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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

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150 Stories

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Start Differently

Weekly 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

Weekly 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

Weekly 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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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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....

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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...

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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 ...

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