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Nina Chyll

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2021

Stories (19)
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495 Followers
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19 Stories

2980 karma pts

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The Bends

Submitted to Contest #337

_October 10, 1045 Earth EST, 1920.2 Europa LST_Dear Bob, this is going be so bizarre for you to read, but I am 35 now, have rewritten this LSM at least a hundred times, and you have a 6-year-old daughter. I am so sorry you are finding out this way. People here have recommended I help you acclimatise with what you may experience. Confusion, anger, bittersweetness (apparently this is a legitimate feeling), regret, or maybe disappointment (this will depend on whether you feel like you have done something wrong — regret, or whether you will feel...

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Beasts of Unburden

Submitted to Contest #330

It snowed until the body was covered good and proper. I saw the bloody trail arrowed towards the forest and tried to convince myself not to go after it. Yes, I had a shotgun, and no, I didn’t know how to use it well. I was made to reload, clean, and aim it at some coke cans a few weeks before, but been given no opportunity to release its thunder since. I couldn’t be sure what had killed the fox. My feet ached to go outside and after the mystery, so instead I got up to make a cup of tea to keep myself occupied. I distrusted the momentum the b...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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Pied Piper of London

Submitted to Contest #321

I want this city eaten from the bottom up, so bottoms up to that. The whiskey I stole off one of the ‘sisters’ tastes like smoke and moors and decay. I want this city squealing with delight and pain mixed exactly like this drink, painful but irresistible. Especially this house by Primrose Hill, this house with unparalleled views. I want its foundations crawling and stumbling, its inhabitants nibbled away in their beds, frozen in a waking nightmare, limb after limb. Until their legs that aren’t for running, and their hands that aren’t for hit...

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Cadaverine

Submitted to Contest #316

First came the smell, sickly and heady like fermenting alcohol. But with every step, it grew more rotten. Seb breathed deeply and heard May gasp behind him. She didn’t appear to like the taste of petrol the stench left behind because she pulled her shirt over her mouth and nose. Not such a good sign. Seb sped up lightly.He stopped at the edge of the ditch and began to move branches out of the way. Dwarf trees grew very densely here, roots strangling one another for whatever water gathered in the hole during wetter seasons. Now, in the dry an...

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A Bottled Letter from Y. Found on Silent Shores of X

Submitted to Contest #305

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life. Yes, we were sinking. Yes, science had no answers yet. Yes once more, we had nowhere to flee, now that the airport had been claimed by the ocean, and the harbour was resting only an insurmountable inch or two under the water’s surface. No way off our island remained, I repeated. A grumpy growl rose in the crowd like a threatened animal, and under the weight of that murmur, I drifted off script. Despite everything, we would be alright, I reassured them from the podium – those who atte...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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An Elegy in Nine Trees

Submitted to Contest #296

It’s mermaid day. She’ll pick up sea shells, lie on the beach like a washed-up starfish, go to an art gallery, and eat grilled fish. Yesterday, she took a boat trip to watch seals sunbathe on ragged rocks, and the captain flirted with her, the only single woman on the tour. It was pirate day; she let him.The cliff-side path sparkles in the breeze. But even the gentle wind, like a breath in, doesn’t help her get a lungful. She’s been so short on oxygen it makes her wonder if she was a fish in a previous life. Maybe she needs gills. The gliste...

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Wire Tap

Submitted to Contest #285

not letters, so often pre-opened we could put nothing in the open not even literature, also closed in on itself, in officials’ drawers or in little cardboard coffins of redacted versions  Stanislaw Baranczak, What will be the testimony, translated from Polish by me* ‘Glad I’ve reached you home. You alright?’ She never calls here. Rigid and reserved and she’s never liked him one bit. And that perfunctory gladness, though she knows full well he can’t leave the flat. Suppose it’s only fair to pretend on the phone. Someone could be list...

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One Day Like This

Submitted to Contest #243

The back of the truck smelled of sweat, sharp with microbial sourness, not unlike the kimchi Max had been concocting in the cupboard under his kitchen sink. He got a fleeting, distant feeling that he might not enjoy any fermented foods for a long time after this.He counted everyone in the truck. Last time they had been summoned, ten years before, there were eight of them, Test Group Octagon. But this year, there were only six. Since the agreement they all signed at the start of the experiment stated the only viable reason to cease participat...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Book of Misrevelation

Shortlisted for Contest #218 ⭐️

We could smell the war before it dawned over the horizon. Day after day, vinegar pushed through pores on our skin clogged by testosterone. The muggy smoke of burning soup filled lungs whenever we forgot about it cooking on the stove. The stench of diarrhoea in the latrines was impossible to withstand, and it doesn’t deserve to be described here other than to say we stole laundry pins from the villagers to put on our noses for protection just to do our business. Sheets had to hang out, smelling crisply of starch, war or no war.  We fille...

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The Imaginary Cabbage Stew

Submitted to Contest #103

C: ‘Are you asking about the impact the accidente had on the family? Well, there’s no family to speak of anymore, to start with. But I just want to scream: be yourself no matter what, you know. God, when I first came to this town, I had no idea, I had to reuse my lashes twenty times, that’s how poor I was, I reattached them until the residue glue was too heavy to keep my eyelids open. I had to ride to auditions on a bike, in the heat, can you imagine?‘And I saw him across the bar one night and boom, ten years later, some late-night arguments...

39 likes 14 comments 14
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Final Products of Combustion

Submitted to Contest #94

CW: very strong language, sexual harassment     Natasha is so plump her breasts are already filling an underwired bra her mother had picked out for her, it’s pink. She looks so tan in it that other girls think she’s dirty. She smells of chlorine and strawberries. She dives so well she’s the only one allowed at the deep side of the pool in swimming class. Ken is scrawny like a young tree with his skinny branches. He’s mere kindling, no obstacle to the hormonal wildfire. He notices hair starting to grow under his armpits. He wakes up...

56 likes 31 comments 31
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On the Origin of Shadows

Winner of Contest #92 🏆

There are two things I have always wanted you to know about the house. Ever since you picked it out, in the middle of a recession, at a heavy discount, as you put it. As if it was a carton of milk about to go out of date. For us, you said, finally away from the hustle. And there are two things I have wanted to tell you. But I didn’t know how.1. I hate the glass door to the back garden. It’s like a wound barely held by shaggy stitches. One measly screwdriver stuck into the lock would suffice to split it open, exposing the house’s organs viabl...

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Raw Sienna

Submitted to Contest #91

Different day, same nurse with a stump where her empathy should be. ‘And you’re absolutely sure you fell down the stairs again?’Sienna nodded and the nurse rolled her eyes. ‘You sure are a klutz,’ she commented and licked her finger to turn the page on the form she’d filled out last time. ‘Still no family history of inner ear disorders? Strokes? Brain tumours?’Some nurses at the emergency department tried to coax the truth out with words dripping like honey, but Sienna was allergic to honey. Some raised their eyebrows so high they looked lik...

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The Tree Surgeon's Dictionary

Winner of Contest #90 🏆

Content warning: terminal illness IMBIBITION: the absorption of water by a seed, stimulating the enzymes required for growth. They’re visiting the quiet grandparents when her father says, ‘One day, you’ll find me here, too. Nothing is forever.’ His voice sounds like it’s coming from under the ground, like he’s already training her for what’s to come. The girl is so small her feet dangle off the folding plastic bench. She stares at her grandparents’ names and oval photos in which they don’t smile, and then at the oak casting a shadow on their...

323 likes 179 comments 179
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Come Again

Submitted to Contest #89

CW: suicidal thoughtsMy mother dropped a thermometer once when I was little. I leaned over the mosaic of broken glass and mercury beads, and a hypnotised hand extended to pick up one of the perfect balls. The sight ripped a screech out of my mother, so shrill it sounded prehistoric, making the hand retreat immediately. She took me in her relieved arms. ‘You’re like a magpie, aren’t you? Can’t say no to shiny things.’It’s twenty-five degrees outside. I know because I’m looking at a thermometer similar to the one she broke that time, hanging o...

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