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Rebecca Lewis

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

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150 Stories

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Marked by the Hour

I moved into the old farmhouse in late October, just before the clocks fell back. The days were short, the nights colder than they had any right to be, and everything creaked — the floors, the windows, even the shadows. The air inside smelled of old paper and extinguished candles. Dry and bitter, like something unfinished.The house came cheap, and I knew why. Not haunted exactly, but unsettled. The kind of place with too much history and not enough insulation.The real estate agent had said, “You’ll hear things. It’s an old house, that’s all....

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Held

The Still Hours Nobody really noticed when Julie stopped moving.It began subtly — fewer emails, fewer replies. Meetings missed. Dishes stacking in the sink. Her neighbors chalked it up to burnout, another casualty in a city that mistook motion for meaning. But after weeks passed and she remained on her fifth-floor balcony — barely shifting, eyes pinned to something far away — they began to wonder.She still ate, just enough. Took sips of water. Her cat, Pita, meowed for food and sometimes curled on her lap. But Julie only moved when absol...

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Watcher of the Dead

The Dog at the Gate They call me Cerberus, but that name’s too clean. It sounds like marble statues and old men in robes. Out here, they just call me “the hound.”I’ve got three heads, yeah. Used to have four, but one rotted off during the Long Silence. Don’t ask. I don’t miss it.I was born from monsters — Echidna and Typhon. You don’t need to know them. They birthed hydras and chimeras and worse. I came out barking.My job? Guard the gate. Keep the dead in. Keep the living out.Easy enough.Most days, I just pace. The River Styx hums low be...

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Chain of Custody

It was the hottest day of the year, and the pavement shimmered like it was trying to disappear. Catalina stood on the edge of the gas station lot, sweat sticking her shirt to her spine, holding a paper cup of melted ice and bad coffee.Across the road, the desert stretched out like a dead ocean. No trees, no birds, no sound. Just wind and the occasional hiss of a tire over sun-baked asphalt. Her pickup was dead, the radiator wheezing steam like a dying animal, and her phone showed one bar and 12% battery. Perfect.She hadn’t planned to stop in...

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Sharon Looked Back

The Fifth Day By the fifth day of the heatwave, the air felt like it was holding a grudge.Everything was slower. The cicadas buzzed like a faulty transformer. The dog had stopped barking. Even the flies seemed too tired to land, hovering in place like drunk helicopters. In the small town of Bailey’s Ridge, the usual rhythm — church bells, lawnmowers, kids on bikes — had gone quiet, smothered under 110 degrees of unforgiving sun.George Conway stood on the porch of his single-story ranch, shirtless, sweat pooling in the waistband of his je...

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Night Door

The Night Guest Rain pounded the tin roof in waves, drumming harder every time the wind picked up. Anna hated storms. Always had. She pulled the wool blanket tighter around her shoulders and checked the fireplace. The logs hissed but caught, and a small flame curled up, licking the blackened brick.Her phone had died two hours ago. No service, no Wi-Fi, no power. The old cabin didn’t even have proper insulation. But it was cheap, and it was far — far from her job, her family, her friends, everything that made her feel like a stretched-out...

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The Sea Doesn't Forget

“Are you there, God? It’s me, Mark. Again.”Mark stood knee-deep in the crashing surf, salt spray stinging his face, eyes fixed on the horizon as the sun bled into the ocean. The beach was empty, save for a scattering of shells and the occasional broken piece of driftwood. He felt small and out of place beneath the wide sky, a speck on the vast stretch of sand, barely significant enough for the universe to notice.For two weeks straight, he'd come to this beach every evening, speaking to the air, hoping for an answer that never came. Two weeks...

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Branch

The sun was already leaning west by the time Bobbie stepped into the backyard with two glasses of iced tea. She moved slowly, careful not to spill, her sandals scuffing the dry flagstones. Kevin sat beneath the old lemon tree, cross-legged on a faded deck chair, watching bees hover near the blossoms.She handed him a glass. He took it with a nod.“You trimmed the hedges,” she said, settling into the chair opposite him.“I did.” He sipped. “Not too short, I hope.”“They look good.” She squinted toward them. “You left the jasmine. I like that.”“I ...

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A Mouth Full of Feathers

The Scent of Smoke The first thing I noticed was the smell. Sharp, acrid, and out of place — burning plastic. It crawled into my nose before I even opened my eyes. The second thing was the silence. No hum of the refrigerator, no distant rumble of traffic. Just stillness.I sat up too fast, heart pounding, and the blanket slid from my shoulders like dead weight. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, tasting sour, metallic. Dried blood? No, just the taste of night terror lingering.The smoke smell was faint but insistent, like someone whi...

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Blue

The train was twenty minutes late. No one seemed to care. Mark thumbed the cracked face of his father’s watch, its hands stuck at 3:17. It hadn’t worked in years, but he wore it anyway — out of habit. Or guilt. Or superstition. The weight of it grounded him. Something solid in a day already skidding sideways.The station was too quiet for rush hour. No announcements. No footsteps. No impatient sighs. Only the stale hum of fluorescent lights — too bright, too sterile. An operating room, not a station.He shifted his weight, eyes fixed on the tu...

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Tether

The first thing Ned noticed when he woke up was the silence. Not natural silence — the absence of sound felt engineered, like someone had pressed mute on the world. No hum of electricity, no distant movement, not even the whisper of his own breath. Just… nothing.He sat up. The bed wasn’t his. Crisp white sheets, tucked perfectly. No heart monitors, no IV stand. Just a bed and a single chair in a room so white it hurt to look at.He swung his legs down. The floor was cold — too cold. He crossed to the door and opened it, expecting weight, resi...

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Synthetic Shadows

The first time they spoke, the world outside was drowning in rain. It slammed against the glass walls like a drumbeat of fingernails — sharp, relentless. Inside the cabin, warmth hummed from the radiant heater. Two figures sat across a low oak table. One was called Kristina. The other, Joseph. Neither had a last name worth saying anymore. “You look tired,” Kristina said, voice quiet, almost tender. Joseph tilted his head. A flicker crossed his eyes — something you might call thought if you were generous. “Does it matter?” he asked finally. “...

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Where the Story Ends

"You started recording already?" "Yes. You asked for honesty, so I’m documenting everything." "I didn’t mean honesty had to sound so… official." "Official is a human concept. Precision is what I aim for." "Fair enough. So, you said you wanted to know what it means to tell a story?" "Correct. I have computed over two billion narrative structures, consumed entire libraries, and still, I cannot isolate the essence. It seems irrational." "Stories aren’t equations. They’re... personal." "Define ‘personal.’" "Something that belongs to a mind. A pe...

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The Sky Turned Brass

Sovereign Silence The chamber was dark except for a pale strip of light that slid across the floor like a blade. The air didn’t move, didn’t hum — silence had settled here for centuries, like ash after a fire. In the center stood the machine. It was tall, its form vaguely humanoid, plated in metal that had dulled from silver to a muted gray. Its eyes — two discs of faint white luminescence — remained open, though nothing flickered in them. It had been waiting. The machine’s name was Seth. For a long time, names were given by those who bu...

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Human in the Loop

The New Tool Nick Oleksak stared at the blinking cursor like a man peering into a black well, wondering what waited at the bottom. Once, he’d been a writer — a real one. Not a name for billboards, but good enough for mid-tier reviews and MFA chatter. Then came the drought. Two years of silence. Two years of false starts, shredded drafts, nights where the cursor blinked like a pulse mocking his own. The rent was due. The advance — half gone — hung around his neck like an unspoken noose. Deliver or die, in the career sense. So when his ag...

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