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Willis Rice

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2025

Stories (6)

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46 Followers

20 Following

6 Stories

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Willis Rice

Submitted to Contest #335

Unit 3A, across the hallI’ve lived here a long time. Long enough to know which sounds belong. Pipes hammer. Someone knocks a glass off a table. Men and women argue, make up, then start fighting again. That’s the price you pay for proximity. Thin walls.Sleep comes in pieces for me. Always has.The footsteps were typical. They came down the hallway late, every single time. I’d wake and listen to them slow outside my door, then continue on. Stepping out for a vape, maybe. Or walking. Some people do that when they can’t sleep. It was a reassuranc...

0 likes

For the Record

Willis Rice

Submitted to Contest #334

IN THE ENCHANTED CIRCUIT TRIBUNALCase No. 314.PINEThe Crown of Everwood v. Lupus Commonly Known As WolfThey swear me in with a book that smells like someone tried to clean a tree with school glue.It’s the kind of heavy that feels like a dare. The kind of weight designed to make a point.I place my hand on it because that is what one does in rooms like this. The bark presses into my palm. I wonder, briefly, which tree gave it up, and whether it struggled.“Do you solemnly swear,” the Prosecutor says, “to speak the truth, the whole truth, and no...

9 likes

At the Mic

Willis Rice

Submitted to Contest #322

Cold clung to the room, light lingered long against the silence. Parents fanned themselves with folded programs, restless hands with nowhere else to go. A throat cleared dry at the back, the air swallowing it whole.He kept both hands locked to his knees. His fingertips worried a loose seam, thread lifting against his nail. The suit had done more than its share. When he lifted his palms, they left prints.The mic squealed once, high and sudden, then cut out. It left a kind of ringing behind. She stood then. Shoulders locked straight. Glasses s...

18 likes

Not Here, Not There

Willis Rice

Submitted to Contest #320

Zora left the car door open, then forgot it.The forest closed its mouth around her.The lot ended at a warped board, a sun-faded map blurred until the trails ran together, colors washed pale as old sky. She stepped past it. Gravel gave way to soil. Soil softened to a mat of pine needles that cushioned her steps.Two bends in the trail. She picked the one where the trees grew closer together. The trunks leaned in, limbs knotted overhead. Then the branches parted, a slit of light showing.She paused. Branches stirred above, waiting.She stayed as ...

14 likes

Miles Between

Willis Rice

Submitted to Contest #319

Ms. Carter found the first drawing while clearing out desks at the end of the day. Just a loose sheet, ends bent and folded, streaks of gray dragged across one side by restless hands.At first glance, it was a house. Four windows, but no door. Also the windows weren’t empty squares. They’d been filled, every inch, with black strokes so dense the paper had nearly torn.The next sheet showed a family at a table. Plates neat, forks lined straight. Every face, though, had been scratched out, marker lines pressed down hard enough to split the page....

20 likes

A Doorway on Lenox

Willis Rice

Winner of Contest #317 🏆

Theo had been staring at the same sentence so long the letters bled together. Lineage in Postmodern Black Poetics. He mouthed the words once more, flat and sour on his tongue. His coffee from the bodega on 121st sat cold beside him, the surface gone slick and oily, but he drank anyway.The radiator groaned in protest, the pipes rattling like brass warming up before a set.Theo pressed a palm against the open book, willing the words to stay still. For a moment they held. Then the page trembled beneath his hand.He told himself it was fatigue.The...

111 likes