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N. S. Streets

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2025

Stories (10)

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59 Followers

47 Following

10 Stories

473 karma pts

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Dad's Potato Salad

Submitted to Contest #333

Dad's Potato SaladThe recipe is wrong.I know it's wrong because I'm the one who wrote it down, eleven years ago, standing in the kitchen of the house on Maple Street. The one with the cracked linoleum and the window over the sink that stuck in summer. The one before the apartment, before the complex, before the running, before all of it.I was twenty-eight. He was forty-four. He stood at the counter with his back to me, a cigarette burning in the ashtray by the stove, and I asked him to teach me because I thought we had time. I thought I'd wa...

51 likes

The Cursor Blinks

Submitted to Contest #329

The cursor blinks. 2:47 AM. Mikayla's hands hover over the keyboard, not quite touching, as if the keys might burn her. Or save her. She isn't sure which.The writing community's weekly prompt glows on her second monitor: Write a story about a character who is haunted by something or someone. She's read Clive Barker since she was fifteen—she knows haunting. She knows how desire and dread weave together until you can't tell which thread is which. But knowing and doing are different animals, and right now, sitting in her apartment with the radi...

34 likes

HUSH

Submitted to Contest #329

CW: Mental health, physical violence, abuse Amanda drifts through the parlor wall—or is it the kitchen? The rooms shift when she's not looking. Not the rooms. Her. She's the one shifting. Today she knows her name. That's good. That's a clear day. Amanda. She died in 1324. Plague. Or was it childbirth? The memories scatter. She can't hold them any more than she can hold her own hand. She knows she's been here a long time. The house wasn't this house when she died. It was a smaller dwelling. Wooden beams. Thatched roof. The current structure g...

10 likes

3 AM

Submitted to Contest #329

I write at 3 AM because I have to. Not "have to" like a deadline. "Have to" like breathing. Like my fingers start twitching around 2:45. Like if I don't sit down and open the document, something inside me will claw its way out. George and Fred know. They're already on the desk when I come in, two black smudges in the blue light of the monitor. Waiting. They're always waiting. I've been writing the same story for eight months. A psychological thriller about a woman who can't tell if she's losing her mind or if her apartment is trying to kill ...

13 likes

Midnight's Gift

Submitted to Contest #329

Late September air carried the scent of dying leaves and wood smoke through the open window of the cramped attic apartment. Jasmine hunched over her makeshift altar—really just a corner of her kitchen table—hands trembling as she measured dried lavender into a brass mortar. The petition spell. She had to master the petition spell. Three weeks until the Autumn Equinox ceremony. Three weeks until she either joined the Thornwood Coven or remained alone, cut off from the magical community that had always felt just beyond her reach. "Clockwise," ...

12 likes

To remember who I am.

Submitted to Contest #328

Present Day Jess sat at her kitchen table at 2 AM, surrounded by notebooks. Seventeen of them. Three years' worth. Every day documented. Every memory preserved. She'd started keeping them after the accident. The doctor had said memory loss was normal with traumatic brain injury. Write things down, he'd told her. It helps. So she had. Every entry began the same way: "I remember..." It was supposed to make her feel secure. Grounded. Like she was holding onto herself. She opened the oldest journal. October 2022. Found the entry she was looking ...

27 likes

Breaking Ground

Submitted to Contest #327

The cat is in the tree again.Midnight—because of course the cat is named Midnight—sits on a branch about twenty feet up, tail wrapped around her paws, watching Meredith with that expression that says she knows exactly what she's doing.Three years since her mother died. Three years since the cat appeared on the back porch like an inheritance. Three years of this dance—the tree, the waiting.Meredith stands at the base of the old oak, hands trembling."Come down," she says.Midnight blinks slowly. Doesn't move."I have work to do. I'm in the middl...

31 likes

The morning that lied about its intentions.

Submitted to Contest #326

The sound coming from Sarah's mouth wasn't crying.It should have been. After a day like this—after everything—crying would have made sense. Screaming would have made sense. Silence would have made sense.But this sound, this broken-glass laugh that wouldn't stop, was something else entirely.She collapsed on the curb across the street from her apartment building, fire trucks idling everywhere, and laughed until her ribs burned. Each breath dragged across her throat like sandpaper. Her stomach cramped. She couldn't stop.The firefighters kept lo...

26 likes

THE QUIET FRIEND

Submitted to Contest #325

Eden woke up to silence.Not the good kind. The heavy kind. The kind that meant Mom was already upstairs in his room and Dad had left early for work.She stayed in bed for a while. Counted the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. Forty-three. She'd counted them every morning since the funeral. The number never changed but she counted anyway.Her stomach growled.She got up.The kitchen was cold. The heat didn't work right anymore. Or maybe it did and nobody remembered to turn it on.Eden pulled a chair to the counter. Reached for the cereal box....

44 likes

The River Between Worlds

Submitted to Contest #324

She woke in a small boat. No oars. No sail. No shore in sight. She sat up slowly. The boat didn't rock. The water around her moved like molten glass, thick and bright. Shapes slid under the surface—doorways, bridges, faces—there for a second and then gone. The air smelled like rain. Her first thought wasn't Where am I? It was What did I do? She tried to remember her name and found nothing. "Hello?" she called. Her voice echoed back, a little late, like someone else copied her from far away. She leaned over the edge. The face in the wa...

30 likes