Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Squirrelly Writer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019

Stories (84)
Comments
Library
396 Followers
145 Following

84 Stories

2482 karma pts

?

Moving Day

Submitted to Contest #150

My life goes around in circles. As the family folklore goes, I was found in a box on the doorstep. However, breaking with convention, it was Father who was the most excited to see me. The Twins lost interest after an hour, retiring to their bedroom to play their complicated ‘cat’s cradle’ game, which for longer than I’d care to admit I thought somehow was for the benefit of Kanye the Cat. Mother gazed blankly down at me and muttered something unintelligible, before returning to the task of taking the haphazardly-stacked items from the d...

14 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Why do I never get to be in your selfies?

Submitted to Contest #144

I know most people who see and like this post won’t read the caption. I mean, who reads captions, right? But I need to get this off my chest, even if it only ends up being for me. What is it you think you see in my photo? A bubbly, self-assured blonde woman in her 20s who’s got it all under control? I mean, how could she *not* be in control with those immaculately brushed brows, true? Or a carefree girl with her head thrown back in laughter at what must’ve been a pant-wettingly good joke? A lovely lady who’s mind must be as free from cloud...

17 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Basement at Percy's

Submitted to Contest #141

Robert Sorola got comfortable in his chair while he read through the agenda one more time. His son, Reggie, he’d sent upstairs to the kitchen with the vaguest of shopping lists. Neither of them had what you could call a refined taste. Both their lives had been peppered with such hardships that whenever food came into sight – whatever food came into sight – it was a case of how much they could claw their way before they found it swept away by someone who figured they were just doing their job. Not these days. Robert Sorola had risen throug...

11 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

A Perfect Swarm

Submitted to Contest #133

ENVELOPE NO. 1“Hi, my name is Jared Blass. I am nine years old. My mother is called Belinda and my father’s name is Anton.”I popped the pencil in my mouth, reviewing what I had so far. Do we need such backstory? I tried remembering if Curt’s keepsakes had any sorta private information like that. Like, did he write an introduction anywhere, or did he, like my father would say (knowing it pees my mother – a veggie – off), “get right to the meat of the matter.” Things got wavy when I tried to think back.But then I didn’t want to think of the co...

8 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Chore War

Submitted to Contest #128

Tamara froze in the doorway of the kitchen. A boundary between realms. She knew she could retreat to the comfort and solitude of her still-warm cocoon of duvets, blankets, cushions and the 20-odd soft toys she liked to surround herself with, despite being 20-odd herself. Or she could tumble into an unknown future, proceed to the communal cutlery draw, pulling the handle with similar apprehension to plucking the sword from the stone, discovering at last whether indeed the last teaspoon in the house was the one whose muddied oval eye was mo...

13 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Stars on the Ground

Submitted to Contest #122

The fires stretched way out. Dots of ‘em, then blending out into a horizon that was starting to shake with the screams while ghostly snakes of smoke found their way up to the sky. Or maybe it was just my eyes seeing a shimmer, scratched from my own cookout themselves. Who knew. Who even could say when the world was last stable. We’re just ants on a big rock tumbling through space after all. When I learned that the world was like a spinning top I asked my mother why we didn’t fall off. She covered up the gap in her knowledge by asking me to r...

11 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Who Just Phones People

Submitted to Contest #115

I was unfastening my bra when my phone decided to crawl across my dresser, making alarming noises that I don’t recall it ever having made before. Someone was calling me. In 2021. It must be an emergency. Who died? I peered at the screen. Jeremy. Well, Jeremy, you’ve just lost yourself a bunch of points. I turned my music down and answered the call, managing to turn the tail end of my annoyed sigh into a breezier “Hiiii.” “Hello Lou. So you think it looks bad out there? Looks okay from my window.” I looked out of my one, which was...

21 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Miss May

Submitted to Contest #111

I jerked my right elbow to remove his hand from my left breast. “Nope. Not tonight,” I told him, pulling my book closer to my nose. A shield to prevent further attacks. Adam rolled over onto his back with a huff, then gave me that wounded puppy look that, much like an evening on red wine, makes me want to laugh, then cry. Five years married and he wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. I suppose I should count myself lucky. But then he hadn’t had to go through what I went through today. Unless they had started a ‘bring your kid to w...

16 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Wobbly Wheels

Submitted to Contest #106

“If you were constantly tuned in to everything that was going on around you or, say, what a wonder it is to have kidneys, you wouldn’t get anything done.” At the time I barely registered it. I was waiting for the father to finish giving his daughter a lesson and for her to put down the can of energy drink she was trying to persuade him to buy her, so I could get to my protein shakes. I filed it away, like so many snippets of overheard conversations I hear when trying to remember why I’ve come to the supermarket. I’d left the trolley par...

16 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Car Boot Sale

Submitted to Contest #103

Hello stranger! Well, I haven’t seen you in a long, long time. You’re always such a busy bee with that phone of yours going “buzz buzz buzz”. Wish I had that many people who wanted to talk to me. No, it’s alright. Come in, sit down. Yes, there’s fine. Do you want a drink? Only water? I hope you're not on one of your funny faddy diets. We always had problems with you as a baby, you know. You would only eat oven chips at one point and it had to be one particular brand of oven chip. So fussy! One time everywhere seemed to go out of stock of ...

14 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Bummer Solstice

Submitted to Contest #99

To: charlot49@gmail.com From: missychrissy1982@hotmail.com Subject: BUMMER SOLSTICE Hey Charlie-girl, How are you doing today? Sorry my reply is so overdue – you must be fed up with me saying that! You know how it is though, I’m trying to devote more time to my special project. Hopefully in the not too distant future you’ll be receiving an email from me with ‘book launch invitation’ in the subject line. They say one of the top tips to achieve your goal is to envisage it happening…so please start picking out what you’re going to wear ;D ...

12 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Always Wear A Hat

Submitted to Contest #96

Rob gave it a last scan to check he definitely hadn’t left a light on or a stained teacup on a bedside table. Satisfied, he shut the door on the empty guest room. His wife, Ali, was fussing in the linen closet at the other end of the landing. She turned when she heard the door close, gripping a lavender coloured hand towel to her chest like a shield. “Is everything okay in there?” she asked. “Yes, all good for…whatshisname’s arrival,” Rob replied. As he drew closer, he noticed Ali’s eyes looking somehow paler than the cornflower shad...

15 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Dare

Submitted to Contest #94

“FINE. I’ll give it a go.” If just to make you shut up, I silently added. Marie put down her pad to do one of those stupid little toddler claps where the culprit beats the heels of their palms silently together, fingers splayed. “Yes! Oh, Alyssa, I’m so, so pleased you’re going to give it a try. I just think if you really put your mind to it…” I watched her lips forming the words but I didn’t take in what was being said. My last drop of energy for the day had been spent sealing my fate. I alternating next between looking at her earri...

17 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

My Favourite Volume Is Silence

Submitted to Contest #91

It was the quietest she’d ever known the place. “Perhaps I ought to volunteer to do stocktake more often,” Shannon thought to herself, thumbing the stubby antennae of her radio as she surveyed the non-fiction area. By day, the place was filled with the chatter of foreign language students on phone calls, lost children playing parkour with the local history section and the rattle of the lift going up and down. On the rare occasions it was fixed. She looked at the post it note on which she’d scribbled her first zone for the night: ‘sport...

41 likes 19 comments 19
Read story

Something in the Water

Submitted to Contest #88

“Hi Lenny.” “Hello,” I replied to the lank-haired guy in horn-rimmed glasses, sitting about three rows from front. The host, Jerome, had picked him as he’d the one being most insistent with his hand-waving. Jerome was probably grateful that someone looked more nervous than he did. I shot a glance at him before turning to listen to the question from the audience member. He was holding the mic at arm’s length, like it was a snake about to bite him. “Um, so, as I’m sure a lot of us are wondering, but, err, how is it you get your ideas for ...

17 likes 4 comments 4
Read story