love to—but because my hooves click against the cobbles like punctuation in a language of their own. I like it that way.I’m small for my kind. You’d know the second you saw me. Most centaurs tower over the humans around them. Here the humans look me straight in the face without craning their necks. Some find that disarming. Others, endearing. Truth is, my small stature does more than just set me apart. It frees me.And stars above, I’m grateful for it. While the others spend half t...

16 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Gordon's mushroom adventure

Weekly Contest #329

My buddy Gordon had a way of getting into situations that seemed too wild to be real. The kind of guy who could stumble into a heap of trouble and somehow come out the other side, laughing it off like it was all just another wild adventure. His latest escapade, though, was something none of us would forget. It all started with his love for mushrooms--the psychedelic kind, of course. Gordon was always chasing the next high, the next strange experience to make him feel like he was on the edge of some great cosmic revelation. Weed, LSD, hot y...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Arrow of Time

Weekly Contest #319

I used to think of time as something we traveled through like a river, with a steady current that carried us forward. My life was stable, I had a strong marriage, a good job managing a toxicology research lab, and a passion for stamp collecting. I didn’t know that the river itself could change course—that its banks could be remade, its waters altered—until the day a man from the future appeared and told us he was going to fix what he believed was the deepest mistake in history. The Man Who Broke the WorldHe arrived in a machine that didn’t ...

13 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Super Badass Cat Girl

Weekly Contest #299

Walking home from school with my friends was usually the best part of the day. We laughed, talked about teachers we liked (and didn’t), and tried to plan our weekend like we were free spirits. But one day, things didn’t go as planned. It all started when Emma, Soo-jin, and I were going home, and the sun was just beginning to set. We heard a low, menacing growl that froze us in place. "What's that?" Soo-jin asked, her voice trembling. We turned to see a dog: a massive, snarling beast barreling toward us, its teeth bared, and eyes locked on o...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Quiet Presence

Weekly Contest #294

In a quiet village nestled between the hills and the bay, life had its rhythm, its routines. People liked the slow-paced days, the charm of the tree-lined streets, and the smell of fresh bread from the bakery on the corner. And then, one day, she arrived.  No one knew her name, where she came from, or what she was. She just appeared, wandering into town one breezy afternoon, moving with a strange, jerky gait, like she wasn’t entirely sure of her own legs.  The townsfolk didn’t recognize her face because, in truth, she had none. Ins...

11 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Hiking Adventure Turned Enchanting

Weekly Contest #291

The bar was dim and humming with conversation, just the place I needed to shake off a week of non-stop number crunching and "hurry up" requests from the whole office. It was Friday night, and I wanted to be well snockered for the weekend. The moment he walked in, I noticed him. Tall and rugged, with a natural charisma, he was the kind of guy who belonged in a forest, not in some louder-than-hell bar. His eyes were sharp, attentive. We hit it off like we'd known each other for years. We laughed, drank, and talked until late, and by the end of...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Dragon Traits

Weekly Contest #290

I never thought my life would take a turn like this. A few years ago, I was just a first-grade teacher with a passion for baking and a stubborn will to keep life simple. Now, I'm Marilyn: half-human, half-dragon, and somehow still trying to teach a school full of hyperactive youngsters. At first, my wings were so heavy that I could barely lift them, and the tail was constantly in the way. In my head, I thought my students would be terrified if they saw me. I visualized my career ending right as it was starting. Thankfully nothing else...

5 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A girl like you

Weekly Contest #284

I should have known better with a girl like youThat I would love everything that you doAnd I do, hey, hey, hey, and I do.By John Lennon, Paul McCartneyFor two weeks, a girl sat on the back of the common lounge sofa whenever I played Hearts or Spades with the other guys in the dorm. At first, I took no notice. Then gradually, her presence penetrated my lame-o brain.The games were a focus after classes and before the assigned readings. They lowered our stress and bonded us in a way I doubt any other activity would. Well… except for my trains.I...

8 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Custer's time warp disaster

Weekly Contest #204

With a snappy salute, Colonel G.A. Custer embarked with the famous Seventh Cavalry on what may have been the most fool-hardy mission in the western theater of the U.S. Army. They planned to march bald-faced into what, although they didn't know it, was the largest gathering of native Americans since the French-and-Indian War a century before. His commander, General Matthew Terry, cautioned Custer to rest his men as often as possible. Custer was well-known for daring escapades, but Terry, understandably nervous, tried to impress on the brash...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Harvey

Weekly Contest #202

I won't say Harvey was my best friend. Jim, my buddy on boy scout camp staff, had been my constant companion since third grade. But Harvey earned my respect in so many ways. In the time I knew him in high school, Harvey's looming presence was my salvation a number of times. In medieval times, he'd have been my jousting champion. From the outside, Harvey was what people call "a bruiser," the kind of bigger-than-life physique that might make him a good bouncer at a rave. He wasn't exactly Andrea the Giant, but he was two inches taller than m...

12 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Embracing the difference

Weekly Contest #199

Embracing the difference After I completed a training workshop in New York, I decided to take Amtrak back to Seattle. I booked a trip on the Lakeshore Limited to Chicago with a transfer to the Empire Builder to Seattle. Along the way, I was deeply affected by people that I met with their own stories to tell. In Rensselaer, NY, where the Boston section of the Lakeshore Limited is combined with the New York section, a student from France wandered away to smoke a cigarette. Not knowing he'd gotten off, the conductor gave the "All Aboard." ...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Thought that counts

Weekly Contest #193

I caused a missionary family an enormous amount of grief because they stopped to help me on the way home. They were on their way to the airport and didn't make their flight.The thermostat of my car stopped working and the engine overheated. I managed to get to the shoulder on kinetic energy after it quit; I was driving a car with a manual transmission, fortunately.My boss stopped to see if I needed help. I gave him my home phone number and asked him to call my wife to let her know. That was nice of him but didn't help me.Where I stopped was ...

14 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Bouncing Bernie

You might say Bernie was the luckiest guy I know. I disagree. I thought of him as the unluckiest person in my life. He was a magnet for bad luck—he just had an incredible knack for landing on his feet. No matter what happened, he always bounced back. For example: My college roommate, Bernie, was the assistant tennis coach and was studying for a master's degree in sports management. He loved to play pick-up tennis with the neighbors at the apartment's court. Bernie was a parttime kleptomaniac. His particular "specialty" was highway sign...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Surprising his favorite teacher with a special telephone call

Weekly Contest #164

Shoes—c'mon—what 11-year-old boy looks at his teacher's feet? She was always standing where he couldn't see over the heads of his classmates, except during tests when she sat with her feet behind her desk. Maybe he should have looked, given that Mrs. Arrington was his favorite teacher. It was 1962 and he was 11 years old. He had just moved to big city Seattle from faraway Farmington, New Mexico. It was the "Century 21" World's Fair and for a boy on the verge of growing up, that was an irresistible attraction. Sixth grade in a new school wa...

10 likes 1 comment 1
Read story