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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

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61 Followers
60 Following

150 Stories

1551 karma pts

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A Sky That Didn’t Tear

At first, it was just the clocks. Saskla noticed it on a Tuesday. The kitchen clock said 8:17 when she poured her coffee. She carried the mug to the living room, glanced at the wall clock, and it said 8:12. Five minutes earlier. She stood there, coffee steaming in her hand, waiting for one of them to correct itself. Neither did. She checked her phone. 8:19. “Cheap batteries,” she muttered, though she’d changed them both last week. By noon, the problem had spread. The sun hung low and heavy like late afternoon, but the digital sign outside th...

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Arrival Records

The following materials were recovered from a water-damaged shoebox in the attic of 214 Bell Street after the property was sold in 1998. Excerpt from The Bell Street Gazette June 3, 1974 CITY TO DEMOLISH ABANDONED TRAIN DEPOT After standing vacant for nearly a decade, the Old Bell Street Depot is scheduled for demolition on June 20. City officials cite structural instability and repeated reports of trespassing as reasons for removal. Built in 1891, the depot once served as the industrial center of Bell Street. Engineers note the building’s...

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The Battle for the Page

On the night before the crossing, General George Washington asked for a second boat. The first boat was already at the edge of the Delaware, its hull nudging the ice. Soldiers stamped their feet on the frozen bank, muskets clutched under damp wool coats. The river was black and loud, broken by slabs of drifting ice. History, as it was supposed to happen, waited on the other side. Washington stood apart from the men. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and very tired. A lantern swung from a post behind him, lighting his face from below. “Another b...

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Personal Day

Every morning, Sean woke up at 6:12. Not 6:10. Not 6:15. 6:12. He’d chosen the time years ago because it felt slightly unusual, like he was getting away with something. But after twelve years of the same alarm, the same shower, the same coffee measured with the same chipped blue scoop, there was nothing unusual left about it. His life ran on rails. He lived on the third floor of a brick apartment building that always smelled faintly of toast. He left at 7:03. He caught the 7:11 train. He stood in the second car, near the door, one hand loope...

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The Moment Between Us

The music stopped first. Not faded. Not stumbled. It just cut out mid-note, like someone had yanked the cord from the wall. Alyssa was halfway through her vows. One second she was saying, “I never believed in fate until—” and the next, silence swallowed the garden. A hundred white chairs. A string quartet frozen with bows hovering over strings. Her father still holding her bouquet because she’d pressed it into his hands to wipe her palms. And then the screaming started. Not loud at first. Just a ripple from the back rows, like confusion find...

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The Still Place Below

Allison had always been afraid of the water. Not the polite, careful kind of fear. Not the kind that makes you avoid the deep end at pool parties and laugh it off. Hers was the kind that lived in her chest. The kind that tightened her throat at the smell of chlorine and woke her at night with the memory of cold, dark pressure closing over her head. She was eight when the river took her under. Slipped on moss. Hit her chin on rock. Saw nothing but brown churn and white bubbles. Her father’s hands pulled her out in time, but something stayed b...

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Where the Light Found Her

The car door is still open when the siren starts. It’s a thin sound at first, somewhere far off, easy to mistake for wind pushing through the parking garage. Samantha has one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the envelope in her lap. The paper is soft from being folded and unfolded all morning. Her name is written on the front in her mother’s careful, slanted handwriting. Her fingers press into it without meaning to, creasing the corner. The siren grows louder. Across the concrete levels, tires screech. A door slams. Someone shouts...

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The Shape of Expectation

Weekly Contest #343

Everyone knew the dragon would come at dawn. That’s what the prophecy said. The scroll was very clear about it. Dawn, smoke, fire, screaming, a chosen hero with a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon. The whole thing had been workshopped for centuries. So the town prepared. Blacksmiths hammered through the night. Bakers handed out free bread to nervous families. Parents hugged their children a little too long. And at the center of it all stood Adam, who had the crescent moon birthmark and a sword that was slightly too heavy for him. He prac...

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The Morning After Rain

The last time I kissed John, it was raining. Not the dramatic kind of rain you see in movies. Just a steady, gray drizzle that made everything feel smaller. The parking lot outside my apartment smelled like wet asphalt and pine from the trees lining the curb. His car idled at the edge of the sidewalk, exhaust curling into the damp air. We’d been standing there for ten minutes, talking in circles. “It doesn’t have to end like this,” he said again, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. His hair was plastered to his forehead. He had...

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Two Dollar Bills

When Chelsea first noticed him, he was arguing with a vending machine. It was late, close to midnight, and the hospital lobby had the washed-out look of a place that never truly sleeps. The fluorescent lights hummed. The coffee in her paper cup tasted burnt and thin. She had been there for nine hours, sitting with her younger brother after his surgery, and the world had narrowed to plastic chairs and the slow crawl of the clock. The vending machine swallowed his dollar and gave nothing in return. “You can’t just take it,” he said, pressing h...

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After We're Gone

The bus dropped her at the corner like it always had, a half block short, as if the town itself didn’t want to claim responsibility for her arrival. She stood there longer than necessary, hands in her coat pockets, staring at the rusted grocery sign across the street. It still said Fresh Meats even though the windows were boarded and the paint had peeled into something that looked like scabs. Some details never changed. That was the problem. She’d sworn she wouldn’t come back. Not after the funeral. Not after the last argument in the drivewa...

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What We Set Down

Letter One Dear N., I’m writing this on the bus because if I wait until I’m home, I won’t. There’s something about motion that makes honesty easier. You can blame the road if the words wobble. I found your spare key today. It was taped inside the old cookbook, right where you said it wouldn’t be. I laughed out loud in the kitchen, which felt strange, like laughing in a closed room after the air’s already gone stale. I didn’t use the key. I just wanted to know it was real. You asked, last time we spoke, why I stopped answering. I’ve been reh...

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Tomorrow, I Promise

Weekly Contest #340

The baby monitor crackled to life at 2:17 a.m. Heidi had only fallen asleep an hour earlier. She’d been at the kitchen table with her laptop, answering emails that could have waited, telling herself she’d stop after one more. She always said that. Her neck still ached from hunching over the screen. At first, she thought it was static. The old house breathed at night. Pipes clicked. Floors sighed. She rolled over and pulled the blanket higher. Then she heard it again. “Mama?” She sat up so fast the room spun. The monitor’s green light glowed ...

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What We Meant to Do

The call comes just before sunset, when the light in the kitchen turns the color of old paper. Mariella lets it ring. Then again. No one else calls her this late. No one else still uses that number. She wipes her hands on a dish towel she keeps meaning to replace and never does. It smells faintly of lemon soap and something older. “Hello?” Breathing on the other end. For a second, she thinks the call has dropped and she’s talking to herself. Then she recognizes the rhythm of it. She imagines him on a sidewalk somewhere, one hand in his pocke...

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Revisions

I wake up mid-sentence again. Not the gentle kind of waking, either. I’m talking, or thinking, or doing something brave with my hands, and then — snap — the world blurs and I’m suddenly standing somewhere else with a different emotion stapled to my chest. “Oh no,” I say. “You changed it.” Silence. That thick, godlike silence that smells like coffee and indecision. Last time, I was angry. Righteously so. I had a whole speech ready. Now I’m… wistful? Why am I wistful. I don’t want to be wistful. Wistful people stare out windows and accept thin...

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