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Willis Rice

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2025

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88 Followers
21 Following

8 Stories

481 karma pts

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Never Odd or Even

Weekly Contest #337

Tick. Tick. Tock. The second hand ticks forward. He waits through two full turns, then another. His shoulders drop. She is sleeping on the sofa, curled on one side, knees tucked toward her chest. One sock missing. He catches it on the floor by the coffee table. He is tired of picking up after things that don’t stay. It feels like he is always arriving one step too late these days. The clock ticks again. He clicks rewind. The refrigerator stops. The house silent, wrong, like something about to happen. She does not finish her breath, chest hal...

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Flagged

Weekly Contest #336

The results came in at 11:28 a.m. On the left side of the screen was a yellow border with A.I. in red letters. A sentence to the right said: We are highly confident this text was AI generated. Lower on the page was a dropdown section titled Probability Breakdown. There was a list of three categories running vertically: 0% Human 0% Mixed 100% AI Each value was matched with the same yellow ring. In every case, the circle was complete. The report took up most of the screen. The story was still visible in the pane beneath it. The student’s name ...

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No Further Action Required

Weekly Contest #335

Unit 3A, across the hall I’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 reassur...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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For the Record

Weekly Contest #334

IN THE ENCHANTED CIRCUIT TRIBUNAL Case No. 314.PINE The Crown of Everwood v. Lupus Commonly Known As Wolf They 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, ...

12 likes 0 comments 0
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At the Mic

Weekly 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...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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Not Here, Not There

Weekly 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 staye...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Miles Between

Weekly 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 pag...

20 likes 11 comments 11
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A Doorway on Lenox

Winner of Weekly 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....

138 likes 85 comments 85
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