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Nick Matsas

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2025

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41 Followers
19 Following

58 Stories

796 karma pts

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Lou/in process of writing

Weekly Contest #351

Against his will, Lou was forced by his parents into the museum of his past and current feelings—a place located between his lungs, but below his chin, and above his crotch. A place where everything could be touched as long as he paid his intellectual property bill on the third of every month, and what was considered intangible was tangible. Where the past and present met every Tuesday afternoon after his parents had a few belts of scotch and let him have it, but also on other days when they found what he and his friends had pinched. He neve...

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Projection

Weekly Contest #350

They never spoke to me, but I was always right behind them, and depending on which way they were heading, I could be at their side. Sometimes I looked like one of them, or both. I don't have the vocabulary to describe what they look like or who they are, but I could mimic them. They noticed me right away and talked about me with the same interest I had for them. They said I’d be around for a few more hours, unless they went downtown, in which case I'd follow them there. They sat in a park and spoke of 'old times,' and I quickly picked up wh...

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they might steal The Son Because The Priest is bunting

Weekly Contest #350

I hope one day they’ll raise the draft age and I can die somewhere outside Tehran, as a conscientious objector, subjected to helping the wounded of the current administration's policies, which is why I believe life is already carved out for you when you’re born. I will not die in Iran, though I wish to, and though I will do what I can to make that happen, I will continue to live in Southern California, in a beautiful house with a garden, and the weather that suits my tan. Sometimes I have 10 dollars, and sometimes I have 7,000, and I have ne...

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Robert George

Weekly Contest #350

I don’t see much, and I can’t hear a goddamn thing unless they yell at me, which they rarely do, I think. My thinking’s good. Real good. The best. That’s all I really do, and I like it. I had a Burmese neighbor, Hein, who was Buddhist, and he told me that some people get stuck between living and being dead, and that's sort of where I feel like I’m at now. It’s peaceful, to tell you the truth, which I always do. The last thing I heard clear as a Daisy was that my Granddaughter was flying first class to Japan with some guy named Joe. I remembe...

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Sophie's Choice For A New Subaru Outback

Weekly Contest #349

CW: Extreme violence, implied sexual coercion, phsychological distress "Tonight on Live or Die, our contestant, Johnny Romine, must spin the wheel one final time before going home with a brand new Subaru Outback and a reduced prison sentence. The Subaru can be any color he wants, folks, and any model. Alright, Johnny! You know what to do!" and in unison with the audience, Ken Parker, a prodigy of Pat Sajak's, works up the crowd by pumping his fist and shouting into his microphone, "SPIN THAT WHEEL!"Johnny Romine wasn't sure if he wanted to s...

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b to b

Weekly Contest #349

“Today is April 31st.”“I need laundry detergent, food, and how about a… you’ve been so good to me. I’ve been so sick. I’m sorry.”“Then why are you sorry?”“Cause of what I’m putting you through.”“You’re sick. You don’t need to apologize. I can leave if I want to.”“Do you want to?”“No, I want to be right here.”Her hair is blonde with a tint of strawberry, her eyes are crescents of clear ocean, and the rest is Texas prairie on the most beautiful day, when there’s money in your pocket, no one is after you, and the sky is a canvas that cannot be ...

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Sam God & Safeway Groceries

Weekly Contest #349

Fog pervades the hills and trees, shaping an atmosphere where one is lost in every way one can be, in an orgy of flame that towers over the land like a satanic lighthouse rising from the soil, and covering it with ash. Everyone is thirsty despite full water bags against their hips. The water never depletes, but neither does their thirst. They sleep, but they are always tired. They eat, but are always hungry. The sky is covered in oil, and no one has seen the sun or the moon in months. There is one man with plenty of hair. It is dark and sl...

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and we miss it

Weekly Contest #348

Once upon a time, we died when our sun died, and there is nothing but our words to say that we ever existed. Our sun is a black hole, and our memories are lost in tears of cosmic rain. We loved and lost, worried and found things we deemed higher than ourselves: Gods, corporations, medications, and meditations, but by the end, none of us or our thoughts, hopes, and passions would make it. A whole history locked between the stars, becoming a mystery, which, like wine, is fine over time.Mallory Weathers was the last person on Earth. She had ast...

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Oasis, 1979

Weekly Contest #348

Light pours through the motel windows, creating an illusion of solid blonde, obtuse triangles that will either eat your arm or burn it off. The A/C is on, and the scars across his face are hairless and dry. His hair is naturally curly, but in this arid climate, he straightens it with a bit of pomade. The only thing that moves is a fan that is not on, and when the room attendant knocked on his door, he said very little, but enough for her to continue down the carpet hallways of Monk's Motel 9.He gets up and looks out at the desert with a glas...

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Lou Gehrig's Disease

Weekly Contest #348

The moon and stars, unaware of the hills and grass, glisten in the dew drops that fight the darkness in the woods that surround the property. A place no one can penetrate, and from the window, where the moonlight shines off the shards of her mother’s heart, stuck in the grout between the kitchen tiles, the night is seen through a child’s eyes—a wound opening, and becoming, just like the dew. Her feeling of inadequacy grows, and her desire to be complete is the only thing that keeps her silhouette: an empty sea of nothingness in the well of h...

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Close to Home

Weekly Contest #348

They sat around the pond, Lake Mini-Ha-Ha, and listened to the story of when Kyle got a fishing hook pierced through his cheek through the inside of his mouth and then tugged as his uncle tried to cast the line. They squirmed under the mighty oak tree and got closer together because that's where human nature points, even if you are boys and girls. Kyle had a long scar on his round, tan face. He is the only kid Melchor Garza knows who goes to the bus stop every Memorial Day and Presidents' Day. Days when school is closed, and there are no yel...

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Something There

Weekly Contest #347

I live a different life. One thing my family does not know about, and if I told you, we’d both be killed. When I sit at the table with my boys and girls, it is for such a short time that you could say that it is not my life, or at least where I spend it. I took an oath, and rule five says: If your wife is giving birth and we call you, you come, and it is true. I live that life. My life. Our life. I know Vito Corleone says a man who doesn’t spend time with his family is not a man, but he’s a character, and I’m the real thing. I run brothels, ...

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Dead Wrong

Weekly Contest #347

“Your protagonist discovers they’ve been wrong about the most important thing in their life.” Prompt: #347- Reedsy The first time I met my father, he opened a cupboard on the 14th floor in Franklin Park, Illinois. It was also the last cordial thing we spoke about. He was emotional. A human, and then he did what he usually does, pointed his finger at the world, and then asked why you would bring anything else up that happened after you were five. Not really ask, more like yell and call you the n-word a lot, an insult I never really quite unde...

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Coca-Cola

Weekly Contest #347

The freckles on Kyle and Kevin Zoukowski’s faces were as if they had been spitting chocolate and forgot to say, “when” to stop. Their father calls them morsels from god, but their mother said her Uncles had the same sort of freckles and were all dead. They have never seen snow, but have seen cocaine poured down a toilet. Kevin Zoukowski took his father’s handgun and shot himself when he found Santa’s presents in their parents’ basement. Kyle still believed in Santa at the funeral. Believed in Santa two weeks later, even at school when Samant...

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FEELD Wand

Weekly Contest #347

She didn’t believe in miracles when she looked at herself in the mirror. She was 38 and hadn’t had a boyfriend in two years. She brushed her teeth and said, “I am going to die alone, and that’s fine. That’s totally fine.” Her hair was blonde, wet, and wrapped. Her breasts had little freckles across them, and one boob was bigger than the other, though no one noticed. No one had seen her without a shirt on in months, and she wondered if they were starting to sag. Every tattoo was a mistake. Every tattoo was done the year she turned 18, and eve...

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