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Tanya Humphreys

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2021

Stories (109)
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94 Followers
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109 Stories

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SR5608

Submitted to Contest #210

The tall, thin woman scanned the crowd from right to left, then back again. There were approximately nine hundred and fifty-seven human beings crowded into the town square, give or take a dozen. It was harder to inventory the little ones, they darted in and out and around the main throng. Also hindering the count was the fact that over two thirds of the people wore black- black cloaks, capes, feathers, tunics, smocks, dresses, and pantaloons. She herself had donned a silky hooded cape to fit in. She’d adjusted her skin tone to a light tawn...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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Me and Spitz

Submitted to Contest #209

As I gazed down the dark alley my tail twitched at its end. The fact that I could not control it was annoying to a control freak like me. Life in the streets was hard but far preferred to the neglect and abuse I’d endured throughout my kittenhood. My burns were still scabbed, and my left leg still crooked out at an angle where the woman had thrown an iron at me. There was plenty to feast upon down places like this and as I slunk close to the trash bins at this end, I heard the scraping of tiny claws. I noted the fetid breeze was into my...

7 likes 0 comments 0
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Girl, Georgie...and Archie

Submitted to Contest #206

Georgie stared out the window but in her zoned-out state she was as blind as a person born with no corneas. The lights in the cavernous subway fuselage flickered and dimmed, alarming her from her reverie, for the light was an odd reddish amber, much like the embers in a dying fire. She had been drawn to the subway. It seemed more comforting than the cold, agoraphobic, openness of the streets. She blinked as she took in her reflection. Her skin so pale, her face was a moon, and her brown eyes huge and darkly shadowed. She was horrified ...

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Seven

Submitted to Contest #204

Seven shivered in the straw pile as she listened to the wind howling through the trees surrounding the barn. It was an eerie wailing like the sound of a soul being tortured. Or a wolf caught in a trap.  A night hawk screeched, and another creature screamed briefly and shrilly. She curled up tighter in the dirty, flea-infested straw and wished she were allowed in the house. The log house had lights in the windows glowing welcomingly and the smells of meat cooking in a pot with vegetables. She detected onions and turnip...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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The Eels in my Hovercraft

Submitted to Contest #200

I’ve stopped telling telemarketers about the eels in my hovercraft. Not because the lowly lifeforms of the pits of viable employment would not believe me, but rather, that they would. After all, eels are quite delicious, and extraordinarily hard to catch.  These individuals with earpieces welded to their greasy yellow seashell ears sustain their earthly flesh vessels with rice and rice alone, and needless to say, are quite malnourished. In the gloomy rooms of the abandoned office buildings, where faint watery grey light insists on st...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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The Starling and the Fisher

Submitted to Contest #198

Rolly looked up through the leaves of the elm at the small, dark, tee-shaped figure soaring graceful figure eights high above against a backdrop of fresh, fat spring clouds. The hawk sent a cry down to earth, high-pitched and slightly raspy. Rolly’s siblings shivered all around him and emulated frightened turtles ducking into their shells.The six baby starlings that surrounded him whispered amongst themselves as if afraid the great hawk in the sky could hear from that far away. Maybe he could. His sister Serry whispered, “It’s him. It’s the ...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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Torry, Son of The Wendigo

The natives looked around the dimly lit cavern, they furtively sneaked peeks towards the ceiling under lowered dark lashes. Torches flickered around them as if blown by a breeze…but there was none. A low keening howl sounded outside and around the cave…but no wolves ventured nearby. The natives, adorned with all things nature- hawk, owl, and wild turkey feathers, pearls and carnelian beads, jet black breast plates made from the sternum bones of wildebeest- they spruced themselves up, their clan’s version of formal attire, dating back two th...

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Backhoe Blues

Submitted to Contest #193

Solomon attacked the yard with an iron toothed rake, scraping and pulling at the scraggly weeds, adding them to the mountain of crap behind him. Sol fanned his reddened face with his wide brimmed fedora, leaning on the rake. His sandy brown hair bunched into damp tufts on his head, and his two-day stubble shimmered golden highlights in the early springtime sun. Sol’s tee was soaked to near see-throughness. “Hey buddy. That’s gonna take ya a week if ya keep on like that.” Sol’s next-door neighbor, Brian, was peeking over the fence between...

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Blossoms

Submitted to Contest #191

I eyed the grain of rice suspiciously. It smelled old and moldy, but I didn’t care, I was a rat after all and the greenish hued grain would make a chewy snack…I didn’t need the grain, I found plenty of things to eat. I was intrigued by the man who’d been brought to this place the day before. The man had placed the grain on the old fruit crate that served as the man’s table, one of four items of furniture in the twelve-by-twelve-foot hut that served as the man’s prison cell. There was another fruit crate and two flat futon like beds on oppo...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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Deany and Freddy Deliver

Submitted to Contest #180

The crunch-clunk was so loud it not only reverberated through the floorboards and up into Sandra-Dean’s sturdy USPS approved shoes, but up her thick calves as well, disturbing the lilting chorus of the David Bowie tune she’d been singing along with.“Fuck!” The word bounced tinnily off the steel walls of the mail truck ‘I’ve heard that noise before.’ She inhaled damp mountain air deep into her lungs while searching for a safe indent to pull over on the narrow one lane road.Early that morning, a butterfly had landed on Freddy’s windshield, rig...

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The Giant Acorn

Submitted to Contest #173

Mila shuddered as she clung to the cattail over hanging the river. She was a rabbit and could swim if she wanted to; but she was frightened of what lurked just under the surface. Vlad the Chomper floated as still as a bumpy green log, only his bulbous, lichen-colored eyes glared upwards at her. She knew that under the water his one hundred gnarly pointed teeth stuck out from his long, grinning, alligator snout.Mila’s long back feet scrambled against the grassy bank, found hold, and propelled her upwards. She sputtered with fur...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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Lightning Head

Submitted to Contest #172

Dawn eyed the darkening sky and smiled; stormy weather was the best. That she was headed to the seventeenth tee box on the golf course didn’t matter. In fact, she felt invigorated by the power of nature and felt that she was playing the best game of her life because of it.June had stuck it out with her then said, “Hey Babe. Check that out.” She pointed to the sky over the fairway behind them. Flat bottomed clouds like charcoal brickettes were amassing even as they watched, the wind picked up and tossed the scorecard from the clip on Daw...

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To Make Believe

Submitted to Contest #171

Warning: violence, gore and racism Through the porthole Herman observed two dozen silvery-white flying fish skim the waves as the sun sunk into the horizon and the infinite sea turned a kaleidoscope of fantastic purples that glittered like gemstones. Though painfully beautiful, he sighed regardless. He blinked back more tears, wondering what it would feel like to dive into the hypnotic, churling, waves. He turned as the cabin’s door opened. His Aunt Danika came into the cabin. She had a pigeon nestled in her hand. “Hello...

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A Good Boy Runs

Warning: some blood and gore Since the time I was able to walk I also started learning about the jungle, our ways…and their ways. The first thing I recalled thinking was that we are all humans and what a wonderful thing that was to be. That happy aura-fog that surrounded my baby mind had cleared as my desire-to-be-bigger-mind developed. I prayed stupidly for instant bigness as I stood on our playground, a mere ten years old, frozen in terror as the big boys came on a-runnin. Our playground was a tamped down earthen field, from my small...

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Marley, the Angel of Death

Submitted to Contest #169

Warning: some people die.The two nurses on night duty stood in the doorway of the children’s ward as still as snowmen, and just as cold. The older one was taller, thin as a rail, and stooped in the shoulders from a lifetime of bending to the gossip of the other nurses in St. Nivelles Memorial, the other was a plump young brunette with a dimpled face more suited to giggling than fretting.With mouth barely moving, the young nurse, Evangeline, whispered, “That one’s a goner. Sad…so young he is.”“Aye. The prime of his life. But Marley ...

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