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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

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150 Stories

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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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The Unasked Destination

Weekly 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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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....

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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...

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