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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2024
Submitted to Contest #333
CW: Substance abuse and self-harm. I don't know what he is hungry for. I wish I knew. He doesn't even know, he lies around in that messy room, clothes and jackets strewn about the floor, wires everywhere, tangled and broken, a desk covered in loose change, scratched sunglasses, gaming controllers, a guitar capo, dirty tissues. I go in every once in a while, the rumpled bed staring at me with blankets that cover him most of the day until I yell at him to get up, get a job, get out.Yesterday, one of the bad days, eats at me. It's the holiday ...
Submitted to Contest #315
Just before Leon was born, Janice and Mike had a New Year’s Eve party. Mike loved his friends, he was social, had so many friends. They laughed, drank, embraced at midnight, danced to disco music. Janice danced too but she was not feeling well at eight months pregnant. As the party ended, and the guests paraded out into the post-Christmas winter night, Mike said to each guest, “Come over tomorrow morning. We can have breakfast, brunch, keep celebrating.” When the house was finally empty of revelers, Jani...
Submitted to Contest #306
Saline Coffee CalciumThere were three items on the original grocery list. Saline, coffee, calcium. Jamie said these three words to herself like a mantra. Saline, coffee, calcium. Saline, coffee, calcium. She drove her sonic gray Honda Civic to the supermarket, breezed through the automatic doors confident in her mantra, her mind humming. Comfortable in her pull-on baggy jeans, black Sam Edelman sneakers, no socks, black tee and jeans jacket, she believed she belonged in the world, set her phone to the Scan It app, chose a shopping cart.TofuO...
Submitted to Contest #305
At the intersection I could go right and head home but turning left would take me back out to Post Road. I wanted to turn right but my entire physical psychic being was pulled left. I tried to tell myself I did not need to go there, tried to think it through, asked myself how I would feel in the morning. The many times in the recent and long ago past when I went to that place, I experienced defiance and short-lived relief. The next morning, though, I awakened to remorse, disappointment, hopelessness.But all those times when I went left inste...
Submitted to Contest #301
Jimmy did not have many friends. After he graduated from college, he broke up with his girlfriend and started hanging out with this kid Zach who went to the Hyde School at the time Jimmy was there. Zach was in a friend group with a couple of other kids, Dev who did not work, Liam who was an exterminator, and Evan who was trying to become an EMT but was having a hard time passing the initial exam. Jimmy started hanging with this group, and in particular, Dev. The Hyde School was that boarding school in Maine for kids who get...
Content Warning: This story contains sexual content, abortion, mental health struggles, strong language.When I was seventeen, I fell in love with Daniel. He was funny and he made me laugh which was hard to do because I was not usually in a mood to laugh. Anyway, he and I connected during the summer of 1974 when my parents left me alone. They went to the Finger Lakes where my father was a horse race judge at an upstate New York thoroughbred racetrack.Daniel and I met at Jones Beach where we were both New York State summer employees. He was th...
Submitted to Contest #300
There were always the few hours before the show when Allison thought she just did not want to go, and she was asking herself if she should cancel it. Call the place and tell them she was sick. She wondered why she was doing this. Why exert the energy at her age? What was she trying to prove? Was it to win something, was it to go back in time to those early years in Manhattan? Was it to be known, so people would see who she truly was? Was it a search for meaning in her life after a forty-year law career that she never really wanted?For Alliso...
Submitted to Contest #298
Keegan stared straight ahead as if not present in the hospital pre-op room awaiting heart surgery. He needed a replacement valve, the medical establishment dreamed up and made real the use of pig heart valves. Keegan was ninety-one but they, the medical people, were willing to do the surgery on his heart because he was in very good shape for a ninety-one year old, spry, alert, well-off with a wife who cared about him, and a daughter who attended all of his medical appointments and sat right there at that moment in the pre-op room with him.Qu...
Submitted to Contest #297
CW: Contains themes and/or references to addiction, substance abuse, and emotional distress.I ran into the house through the garage door. Michelle, my spouse, called me sounding frantic as I was pulling into the driveway.Vic? Nick is in the bathroom on the floor. There is vomit everywhere.I looked into the downstairs bathroom, the one with the washer and dryer and the extra shower. My son was lying across the floor, on his stomach, face turned to the side, rhythmically moaning, “uhnnn…uhnnn…uhnnn…uhnnn, incoherent, eyes closed, vomit on his ...
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