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Squirrelly Writer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019

Stories
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445 Followers
158 Following

93 Stories

2777 karma pts

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Please Do Not Touch

Weekly Contest #367

If you’ll kindly check in your coats and bags to one of the lockers on your left, I’ll begin the tour. I see you’re struggling – no worries, here to give a helping hand, always. We shall proceed. Welcome to the Beaufort Gallery. The layout goes east to west, chronological order. The curators are sticklers for correct categorisation and labelling of specimens – I beg your pardon, I mean pieces. Species, peecies. You’d think I’d have the patter down pat by now, bless my soul! Fire exits are clearly signposted. Please refrain from touching any...

12 likes 8 comments 8
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Paper Cuts

Weekly Contest #360

Paper Cuts Spend some minutes reading the extract below. Then in a minimum of 1000 words to a maximum of 3000 words, explain how this writer uses language to convey the emotions of the characters. Spent the first five minutes of this stupid testLooking outside, thinking that looks the bestWould rather be out there getting inspo from the homiesThan cooped up in here with all these zombie nobodies Didn’t wanna sit English language – parents chose it for meTryna concentrate but the girls in short shorts getting me hornyLost another five minutes...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Shielding

Weekly Contest #359

“It says they’ve received it.” I hear the plaintive bleat I’ve not manage to muzzle. It’s answered with a grunt from the bedroom, where my lover is undressing. Lover. Can you still call someone that when every interaction they have with you seems drenched in contempt? Another notification brings me away from trying to remember when he last complimented me. Asides from performatively, in the presence of friends and family. The witnesses, gathered there today, gone tomorrow. My stomach drops. “Wait, it says they’ve cancelled it.” A gargling...

16 likes 8 comments 8
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Family Fortunes

Weekly Contest #356

Family FortunesTrigger warning: portrays grieving. “No point looking for her in there, old boy,” Roger advised his best friend. Berny was sniffing around Roger’s wife’s dressing room. An extension Roger had had constructed for Maureen for her 50th birthday. If he’d known it was going to be the last milestone of hers they’d celebrate together, he would’ve built her palaces instead, with all the trimmings for every stop on the world cruise he would’ve taken her on. “Shouldda wouldda couldda,” Roger grumbled to himself as he swung his matchsti...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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Lauren Peters versus Peter Lawrence

Weekly Contest #355

“Check this out, Dylan!” Mary Lucas carried her laptop into the kitchen, where her husband was sitting at the table, hunched over some receipts. Her footsteps faltered when she met the gaze boring into her over the tops of the spectacles. He was a man who welcomed interruptions like DJs welcome requests shouted at them in the middle of a flow. Mary tentatively continued her approach, swivelling the laptop round so the screen was facing Dylan. She watched him swallow a curse word or three as he put a manila folder down and squinted at the we...

12 likes 9 comments 9
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Blackberrying

Weekly Contest #352

The two cloaked sisters entered the greyscale forest. To E, the youngest, it was just the forest. A world without colour was all she had ever known. A was just old enough to remember what a landscape lit by sunlight looked like. She had tried describing it to E many a time, but it was like trying to describe sound to a person born deaf. In the olden days, A would say enigmatically, monochromatically, people would use filters on social media to achieve the same effect. Then E would ask about social media and A would sigh and tell her to get o...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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Hello, Fresh Hell

Weekly Contest #345

Step 1: Wash your hands – one of the most important steps in meal preparation. We’re told this frequently as children, but by the time we’ve reached adulthood, some of us have forgotten (our surveys say). Pre-heat the oven to…why do you even read this part? You know it’s always the same. Alright, twist my arm then. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F. Trim the green beans. No, not those beans, the green ones, you dickwad. Honestly, it’s amazing you even managed to get the delivery box open. Which is currently blowing its way down the street as you d...

9 likes 6 comments 6
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Cecil

Weekly Contest #341

One crisp Monday morning in March, Maria found Cecil at the foot of the apple tree at the bottom of her garden. A small grey shadow, a lumpen form at first indistinguishable from the surrounding splatter of pinecones. Robins sang of the fallen soldier. As Maria delicately approached, the shadows divided into shivering limbs, a pale chest rapidly expanded and contracted. He made her late for work, a disruption that would gradually become the new routine. When he first tried to get up and walk around, he would limp and cry out in pain. Maria h...

16 likes 14 comments 14
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Tweakment Tower

Weekly Contest #338

It made a change to see a man disappearing into Lauren’s room. The very glamorous ex-model usually had a succession of very glamourous current models traipsing into and out of the beauty parlour she operated from her flat in our block. Or maybe they were just women with enough disposable income to pay someone to make them look Barbie box-fresh on top of whatever it was they did for a living. They were more tolerant of Lauren’s new baby than I was, that I knew for sure. But then they only had to endure the screaming for an hour at a time. I ...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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Train of Thought

Weekly Contest #335

On the train/under the trainOn the train/under the trainOn the… “Have we met before?” Sophie pauses her inner train of thought to look round to the speaker of the question. Short, puffer-jacketed, black hair, pale face. More of a penguin than a man, she thinks, unkindly. She can’t help it. Working in the beauty industry, she critiques appearances on autopilot. He is about twenty years her junior, but on a good day Sophie could almost pass for his age. Free makeup and skincare samples. Perks of the job. “No, I don’t think so,” says Sophie, t...

9 likes 5 comments 5
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Crunch Time

Weekly Contest #327

CW: Physical violence, domestic abuse, animal abuse It began with a bang. No, not the fireworks, those finished hours ago. It was the kind of bang that makes you somehow certain that something just exploded out of, not into, existence. The sound of a crunch that sickens you, a reverb felt through wheel and seat. A meaty thunk that tries to push your insides outside. “Nick!” your girlfriend cries. Her name is unimportant – she won’t be around for long. “What was that?!” Always with the shrieking. You grimace. Your head is still hurting from t...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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I’m in Love with my Sleep Paralysis Demon

Weekly Contest #325

I’m in love with my sleep paralysis demon. I’ve only ever seen him out of the corner of my eye. He freaked the hell out of me the first time he came to me. Tall – at least seven or eight feet, but hard to know really when you’re lying down, your vision is blurry, and your visitor will not stay still. I tried to scream but try as I might, I couldn’t prise my mouth open. My arms were glued to my sides. He was there, he was here, he was close, he was far. He was slow motion, he was fast forward. He was sliding across the ceiling, he was crawli...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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Buoyancy

Weekly Contest #324

“UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA.” “Oh for God’s…” Maggie checked herself. It was both a Sunday and she was in public. Specifically she was in the Hatcham Lessco Superstore, which she’d forced herself to walk to. She needed to build up her 67-year-old bone health, her GP had warned. And her heart health would benefit too, her therapist had urged, a man seemingly still unawares after eight sessions that Maggie’s heart seemed to have gone the way of her dearly departed. Behind the curtain, up in smoke. What a wicked magic trick that had be...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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Staring at Circles

Weekly Contest #321

My early life was somewhat lacking in stability, you might say. I never stuck around anywhere long enough to be the popular kid. I bet most of those I met as I went from school to school because of my parents’ jobs would be hard-pressed to remember my name now. And that’s okay. I’ve made peace with it. I’ve just stopped entering situations with the hope that I felt in the beginning. When a new start meant something. Of course, it wasn’t always this way. For example, a few months after six-year-old me started at Goldwick primary school (in t...

6 likes 3 comments 3
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Amanita Explain Myself

Weekly Contest #320

My cap has flattened with age. The couples that pointed and blushed at what they thought my former beehive noggin on my stem made me look like now, for the most part, walk on by. How they would chuckle if they only knew my surname. Oh fine, it’s Phalloides. If I had legs I would run over and kick their sickeningly clenched hands apart. Like the one who tried to impress his date by calling me a puffball. I’d kick him in the nuts and then go and punch some puffballs themselves for good measure. Strange little smoky eggheads. The dog toys of ...

9 likes 5 comments 5
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