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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

Stories (398)

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25 Following

398 Stories

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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...

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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...

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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

The House on Waverly Street

By night, the house felt wrong.The air had weight — not like heat or humidity, but pressure, like the kind that settles over you just before a storm or a scream. It pressed against the windows, the floorboards, Sarah’s skin. It gathered in corners like dust, clinging even when the lights were on.She sat in the armchair again. The same one. She had never moved it — not since the funeral. Shifting it would be like giving the room permission to change, like admitting the world had gone on without her. And it hadn’t. Not really. Not in here.Abov...

1 like

The Day the Cat Refused Consequences

A cat was stuck in a tree.Not just any cat — Mrs. Fetterman's orange monster, a beast of myth and menace among the neighborhood children. It wasn’t large, exactly, but it radiated an aura of entitlement so intense it warped reality. Its eyes glowed with the unearned confidence of something that had never faced consequences. The cat’s name was Tiberius.He sat on a high, gnarled branch like a Roman emperor surveying peasants — tail flicking, ears twitching, utterly unbothered.Below, chaos simmered.A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk lik...

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The Cat Who Waits

The Cat Who Waits I was a crow once. Then a rat. Now a cat. Bodies are like coats — you wear what suits the weather, and the weather of magic changes often.My witch is named Catherine. She has the sort of face that looks like it remembers laughter but hasn’t used it much lately. She lives in a crooked cottage that smells of thyme and burnt sugar, tucked at the edge of a forest that doesn’t quite like being watched.Catherine found me on a stormy night, naturally. They always do. She was scavenging for mugwort by the riverbank when she he...

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What the Bottle Remembers Part 2

The laughter began as a kind of rebellion — brittle, half-hysterical, the sound people make when logic finally gives up and something larger moves in. Lavanya was the first to break. It rose from her chest in a tremor that caught even her off guard, a disbelieving giggle that cracked into full laughter. She bent forward, covering her face. The sound seemed to startle the green light in the bottle — it pulsed sharply, then steadied, like a heartbeat learning to sync with hers.Drew’s laughter followed, hesitant at first, then helpless. The abs...

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Small Errors

Kash Shaikh was not unkind. He simply misunderstood people.He had read somewhere — he could no longer remember where — that the secret to likability was “warmth.” So, Kash practiced warmth. He smiled at everyone, even when he didn’t feel like it. He nodded too often. He leaned forward during conversations, eager to show engagement. He thought this made people comfortable. It did not.On Monday mornings, when his coworkers shuffled into the office bleary-eyed and grim, Kash would be waiting near the coffee machine. “Big weekend?” he’d say, as ...

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Elegy of the Eighth World

The Weaver’s Gift In the first dawn of the third world, when mountains still remembered the hands that shaped them, there lived a weaver named Ashley. Her craft was peerless- she could spin light into thread, and from it make garments that shimmered with memory. Kings came to her for robes that sang their victories; mourners came for veils that whispered the names of the dead.One day, she found a wounded serpent tangled in her loom. Its scales were cracked and bleeding gold. The creature looked at her with an intelligence older than fire...

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Through the Black Window Part 2

David’s breath came in shallow, measured pulls. The room smelled like pine smoke and fear. His sister’s eyes — wide, wet, desperate — anchored him in a nightmare he couldn’t wake from.The woman from the car leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching him with that unnerving calm people use when they think they’re saving you from yourself.“Sit,” she said.David didn’t move.“I said sit.”The hooded figure nudged him with the barrel of a gun he hadn’t noticed until now. He sat. The chair creaked beneath him.“You said you made her,” David said...

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Wake Up Dead

Joshua Parker used to be ordinary — an adjunct lecturer who graded too slowly, drank too much coffee, and fell asleep to crime podcasts. His life was unremarkable enough to feel safe. Until the mornings changed.It started with songs that didn’t exist. He’d wake humming lyrics he didn’t recognize, melodies too perfect to be accidental. When he tried to hum them again, they vanished, leaving only the shape of sound in his mind. He wrote them down under a heading in his bedside notebook- Dream Fragments.Dr. Lee, his therapist, called it hypnopo...

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The Deep Calls

The water looked black. Not just dark — black, like a mirror reflecting nothing. Mallory stood at the edge of the quarry, shivering despite the heat that pressed down on her shoulders like a hand that wouldn’t lift.Cicadas droned from the trees. The air smelled of dust and iron and the faint sweetness of algae.The others had left hours ago. Only the echo of their laughter still clung to the rocks — faint and hollow, as if the quarry itself were trying to remember what joy sounded like.She’d been coming here since childhood, climbing over the...

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The Shape Beneath the Waves

A woman stood at the edge of the water, the tide pulling thin lines of foam across her bare feet. The sea wasn’t calm tonight — neither was she — but it moved with a kind of rhythm that steadied her breathing. The horizon was a jagged bruise of deep blue and silver where the moon had split the clouds.Behind her, the old town slept. She could still hear the faint hum of its lights and the creak of fishing boats tied to their posts. She used to love that sound when she was a child. It meant her father was home. It meant the world was small and...

1 like

The Patient Silence

The air tastes like iron and dust. I keep swallowing, but it never goes away. Every breath drags through grit, like I’m inhaling the bones of the building itself. Every sound makes me jerk my head toward the doorway — each creak, each echo — but it’s always the same- nothing. Silence, heavy and patient.I’ve stopped yelling. The first few hours, I screamed until my throat split into raw edges. I shouted names — my crew, my sister, God, anyone. Now I just sit and listen to the sound of my own heartbeat. It’s the only rhythm left.We were suppos...

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.