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Vera N

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2024

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147 Stories

613 karma pts

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Claimed by No One

She watched the tide come in, touching containers that technically belonged to no one. The water slid up against the concrete edge of the port and licked the rusted undersides of steel boxes stacked six high, stretching out in perfect, silent grids. Red, blue, gray. Logos from companies that no longer answered their phones. Some were already fading, as if the salt air had decided to erase them faster now that no one was looking. Mila adjusted her vest and checked the time. 06:12. Too early for the heat, too late for the night shift t...

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Alive in Pieces

The first time I used the device, I expected nostalgia. I had pictured myself sitting in the small leather chair in my apartment, headphones snug over my ears, the world shrinking to a single golden memory: the summer of nineteen ninety-eight, when the air smelled of grass and salt, and I had laughed so hard I thought my lungs might burst.I pressed the button.The room blurred. I smelled the salt of the ocean before I saw it. Sand prickled my toes; the sunlight was sharper than any photograph had ever captured. I turned toward the boardwalk a...

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Alive Again

Rain beat against the window with uneven insistence, a rhythm that seemed to echo inside my skull. I lay in the bed, sheets clinging damp and heavy to my skin, and for a heartbeat I thought I was back in the car—the smell of gasoline, the screech of metal, the bright, sudden nothing. Then I blinked, and I was alive. Everything was the same and nothing was. The sunlight fell at an odd angle across the floorboards, dust motes hovered lazily, and the faint scent of bread lingered as though it had been baking for hours. My pulse thudded in my ea...

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Presence Without Breath

The perfume hit first. Not the soft lavender I remembered from mornings long ago, but something heavier, sharp, clinging to the corner of the hallway I hadn’t passed in years. It pressed against my chest, a presence I had not invited. Do you remember…? I froze, grocery bags half on the floor. The words were not spoken aloud, not exactly. They hovered in the air, attaching themselves to the scent, to the shadows around her coat hanging by the door. My fingers itched to brush it, to test if it would respond. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was ...

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Shadows on the Road

By the time Mara reached the bottom of the church steps, she already knew what would happen. She felt it first in the ribs—a faint tightening, like the shadow of a hand she had long forgotten. Her posture shifted, automatically. The old muscle memory whispered: proceed carefully. She paused at the door and inhaled the smell leaking through the frame: stale coffee, lemon cleaner, damp wool. Familiar. Protective. Claustrophobic. When she stepped inside, the room recognized her. Not slowly. Not tentatively. Recognition moved faster than speech....

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Down the Hall

The baby monitor had been silent for nearly an hour before Mara noticed, and even then, the realization came slowly, as if her mind were reluctant to name it. She lay on her back in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the ordinary sounds of the house: the refrigerator cycling on and off, the soft tick of cooling pipes, the distant rush of a car passing on the road outside. Beside her, Evan slept deeply, his breathing steady and untroubled. He had always slept easily. She had never understood how. The monitor on the nightstand glow...

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Shadows in the Glass

Daniel inherited the old Thompson house from a great-uncle he barely remembered. The letter was formal, clinical—but the delivery unsettled him. Along with the keys arrived a small, unmarked wooden box, tied with a fraying ribbon.Inside was a miniature of the house. Every shingled roof, every cracked window, every gnarled oak tree meticulously carved. At the center, a tiny figure of a man—him.He laughed, uneasy. “A collector’s item,” he muttered. That evening, unpacking the rest of his inheritance, he noticed a detail that twisted his stomac...

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The Right Wrong Order

The coffee was wrong in a way that felt deliberate. Not spilled. Not burnt. Just unmistakably not what she had asked for, as if the cup had listened politely and then decided it knew better. Cinnamon floated on the foam. She stared at it, phone pressed to her ear, the barista already turning away. “Are you listening to me?” her mother asked. “Yes,” she said, though she was watching the steam rise, thin and white, erasing her reflection in the counter’s metal edge. She could have said something. Sorry, I asked for cocoa. The words formed easi...

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Chocolate and Sunlight

The scent hit her before she even saw the café. Sharp, warm, intoxicating: roasted coffee, sugar, chocolate melting somewhere in the back. Mara stopped mid-step, frozen on the cracked city sidewalk, and for a heartbeat she felt sixteen again, sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, a stack of letters spread in front of her like fragile wings.Her chest tightened, a dull, insistent ache that made her palms sweat. The city moved around her—a man shouting at a taxi, a stroller bumping over the curb, tires squealing—but she barely noticed. All...

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What We Build Together

The wardrobe was supposed to be an easy win.“Low stakes,” Mark said, steering the cart through IKEA with the focused optimism of someone who believed problems came in boxes. “We’ll be done by dinner.”Elena followed a half step behind, maneuvering around a couple arguing in whispers and a child licking a display mirror. The warehouse smelled like sawdust and ambition. Everyone moved with the same hopeful urgency, as if flat-pack furniture were a character test they intended to pass.Low stakes sounded appealing. Low stakes suggested a day that...

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If You’re Reading This, It’s Already Started

Weekly Contest #338

I used to believe that if something was meant to change your life, you would feel it coming. A subtle shift behind the ribs, a pause in thought, the quiet sense that the day had split into before and after. That belief made it easier to forgive myself for missed calls, unanswered emails, and the people I let drift away. If nothing had signaled importance, I told myself, how could I be blamed for missing it?That belief collapsed the day the book arrived.It was a Tuesday, the kind of day designed to be invisible. Mondays carried ambition, Frid...

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Stone And Breath

Weekly Contest #337

The bells begin while Éva is still standing in her kitchen, holding a mug she has no intention of finishing. They strike too early, as they always do in the village, where time has never quite agreed with itself. The sound travels cleanly in the cold, crossing gardens and fences, slipping between houses that know it well. It is not a summons so much as a reminder. It says: You have done this before. Éva does not move. She hasn’t believed in God for years. She has believed in routine, in habit, in the usefulness of keeping certain doors unloc...

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Our House

Weekly Contest #335

The envelope arrived on a Tuesday. Thin. Soft at the edges, like it had been opened once already and decided to come back. It lay on the doormat like a living thing, waiting for me to notice it—or maybe daring me not to. No return address. Just my name, written carefully, each letter separated, as if the writer feared running out of space—or courage. I picked it up, ran my fingers over the paper. It was faintly warm. I tore it open. Inside was a drawing. Crayon. Heavy lines. A house tilted slightly to the left, narrow porch, three steps lead...

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Lingering Light

I am here, of course, because I have to be. Not because I want to be, though sometimes I wonder if I would choose differently if choice still existed in this state. People see me as a nuisance, maybe a threat. They call it haunting. I call it trying. Trying to be understood, trying to make a difference, trying not to disappear into the oblivion of forgotten time. But no one notices. No one ever notices.It started that day—the day I keep reliving. I can’t move forward. I can’t leave it behind. It was a Tuesday, I think, or maybe a Wednesday. ...

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What The Storm Brought In

It was a dark and stormy night—the kind that makes the whole city feel like it’s shivering under a wet overcoat. Rain slapped the windows of the Crenshaw Building with the persistence of a bill collector. Lightning cut the sky into snapshots of misery. I sat in my office, hunched over a chipped mug of coffee that tasted like it had been filtered through a cemetery. The overhead light buzzed like a drunk neon angel trying to stay awake.People think nights like this bring out monsters. They’re wrong. Nights like this show you the monsters that...

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