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Nick Matsas

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2025

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50 Followers
20 Following

70 Stories

1068 karma pts

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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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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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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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Copperhead's

Weekly Contest #346

Former Senator Zell Miller of Georgia believed he had killed all the copperheads under his porch with a hoe. To make sure, he told his great-granddaughter, Chelsey, an eight-year-old girl on summer vacation, to get under the porch and fetch “the snake meat,” and to “Let Grandpa know if any are still alive.”Chelsey looked at her Great-grandfather and remembered what her father said: she shouldn’t do anything he tells her to do without running it by someone else first. Still, her Great-grandfather was a man of short patience, and her comprehen...

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The End of The Road

Weekly Contest #346

He wears a brown-and-white-checkered shirt with buttons. He stays in motels and out of bars, and the only sound he hears is the turn signal in his ‘98 Buick LaSabre. He’s been driving for a while, and the last highway sign said:THE END 267He’s on the final leg of his journey. His earliest memory is waiting in a car while his parents busted Timothy Leary out of jail. His last memory was the girl who asked where he was going. Gas was $1.09, and so were her heart-shaped sunglasses. She said she was 19.Heading toward the end clears one’s mind, t...

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kisses of love and sour menu's

Weekly Contest #346

“Will you promise me something? That it is you and no one else that talks to him.”Love, hope, and motherhood cannot be rushed. Certainly, it was the truth once. I said, “Please tell me that you have no regrets.”Her hand went through her hair, and she looked out the window. It was raining, and her hair was beautiful. I can describe it, but I always feel like I'm stepping on something if I do.“It’s too late,” she said.I disagreed.“You reached out to me.”She lay on her white duvet. The rain pelted the windows. “This was my grandmother’s,” she s...

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