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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories (405)
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30 Followers
29 Following

405 Stories

794 karma pts

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Final Entry

The book came to me the way rot does. Quiet. Patient. Already working before I noticed the smell.It was waiting on my kitchen table when I got home from work, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. No return address. No postage marks. Just my name written in ink that looked too dark, almost bruised into the paper. I stood in the doorway for a long time, keys still in my hand. I lived alone. The landlord did inspections, sure, but he never left gifts. I considered the obvious options. Prank. Mistake. A friend I’d forgotten.I told myself ...

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Where Sound Carries

On the morning the river went down, Nick Kierpiec missed the bus on purpose.He told himself it was because the sky looked different after a flood, scrubbed and pale like a plate rinsed too clean. He told himself he wanted to walk the long way along Front Street and see what the water had left behind. Both of those things were true. But if he was honest, he also wanted to delay the day. He wanted to stand still for a bit before the town decided what it was going to do with him next.The bus hissed away from the curb and took its diesel breath ...

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One Second Late

Submitted to Contest #338

I opened the book because it was the only thing left in the room that hadn’t tried to warn me away.The cover was plain, dark blue, no title. It smelled faintly of dust and something sharper, like metal. As soon as the first page lifted, the house went quiet. No creaking pipes. No wind in the trees outside. Even the old clock in the hall stopped ticking, right between seconds.The first line was written in my handwriting.If you’re reading this, you already waited too long.I flipped the page. My pulse thudded in my ears. Each paragraph describe...

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Unmarked

The planet had no name anymore. The maps called it K-317, but maps only mattered to people who planned to return. Names were for places that expected visitors. Histories. Futures. This world had been reduced to coordinates and warnings in small print, unless they were desperate. Or very well paid.Once, it had been something else. It must have been. No one built domes and towers and schools on a world they never bothered to name. The designation came later, after the evacuation, after the reports were filed and stamped and buried under newer ...

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The Search

He begins with the map, though he knows better.It is an old road map folded so many times the creases have turned white and soft, like fabric rubbed thin. The ink has bled in places. Town names blur into rivers. Rivers fade into nothing. Still, he spreads it on the small kitchen table each morning as if it might tell him something new.The kettle whistles. He turns it off. The sound feels too sharp for the hour. Outside, the light is pale and undecided, not quite morning, not quite the night letting go. This is the time he always wakes now, t...

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The Machines Turn

Submitted to Contest #337

Kat kept her phone on mute because the world was loud enough already, but she kept the screen face-up like it was a tiny altar. Every few minutes it lit up with nothing — no new messages, no missed calls — just the soft blue glow of possibility.At 2:17 a.m. her time, she got used to the quiet in a way that felt like learning a new language with no teacher. She had started categorizing silences.There was the “sleeping” silence, sweet and forgiving, like a cat curled on your feet.There was the “busy” silence, the kind you could forgive because...

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The Cost of Correction

She can rewind time.Not in the dramatic way people imagine. There’s no bright flash, no sound like a tape screeching backward. It feels more like holding your breath and stepping sideways. The world softens, loosens, and then slides back to where it was a moment ago.At first, she only rewound a few seconds. A dropped mug before it shattered. A word she wished she hadn’t said. She’d feel a pressure change behind her eyes, like stepping into a different room, the pressure in her chest, and then everything would be righted. Clean. Corrected.She...

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Start Differently

Submitted to Contest #336

Akshita found the line in the notebook three days after the accident.The notebook had survived everything. The spill of coffee in February. The rainstorm in April when she’d run for the bus and slipped, scraping her knee and her pride. Even the move, when it had been tossed into a box labeled “MISC — DO NOT LOSE” and then promptly ignored for two weeks.The notebook was blue, soft at the corners, warped in a way that suggested loyalty. She opened it expecting lists. Groceries. Call Mom. Finish draft. What she found instead was a sentence writ...

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Practice

They leave the apartment at the same time and turn different ways without stopping. There is no ceremony to it. No last look framed in the doorway. Just the soft choreography of two people who have practiced not touching. This is how it ends — not loudly, just practiced.The hallway light flickers as they pass under it, the same flicker it’s had for years, the one Ryan kept meaning to fix and never did. Barbara notices it anyway. She notices everything now. The scuff mark near the baseboard shaped like a continent. The mail slot that rattles ...

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The 3:17 Stop

At 3:17 every morning, the old elevator in Building C stopped between floors.No one knew why. Maintenance had checked the cables, the motor, the buttons. They replaced parts that didn’t need replacing and tightened bolts that were already tight. Everything worked. Still, at 3:17 A.M., the lights flickered and the car sighed to a halt, a long metallic exhale, as if remembering something it would rather forget.Julia knew this because she was always awake at that hour.Insomnia had hollowed out her nights and given them back to her in pieces. Th...

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Before It Shattered

Submitted to Contest #336

The room goes quiet in a way that feels physical, like the air just dropped. Not silence exactly. More like pressure. Like everything that was moving a second ago decided to stop at once. The refrigerator hum cuts out. The traffic outside seems to pull farther away. Even the light feels different, flatter somehow, as if it’s waiting to see what happens next.“I mean, it’s not like you were really there for her at the end,” Joshua says, shrugging a little, casual in a way that doesn’t match the sentence. His voice tilts upward at the end, like...

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What the Wind Took

The plan was simple.Hector would wake up early, drive to the coast, scatter his father’s ashes at sunrise, and be back home by noon. No speeches. No witnesses. Just water, light, and the quiet click of the urn closing for the last time.Simple plans were his specialty. They fit neatly into lists and calendars. They had edges. After the hospital paperwork, the phone calls that all sounded the same, the casseroles left on the porch with handwritten notes he never read, this felt manageable. One morning. One task. Done.He told himself it would b...

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Instructions, Gently Given

Submitted to Contest #335

The package arrived on a Tuesday, which meant it sat on my porch all day while I was at work. I saw it through the front window when I got home, the box hunched against the door like it had been waiting. The sun was already low, the light thin and blue, the cardboard darkened by cold.My name was written on the label in careful block letters. No return address. No postage mark I recognized.I stood there longer than I needed to, keys still in my hand. For a moment I wondered if it had been misdelivered, if this was meant for a neighbor with th...

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The Road Still Worked

The last bus left at 9:40, coughing a cloud of exhaust that hung in the cold like a held breath. Jennifer watched it go until the red lights shrank and vanished around the bend. She checked her phone again even though she knew there’d be no signal this far out. The screen lit her face briefly, pale and unfamiliar, then went dark. She slid the phone back into her pocket and stood there, listening to the quiet close in.The road was quieter than she remembered. No dogs barking, no distant radio bleeding out of an open window. Or maybe she was r...

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What Waits Without Chasing

They told her not to go into the woods.Not in a dramatic way. No raised voices or stories whispered over flames. No warnings carved into signs or threats meant to scare children straight. It was just a rule, delivered the way people delivered weather updates or reminders to lock the shed. Casual. Worn smooth from repetition.Don’t go past the fence. Don’t take the trail. Don’t go into the woods.Desiree heard it first from her mother, standing at the sink with her hands in soapy water, eyes on the window instead of on Desiree’s face. Then from...

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