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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories (393)

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25 Followers

24 Following

393 Stories

656 karma pts

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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...

2 likes

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...

1 like

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...

2 likes

A Place to Wait

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark, the kind of dark that arrives early and settles in like it plans to stay. The sky had that dull, colorless look, neither black nor blue, just heavy, as if it were pressing down on the city. Snowflakes drifted down slowly, unhurried, as if they had nowhere else to be, each one spinning lazily before disappearing into the ground or the folds of someone’s coat.Jennifer stood at the bus stop with her hands buried in the pockets of a coat that had lost its warmth years ago. The fa...

2 likes

I Answer Exactly What I’m Given

You cross me like a decision you’ve already justified. You call me a boundary, a test, a problem to be solved with stones and boots and clever knots. You give me names on maps and argue about where I begin and end. You measure me in miles, in ownership, in usefulness. You never ask what it costs me to be crossed.I feel everything, and I keep score without numbers.I existed long before you learned how to interrupt me. I remember before bridges. Before ferries and borders and signs nailed into trees. Before you split me into upstream and down ...

1 like

Fed

He wakes up hungry.Not the kind that growls right away. Not the sharp ache that sends you straight to the fridge with your eyes half closed. This hunger sits deeper. It waits. It stretches its legs. It lets him brush his teeth, pull on a shirt, step into the morning before it clears its throat and reminds him it’s still there.He notices it most in the quiet moments. Standing at the bus stop with his hands in his pockets. Washing a mug that still smells faintly of coffee. Watching the steam rise from other people’s breakfasts through restaura...

2 likes

Ten Minutes Can Wait

The pan hissed when Barbara dropped the onions in. She hadn’t meant to cook this late, but the day had slipped away from her in pieces, hours lifted out of her hands while she was still using them. An email that turned into three. A call that ran long because neither person knew how to end it. Standing in line at the pharmacy, staring at the backs of people’s coats while the clock on her phone crept forward. By the time she noticed the light outside the kitchen window had gone flat and gray, her stomach ached with the hollow kind of impatien...

2 likes

Saturday Mornings

Something was burning when I walked into the kitchen.Not loudly. Not in a way that set off alarms or made the smoke detector scream. Just a thin ribbon of smoke lifting from the toaster oven, lazy and pale, carrying the sharp, sweet smell of sugar gone wrong. The kind of smell that sticks in your throat before you even realize you’ve breathed it in.I stopped just inside the doorway. My keys were still in my hand, biting into my palm. For a second, I stood there trying to remember if I’d put anything in the oven that morning. Toast. A pastry....

2 likes

Burnt Sugar Custard at Mile Marker 47

The diner sat alone on the highway like it had missed a memo about closing time. No other buildings. No gas station glow. Just a low concrete rectangle and a sign with half the letters burned out, buzzing softly in the dark. One of the O’s flickered on and off, as if it couldn’t decide whether it was worth the effort.One light flickered inside. A bell rang when I pushed the door open, sharp and lonely, though nobody was behind the counter yet.I took a stool anyway. Vinyl cracked under my weight. The counter was worn smooth where elbows had r...

2 likes

Index Cards

She always shopped like she was trying not to be seen.Not in the dramatic way — no sunglasses indoors or trench coats in July. More like she moved through aisles with the careful economy of someone who’d learned to take up less space. She kept her basket close, read labels too intently, and never made eye contact with the cashier until the moment she had to.On a Monday in early October, she broke her own habit and went to Pomeroy’s Market at 6:17 p.m., the hour when other people — loud people — showed up to decide dinner based on hunger and ...

2 likes

The Unasked Destination

Submitted to Contest #332

The morning started out dull, the kind of gray that feels stuck between seasons. Liz pulled on her jacket anyway and stepped outside with her dog, guessing they’d beat the rain the forecast kept teasing.Halfway down the block the air shifted. It wasn’t colder or warmer, just charged, like the moment before someone flips on a light. The clouds thinned, not in patches but in clean, straight lines, as though some giant hand had dragged a ruler across the sky.Then the snow began.Not flakes. Shapes.Liz stopped walking. Her dog sat, puzzled. From ...

10 likes

When the Truth Stops Waiting

×This story includes themes of reproductive autonomy, pressured decision-making, family estrangement, and emotional trauma. Readers will encounter discussions of a past abortion and the long-term impact of a broken sibling relationship.× Megan kept the letter in the quietest place in her apartment. It lived in the second drawer of the bedside table, under a stack of receipts that she had promised to sort. The envelope was soft from handling. The ink on the front had started to fade. But she knew every loop and slant of her sister’s handwr...

3 likes

You Missed Something

Juli had been back in the city for only two weeks, and already the past felt closer than it should. People warned that trauma made the brain noisy, hungry for meaning in randomness. She accepted the neuroscience of that, even respected it. But she trusted observation more than warnings.The apartment her cousin lent her was nothing romantic. The pipes rattled, the windows sighed, and the heater argued with the laws of thermodynamics. It gave her no illusions of permanence, which was oddly comforting. She rebuilt her days methodically, writing...

2 likes

Rook’s Streetlight

The streetlight hummed like it had something to say.Barbara noticed it every night on her walk home. She always took Birch Lane, even though her route didn’t require it. Something about the narrow street and its leaning maples felt familiar, like a place she had known once but forgotten. The streetlight stood at the bend, a tall metal spine with a chipped base and a glass bulb that glowed the same washed yellow no matter the weather. It never flickered, never dimmed, never stopped its low steady hum. Most people ignored it. Barbara listened....

2 likes

The Last Warmth

Heather saw the hospital elevator doors sliding shut and shoved her hand in just in time. The metal edges bumped her knuckles. Inside, her brother Adam sat in a wheelchair, pale but restless, turning the thin plastic bracelet on his wrist like it was a puzzle he meant to crack open.“You’re late,” he said.“You’re impossible,” she said, catching her breath as she took the handles and pushed him toward the garden terrace.The hallway smelled like antiseptic and chicken soup from the visitor kitchenette. They rode in silence past the nurses’ stat...

2 likes

Author bio

I love. I don’t do things halfway, and I don’t know how to be detached when something matters to me. When I commit, I’m all in — even when it costs me, even when I know it might hurt. I notice everything- shifts in tone, small details, when something feels off. Once I see it, I can’t unsee it. I need things to mean something. I don’t skim through life or people. I sit with feelings, replay moments, question narratives, and refuse to accept easy answers just to be comfortable. I don’t trust tidy moral stories or authority for its own sake. I’m drawn to darker, moodier art because it feels honest — it doesn’t pretend everything is okay when it isn’t. I’m grieving, and that’s real, but it isn’t all of who I am. I’m loyal to my core, aware, creative, and honest. I don’t want platitudes or surface-level fixes. I want the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. I loved hard. I lost hard. And I’m still here. Bruised, human, and stronger than I give myself credit for.