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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories (394)

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25 Followers

24 Following

394 Stories

659 karma pts

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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

The Direction She Chose

Emily let the train settle into its pace. The early evening light stretched across the windows, thin and gold. She watched it flicker over the passengers around her. Most of them carried the calm of routine. They boarded trains like this every week, maybe every day. She wondered if any of them were leaving something behind that tugged at them the way Keith tugged at her thoughts.A sudden, irrational anger flared in her chest. How easily they went about their lives — scrolling, unwrapping sandwiches, talking about nothing. How untouched they ...

2 likes

A Light Left On Between Them

“Goodbye.”Steve stayed rooted to the platform long after the train shrank into a streak of silver and vanished into the tunnel. The noise of the station came back in pieces. Someone laughed near the ticket kiosk. A suitcase rolled over a crack in the tile. A vendor called out about hot tea. None of it landed.He finally sat on a bench and let his hands fall between his knees. He had pictured this moment a hundred times, but every version ended with Amanda choosing him. Not this quiet exile she walked into, head high, heart guarded.A gust of c...

3 likes

When the Air Changed

The Start It began quietly. No spark, no spotlight. Just two people crossing paths on an ordinary day that should’ve dissolved into the pile of forgettable ones. You asked a question like you were almost afraid to disturb the air. I answered with a warmth that startled me, a touch softer than I meant to be. Nothing dramatic happened. Still, something shifted — like a faint click beneath the floorboards.We didn’t feel it at first. We were both too wrapped in our own separate worlds to notice the new thread forming between them. But it was...

3 likes

The Riverbank Beneath the Storm

It was a dark and stormy night, the kind that rattled shutters and made every tree look like it wanted to climb through your window. Savannah stood on her grandmother’s porch with a flashlight that kept flickering like it had second thoughts. She had come back to settle the old house after the funeral, but the storm made even the simplest task feel like trouble was waiting around the corner.Inside, the air was thick with dust and memory. The wooden floor groaned under her boots. A picture frame tilted on the wall as if it had been listening ...

3 likes

Quite Work

Brandon kept the workshop lights on long after midnight again. The neighbors thought he was building furniture. His sister thought he was avoiding his grief. Only the walls knew the truth. Brandon was addicted to fixing things that were never really broken.It started with a chipped teacup. He glued it together and felt a small spark in his chest, warm and bright, the way a single match looks in a dark room. Then came the old radio from the attic, the cracked photo frame, the wobbly chair. Soon he was hunting for broken objects the way other ...

4 likes

The Softness After

I drift above the floorboards the way smoke drifts from a candle that forgot it was supposed to burn out. Most nights are quiet in this old house. The walls groan, the windows shiver, and I listen to it all the way someone alive listens to rain.I do not remember the moment I died. Memory is slippery when you have no hands to hold it. I know I was someone who loved this place. I know the rose garden outside once smelled sweeter than anything in my life. I know the piano in the parlor remembers my fingers even if I no longer have any.The new f...

2 likes

The Small Truths of Moving Forward

James stayed on the fire escape until the cold had settled so deeply into his sleeves that he could feel each thread stiffen. By then the couple below had vanished around the corner, swallowed by the grid of city streets. The moment was already drifting into memory, thin as breath on glass. He slipped back inside and shut the window, trapping the last bit of cold behind him like a stowaway.The apartment felt expectant. It was a strange feeling, almost like stepping into a room that had been holding its breath. He moved through it slowly. The...

2 likes

The Shape of Quiet

The house on Wren Street kept its secrets in the quiet way old places do. Narrow and two-storied, its chipped paint curled like dried petals, and the porch rail leaned forward as if listening. Gauri lived there three months before the noises began. Not the soft settling of beams or the grumble of pipes, but a gentle tapping that traveled through the walls with the persistence of a polite visitor.She tried ignoring it. She played the radio late into the night, letting voices blur together until they formed a single, numbing haze. She layered ...

2 likes

When the World Went Quiet

I remember the night the power went out. Not just in the house — everywhere. The whole grid collapsed, like someone had yanked the plug on the world. No warning, no storm. One moment everything buzzed with electricity, and the next it was all gone. Lights blinked out. Screens froze. The hum of modern life died in an instant.At first, we thought it was just our block. Then we stepped outside and saw that the entire neighborhood was dark. No porch lights. No distant glow from traffic. The sky looked huge, like it had grown overnight. My dad st...

2 likes

The Sky That Called Him Back

In the summer of 1987, in a dusty corner of a gas station off Route 46 in New Jersey, eight-year-old Dale King sat on a torn vinyl bench, swinging his legs and trying to disappear. His mother was arguing with the mechanic — something about a radiator leak and a price that didn’t match the sign out front.The air smelled like motor oil and burnt coffee. A flickering fluorescent light buzzed overhead like it was running out of reasons to stay alive. That’s when Dale saw it — a quarter, face-up, right at the base of a soda machine. It wasn’t gri...

2 likes

The Summer Before I Knew Myself

When I think of that summer, it always starts with the cicadas. Their sound wasn’t just noise; it lived inside the air, inside my teeth, inside the boards of the porch. It was a kind of weather. A shimmer that made everything feel a little far away, as if the whole neighborhood was already a memory even while we were still living it.I can still see the porch. The paint curling like dried petals, thin enough to flake off onto the backs of my thighs when I sat too long. The wood held the heat no matter the hour. It smelled of old summers sunk ...

2 likes

Where the Fifth Star Falls

In the kingdom of Velmira, the stars told the truth.Every hundred years or so, the sky shifted, and five stars aligned over the northern horizon. Scholars called it the Crown of Fire. Priests called it the Hand of Fate. But the people remembered it by a simpler name- the Fifth Star.Once, long ago, a child was born beneath that burning alignment. He grew up to be a warlord who scorched the land for a decade, toppling cities, turning rivers red, and crowning himself in blood. When he finally fell, Velmira swore an oath- should five stars light...

2 likes

Rain on the Barn, Snow on the Campus Lawn

France, 1944 — Vladislav, Age 19 Rain lashes the broken roof of the barn. Vladislav hunches beside the radio, fingers trembling as he dials the frequency again. Static. Then a blip. Another. A signal.He glances at the others — three resistance fighters, soaked and silent. The youngest, barely sixteen, is holding a pistol like it’s heavier than his arm. They’re waiting for word from London- confirmation that tonight’s drop will land in the field behind the monastery.His job is to listen.Vladislav adjusts the antenna, heart pounding. The s...

2 likes

No Safe Choice Part 2

—David’s hand.The café froze. Boyink’s jaw tightened, his calm splintering into something darker. Jess didn’t breathe; she couldn’t. David’s fingers closed around hers, and in the next heartbeat, they were moving — not running yet, but close enough that every step felt stolen. Chairs scraped. Someone shouted. Rainlight flared in the windows. Then they were outside, swallowed by the downpour.The rain hit like needles. Jess barely registered the cold before David pulled her down an alley slick with puddles. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she ...

1 like

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.