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Squirrelly Writer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019

Stories (85)
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399 Followers
144 Following

85 Stories

2504 karma pts

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Buy A Parrot Next Time

Submitted to Contest #232

“You’ll never see it if you keep giving Keith all your attention.” I prodded at the koala plush my brother’s tiny fingers were fumbling with. T was going through an antipodean phase. Which was strange enough for a six-year-old whose peers wore screens as extensions of their noses, but stranger yet to name it ‘Keith’. I was hoping, praying, that tonight’s celestial event would out-strange both T and his toy. “Why are we here again?” T whined, cheerily thumbing Keith in his glassy black eyes. “For Lonergan’s Comet. For the hundredth t...

12 likes 7 comments 7
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The Most Embarrassing Thing Story

Submitted to Contest #220

I was helping out Grandma in the kitchen. It had become our bimonthly ritual since parents had moved into The New House. Mum had wanted to move to a place that had a bigger garden and fewer neighbours. Dad and I had been completely comfortable at The New House once all our stuff was unpackaged. Mum, however, was adamant the place was a fixer upper. So while they spent every other Saturday in the shops comparing swatches of carpet and pouring over tins of paint called things like Iced Latte and Glazed Apricot, Grandma and I would bake. Gra...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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The Midnight Wanderer

Submitted to Contest #211

It was a cool July evening when Erinaceus europaeus finally accepted my offering. That’s their scientific name. The hedgehog. I learned it just in case he responded to it, but I still had to look it up again to remember how to spell it. I’m doing more of that since Horatio died. Not just with scientific words that you wouldn’t expect an 85-year-old retired seamstress to know anyway; but with simpler words like ‘fruitcake’, ‘newspaper’, ‘remorse’, and ‘lodger’. The difficulty with that last one struck when I was trying to place an ad for ...

5 likes 0 comments 0
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Giving Back

Submitted to Contest #210

“Whoo! Look at this, Eileen – I’m Marilyn Monroe!”Eileen peered over the top of her glasses and put down the receipt she had been puzzling over. Janice, her eccentric boss at the Rewild Life Charity shop was holding the straps of a dazzling white ball gown up to her shoulders, doing twirls in the back room that barely had space for the staff lockers, let alone such activity.It was January 8th and they’d been inundated, as usual for the time of year, with unwanted Christmas presents. Piles of DVDs still in their cellophane wrappers. Perfumes ...

9 likes 6 comments 6
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Salt and Pepper

Submitted to Contest #203

Benjamin Pendergast-Manifold had been waiting seemingly forever for an opportunity like this to drop into his lap. Or more accurately, his hands. Just typical, wasn’t it. He kept his LinkedIn profile pristine and up-to-date, only to be rewarded only with thousands of nonsense emails a week. He attended recruitment fairs where reps seemed thrown if you dared ask them about anything about their companies other than to ask for one of keyrings they were handing out. He attended parties in the hopes of networking, when he’d rather be lying on t...

21 likes 11 comments 11
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Always Check The Pockets

Submitted to Contest #197

Nobody liked her and everyone cheered when she died. Or would have done if she had ever taken the time to get to know anyone. I only knew her by way of being related to her. I am Mary Veronica Findlay’s granddaughter and it has fallen on me to do her house clearance. It’s not like people haven’t tried over the years. I wrote her a letter when I was 18, saying my mother wouldn’t disclose why she fell out with her, but I bore her no ill will and would she like me to come and visit. “I’m too old to be entertaining young guests” was her reply...

19 likes 14 comments 14
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Making Tracks

Submitted to Contest #189

The trees are so densely packed in this pocket of the woods I’ve found myself in, you’d think there’d been an astronomical event. I stand in the unseasonable cool, clutching the box containing what was left of Marty and wondering whether to go forwards or backwards. I lost signal about three quarters of an hour ago. At least I still knew the time, even if it was little comfort how late it was getting. A group of pigeons erupted in flight, causing me to nearly drop my precious cargo. Not that anything would’ve escaped. Marty had been very ...

15 likes 11 comments 11
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Rectangled

Submitted to Contest #188

I met Vernon at University. He taught Astrophysics. I was one of three female students taking his class. I’d love to say it was because I was determined to help up the numbers of women in STEM, but truth is I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and hoped if I learned the laws of the universe they might guide me as to my place in it. I still don’t know what to do with myself, but I can explain synchrotron radiation and gravitational lensing and you’ll want me on your pub quiz team. I can also entertain your child for an hour using ...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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Birds that Lay Eggs in Another Bird’s Nest

Submitted to Contest #186

“Okay, alright, settle down everyone. Good afternoon students! Today’s lecture is on form versus content, which should come as no surprise if anyone referred to the timetables I sent out at the start of term. Some of you, the ones taking this seriously and hoping to turn their English Literature module into some sort of career, may even have worked their way through the additional reading list. Others may have spent three months in Bali hoping non-stop drugging and partying will transfer into ‘sociable’ and ‘thinks outside the box’ on their ...

19 likes 4 comments 4
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See it. Say it. Sorted.

Submitted to Contest #182

It started, unimaginatively enough, with someone looking up at the stars. That someone was Laurie Entwistle, who instead of writing up a review of up and coming ska punk ensemble The Mucus Plugs, looking for new ways of saying that they “absolutely tore the bloody roof off” of local pub Dog & Gristle (a venue which truthfully remained quite intact), was actually stuck on making tweaks to her dating profile. Female Early 30s Occupation: journalist Likes: travel, reading, her sofa, art, photography, blueberry muffins, endless scrolli...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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Lactose Intolerance

Submitted to Contest #176

I wasn’t supposed to be in Daddy’s study that day. I definitely wasn’t supposed to be in the closet of Daddy’s study that day. And I certainly wasn’t supposed to find out the real reason that Daddy was a very rich man indeed. I was only in there because my Tesla (a mini remote-controlled version that has the same number plate as Mommy’s but I’m not telling you what it is because it’s embarrassing) took a wrong turn and nosed the door open. The big brown door with the peephole in it too far up for me to even try to look through, the door th...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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Feel the Benefit

Submitted to Contest #170

Eye mask. Lavender spray. Ear plugs. Phone off. All the things I do to avoid you, yet sometimes, somehow, you still sneak in. Usually complaining of how tired you are, failing to note the irony. Then on about how you never get to go anywhere. I remind you that you do not have legs, but you talk over me to tell me how you do not approve of my boyfriend, my hair, my clothes, my weight, my carpet, my job. Which doesn’t matter. None of these things are for you. But I could build a concrete wall and your poison arrows would still corrode it ov...

18 likes 16 comments 16
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Fanfare

Submitted to Contest #166

What first hit me was the cold. What I first hit was the printer. Daft to leave the tray poking out over the bin everyone was discarding their cupcake cases in. There were fans on every desk. As well as overhead fans. The flapping of neon post-it notes forming the disco lights of the party. All the windows were wide open, the sounds of gulls and sirens added to the mix of the whirring of the blades and the hens’ clucking going into overdrive as they welcomed me, the new chick. I would like to say it was all in celebration of my arrival bu...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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Submitted to Contest #162

Hyper-seasonal special Fungi-To-Be-With Straight from head chef Marlene Bartley’s vegetable garden/acres of woodland (a land guaranteed protected from the radiation after effects, being as it is covered a magnificent dome of state-of-the-art disease-resistant toughened glass), we are delighted to present a creamy vitamin-enriched garlic mushroom risotto peppered with crispy crickets, who reach your plate after spending their best days in our patented Bug Hotels, with prior counselling as to the benefit they will be serving greater life for...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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Mandatory Training

Submitted to Contest #160

Triggers for strong language and sexual harassment. Annabel inspected the two glasses carefully for any smudges, then filled them from the sink. Her eyes made contact with the pitcher sitting on the shelf, so she decided to fill that too, for good measure. England was experiencing a heatwave, after all, and despite all the airs and graces her employer KSM Partnership liked to put on, the budget didn’t quite stretch to air conditioning. Trying to balance the tray while opening the kitchen door, Annabel caught her ghostly reflection in th...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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