One post to rule them all

All my fiction in one, mostly real place

Lizella Prescott

Published in

The Writer Archives

8 min readMar 31, 2016

Welcome to my quiet, largely fictional corner of Medium. Browse, read and, I hope, enjoy.

Featured

Four pieces of glass

“Eleven-year-old Andie Clean stared out the window, admiring the Clean family graveyard…”

medium.com

The girl who covers her hair

Craig knows he should be mainlining the glory of the Parthenon, and the majesty of its columns. But he can’t stop…

medium.com

The haunting of Ed and Cheryl’s apartment

Ed opens the window while the tour goes by. He loves that his apartment building is one of the city’s ten Spookiest…

medium.com

His type

Audrey clings to Jonathan’s arm like she’s drowning. The launch party is filled with men and women whose sharp wits and…

medium.com

The hole in her heart

Maggie was born with a hole in her heart. Symptoms included fainting, dangerous blood clots, and frequent heartbreak…

medium.com

Magnetic poles

The woman at the end of the bar gulps her wine like she needs to forget something. Her unblinking eyes, messy bun, and…

medium.com

Milk teeth

The evil sorceress retired upon her marriage, devoting herself to her husband and his land in the Valley. After their…

medium.com

The monster under the bed

Four-year-old Ben knows there’s a monster under his bed. He hasn’t had the courage to look yet, but he’s sure it’s…

medium.com

Not Charlotte’s web

Charlotte is a glittering presence at the party. Her red lips mouth funny, filthy things. Glossy black hair spills down…

medium.com

Only the pretty girls

“I’m an average-looking girl at a college where being pretty is a blood sport…”

medium.com

Oversleeping beauty

“Why do you have to go?” asks Butter. As her name suggests, she is a milkmaid. Rounded with creamy, freckled skin, she…

medium.com

The penultimate gasp

Her cough has a rhythm to it, a percussive syncopation that reminds her of castanets. Half a lifetime ago, she danced…

medium.com

Poor Harold

“He can’t believe yet another CEO was fired for sexual harassment. He isn’t like those poor bastards…”

medium.com

A Tinderella story

The woman in Ralph’s bed is everything he’s not supposed to want. An out-of-shape, tattooed blonde with a sarcastic…

psiloveyou.xyz

The troll queen

Renne watches herself in her mirror app, changing filters and pouting her lips. No matter what she does, her face looks…

medium.com\

The witch and the warrior

Lizella Prescott

medium.com

Serial fiction

Book of Jo: When bad things happen to almost good people

Part 1: A confession in the park

medium.com

Ophelia’s Curse

Chapter 1: Into the river

medium.com

Out of breath

“I didn’t know if we were going to make it…”

medium.com

Sugar babe

Chapter 1: Living and dying

medium.com

Holiday fiction

Christmas past

The widow stands alone on her snowy porch, wrapped in a parka. It’s Christmas Eve, one year since Maxim died. Without…

medium.com

A Christmas stalking

Bob’s new girlfriend is young, firm, and painfully sincere. The more time he spends with her, the more he misses his…

medium.com

New Year’s resolution

Anita inspects herself in the mirror with a critical frown. Wrinkled face. Graying hair. Thick waist. Drumstick thighs…

medium.com

Short fiction

A little thinner

Ava was what the other waitresses called a big girl. Her legs were as wide and strong as oaks. Her forearms were as…

thecreative.cafe

Alina redux

The marriage agency websites only show pictures of New York and Los Angeles, and smart, orderly men. They don’t show…

medium.com

Beautiful Beast

Beast dreams about complicated buildings that punch through the clouds. She flies between the spires with precise…

medium.com

Best laid plans

Melissa’s husband Bill is a terrible planner. When he surprised her with a weekend getaway, her stomach twisted like a…

medium.com

Bluebeard’s dog

When Alice first sees him walking his dog, she smiles. Although he’s a tall man, probably close to seven feet, he…

medium.com

The cheater’s moon

The moon is high in the sky, as bright as the headlights on Hank’s truck. He brings an iced beer to his lips; it’s cold…

medium.com

Cinderella, the girl who loved fire

Cinderella, an inky-haired, ruddy-cheeked child, gazes into the flames.

medium.com

The City of Light

Vegas is running away, because she doesn’t want to marry her cousin, the pig farmer. He may be the richest man in the…

medium.com

The day the cows got out

The sight of her small orange tractor waiting by the gate always made Jane smile. It was as faithful as a dog, and a…

medium.com

Don’t ask

Ever since Angie agreed to a “don’t ask-don’t tell” arrangement, her husband has been annoyingly chipper. While Angie…

medium.com

Dorian’s new phone

Dorian is the most transcendently beautiful man Max has ever been with, and it still messes with his head. He sometimes…

medium.com

Every fairy is born with three curses…

Only the youngest fairies can fly. As they age, they grow too big for their wings and become subject to mortal physics…

medium.com

Family ties

Ted is not supposed to be here.

medium.com

The gift

Monica has been an optimist since she read The Secret. When her doorbell rings at midnight, she takes a moment to…

medium.com

Gone guy

Emma’s husband had been gone for months. Not physically gone, but trapped in a dark, viscous depression like an ant in…

medium.com

Gretel, the Third

Once there was a small girl with dark hair and a narrow face named Gretel. She lived with Mother and Father in a small…

medium.com

Heart lines

Vanessa’s life was an open wound, so she drew lines around her heart to protect it from every conceivable danger.

medium.com

Heir to the Hair

His knee aches, and his leg quivers like an injured hummingbird.

medium.com

How she does it

Cora couldn’t look away from her sister-in-law’s Facebook feed. Every carefully curated photo leached a little more…

medium.com

THE HOTEL ROOM

George loves traveling alone and staying in expensive hotel rooms.

medium.com

The hungry little mermaid

Ping, ping, ping. The little mermaid has found a school of fish, and she follows it to the surface. Like all mermaids…

medium.com

Inverse relationship

The truck driver keeps one hand on the wheel, and uses the other to make an obscene gesture at three woman in a pink…

medium.com

The key

Nell wears a silver key around her neck, hanging from a rawhide cord. She bows under its weight of concentrated dread…

thecreative.cafe

Legacy

Rachel watches Mason braiding the challah bread with a sly smile on her face. As his pale, tapered hands shape the…

medium.com

Minor pleasures

Edwin has the best cubicle on the thirtieth floor. If he swivels his chair by about forty-five degrees and cranes his…

medium.com

Missed connection

Dave and Kayla are having their last dinner together as husband and wife. Twilight is slouching into darkness. The sky…

medium.com

Mistaken identity

She knows she is a woman having the worst headache of her life. Everything else is blurs and shadows.

medium.com

Night stalker

The predator bathes in darkness, watching his prey. His future victim moves with a twitchy kind of grace, almost as if…

medium.com

Only one

The boy cowers behind several stacks of old, yellowing newspapers that stand taller than he is. He thinks of them as…

medium.com

A prayer, or two, for Alan

Alan thinks his girlfriend Suzette is perfect, except for one little thing. Although she is a smart, sensible person…

medium.com

Poor written communication skills

Tim looks like everyone else, and so does his office, if you can call it that.

medium.com

The princess and the plague

The princess looks out the airtight window, which contains her like a bug in a bell jar. She wants to feel the hot…

medium.com

The red menace

“The red one. I see the red one. The red one is here!”

medium.com

The ritual

Laurel is sixty years old. She has clear eyes and a straight back. She is a little excited and more than a little…

medium.com

The roach king

Mary trembles in the center of the humming, vibrating crowd. The humid air smells sweetly acrid, a scent compounded of…

medium.com

Toothless (sequel to Milk teeth)

“You’re too much like your mother. I’m leaving. Do not try to find me.” The young sorcerer watched his father ride into…

medium.com

Underworld

The acolyte entered the dying gods’ temple for the first time. It was the happiest day of her life. She had begged the…

medium.com

Unlost

Megan was playing a high-stakes game of Retrace My Steps with a five-thousand dollar prize. She had lost her engagement…

medium.com

The void

Alex cringes when people call her a “creative.” She prefers to think of herself as a midwife, birthing ideas from…

medium.com

What the Queen didn’t say

“Why do I have go to Council meetings? They’re so boring, and you never let me say anything.”

medium.com

What the witch made him do

The girl sits in her pink-walled room, thin arms wrapped around bony shins, ears plugged with music. And yet her…

medium.com

Wife, daughter, and dessert

Since Anya was a little girl, her mother had urged her to marry a rich, older man. “Don’t fall in love with a bum like…

medium.com

Winesight

The girl at the end of the bar can sense the hungry eyes mapping the smooth, rounded contours of her surface. It…

medium.com

Wings and things

Milton is running away from his problems. It’s a healthier choice than confronting them head on, especially since most…

medium.com

The world is her garden

Belinda is a botanist. Edible fungi are her passion. Every spring, she picks button mushrooms in the woods beside her…

medium.com

The worst mistake of his life

…was buxom, mud-spattered, and smelled faintly of mildew.

medium.com

Epic poetry

The end of the world: part 1, Demeter’s apocalypse

First they argued. Then they fought.

medium.com

Erotica

Alone

“I’ve never done this before…I guess everyone says that.”

medium.com

Backseat Betty

“She cringes every time she hears her childhood nickname…”

medium.com

Beach reading

“The night is her day, the moon is her sun…”

medium.com

First date

“It’s been two years since her husband died…”

medium.com

The letter

The college student–a senior on the edge of no return–keeps the letter in her copy of Wings of a Dove.

medium.com

Loup-garou

“She opens the spare room and gazes at the chains built into the wall.”

medium.com

Trash night

“He watches guiltily from his kitchen window…”

medium.com

Winter breakdown

“She never should have gone to Alaska with her college boyfriend…”

medium.com

Poetry

Dear Vesuvius

We wait… In the shadow of your pain In the eye of your depression In the well of your sorrow

medium.com

Existential whistle cry

I’m bored. I’m stuck indoors. I’m trying hard to be patient. But it isn’t easy. This room is filled with furniture. Oh…

medium.com

The littlest vampires

Tiny vampires with sticky hands drink your blood and replace it with love.

medium.com

Mme. Sisyphus

They call her Sissy. It’s part of her punishment.

medium.com

Sleep…sin or sacrament?

Warning: Here There Be Rhymes

medium.com

The unforgiving tree

Once there was a tree… …the giving tree… who loved a little boy. And the tree had a friend …the other tree… who…

medium.com

Attempted humor

The five stages of caring for your cold-afflicted child

Since my daughter entered preschool, my family has been drowning in rivers, lakes and oceans of snot. Whenever she…

medium.com

8 Things Every Person* Should Do Before 8 A.M.

*If by “person,” you mean “dog”

medium.com

Death by ladybugs

A story about bugs and math*

medium.com

Deathproof, or one mom’s sleep-deprived thoughts on baby proofing

Everything in my house is trying to kill my children.

medium.com

Six Days of Stinky Trash

Relationship Brinkmanship Has Unintended Consequences

medium.com

Why Santa hates the poor kids, a Christmas allegory

“Did everyone bring a toy to donate?”

medium.com

Death Chase: an unpublished novel

Before: Prologue

“It is stunning, remote, and murderous…”

medium.com

Mira: Chapter 1

“They know me to my dark, rotten core…”

medium.com

Process & projects

Introducing the Grimm Reaper

…in which we take tales by the Brothers Grimm and twist them, turn them, and run them through a blender

medium.com

10 ways to write more when you have small children

How to lower your expectations, get more done, and save some of your sanity

medium.com