A.G. Scott

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2020

Stories (48)

48 Stories

4298 karma pts

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“Just Words” by A.G. Scott

[CW: a couple slurs]Inventing new hate speech is not as easy as people think. When I was a kid, putting a cuss word next to a filthy animal was a pretty safe bet. Shit pig, pig shit, those sorts of things were the gold standard. Nowadays? I'm sorry, those things won't fly. The world we live in wants inclusive put-downs from fresh perspectives, pancultural verbal barbs sharpened by cruel and unusual minds. That's where I come in.One way to generate ideas for new hate speech is to p...

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“Standing By” by A.G. Scott

It was today, in a nameless desert, that the last human being chose to die.***The primitive desktop computer whirred, and a blinking cursor dragged a series of neon letters across the off-black screen. The machine's light was a flare in the cool, dark room."Please," Bertie begged, pausing momentarily as it modeled its next utterance. "Don't do it."Feverish and trembling with the apprehension of a hard morning, Evelyn Mason read the chatbot's message several times. Ber...

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“la vie en rose” by A.G. Scott

(CW: mental health/addiction, violence/gore)The night I got shot in the head: that's when I changed my mind.The Waypoint Diner was more like a hallway than a room. It was a place for coming and going, not for staying. If you sat under the flickering fluorescent lamp and smelt the burning grease for too long, if you were too patient, you would start to feel it: a hollowness, an unsteadiness, a sense that the diner itself was teetering on a pinhead. Nobody made any sudden moves.I tucked ...

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“Psycho” by A.G. Scott

When Uvalde popped out of the top of my phone,I had been daydreaming,And without so much as a cursory background check,I swiped it away,Like a hornet in the garage,Like words that actually did hurt,Like ashes that missed the ocean,Thinking damn, that’s crazy.That’s psycho.When I saw the pictures of the children,Many of them brown,Sayin...

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“Boff” by A.G. Scott

Dawn.Greedy shadow slinks over checkout lane number thirteen, consuming the conveyor belt, the register, and the oblivious, brace-faced girl behind the counter. The Wauwatosa Kroger has hardly been open for ten minutes, and its self-checkout stations do most of the work; no cloying couponer has arrived to peel the cashier’s attention away from her phone. The essence of a smile touches her chapped lips as she types a message to her boyfriend: getting paid to read twitter lol. Then there’s a...

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“A Wordless Verse” by A.G. Scott

(CW: murder/suicide, domestic violence, childhood trauma)An exceptional photograph is poetry: through inspired choice, meticulous composition, and language of a kind, the still subject comes to life in the eye of the beholder. Ju Yeon’s hand was plenty steady, but under the roof of a drafty and eerily silent house, she struggled to find life on the other side of her camera’s viewfinder. An ocean-blue wingback chair occupied the bottom half and leftmost two-thirds of the frame, while a long, dark ha...

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“Things We Go Through” by A.G. Scott

Shoulders burning, back seizing, chest tightening, I grab the shovel again. By now it’s a basic instinct; I eat when I’m hungry, I sleep when I can’t stand, and I dig until the job is done. My palms are slick with a thin mixture of blood and sweat, and I feel a callus rip free as the shaft turns in my hand. Another piece of me falls away. A piece that might be properly replaced, if I were to let it heal. Perhaps I will, when the dig is through with me.I feel the muscles in my abdomen stretch and contract as I strike the ...

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“The Box” by A.G. Scott

(CW: brief allusion to child abuse)The Box is as ordinary as anything. It has six faces, eight corners, and twelve edges, not counting the lid. For now it is wrapped in a perfectly pleasant shade of puce and bedecked with a bold bronze bow. Like all gifts, the Box is at once giving and taking, at once known and unknown, but it is not scary. It has no lips to grimace or grin with; it cannot grumble, or growl, or lash out and grab with grubby little hands. It is ordinary: it can open, and it can shut. The only thing is, it...

11 comments 11 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“Doomscrolling” by A.G. Scott

I.Eyes crusty, Cyrus Ghasemi rolls over in bed and stretches his body like a Persian cat, copious black body hair standing on end with the static of the shifting sheets. Muscle memory sends a paw swiping at the bedside table. By no intention of Cyrus' own, he grasps his smart phone and enters the connect-the-dots unlock pattern, which resembles a cross or a pentagram, depending on how he looks at it. He rarely does--look at it, that is. By now, tapping into the world wide web is as natural to him as wiggling his toes.

11 comments 11 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“What are the Odds?” by A.G. Scott

CW: terminal illness, suicidal ideation“Does the wind always blow this way?” asked the Eastern visitor, holding onto his hat.“No mister,” said the cowboy. “It’ll maybe blow this way for a week or ten days, and then it’ll take a change and blow like hell.”A tired chuckle followed, and then a profound silence. The odd pair looked with great envy upon the prairie grass, which with its two-foot roots had long been the great withstander of both storm and drought. After a moment of contemplation their ...

11 comments 11 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“No Time At All” by A.G. Scott

I won’t be at home for half as long as I’d like. There are some days here, in the house I grew up in, during which it occurs to me that living with my family forever wouldn't be so bad. Don’t let that get back to my little sisters—who bully me relentlessly—but it’s true. Maybe that admission is a little unbecoming, or at least makes me seem somewhat immature; but frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. This is the only place in the world where I love everybody and everybody loves me.That being said, ...

34 comments 34 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“El Jefe” by A.G. Scott

I stood under a cone of cold white streetlight in the alley behind the Lucky Dragon, defiantly stretching my five-minute smoke break to a full ten. My coworker, Alan, leaned against the wall beside me, holding his cigarette between metallic chopsticks. We weren’t standing particularly close, but his hands absolutely reeked of the mild orange sauce our white patrons so often loved to order.A little grunt escaped me as my lower back seized.“Getting older?” asked Alan, watching me stiffen until the pain su...

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“You Talkin' To Me?” by A.G. Scott

The blue-white light pouring out of my cheap dual-monitor setup strained my eyes.“So,” said Chris, giving me a start. “Are you coming out tonight or what?” To be totally honest, I had forgotten I was on the phone. Half of my mind was wrapped up in unearned teenage angst (from binging the second season of Gilmore Girls) and the other half was hacking away at some annoying coding project (which, like most coding projects, could have been solved with a few better-phrased Google searches). Consumed by ...

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“The Turning Tide” by A.G. Scott

Her tired eyes, one blue and one green, bore into mine with characteristic curiosity.She is like a mirrored surface in the sun, so bright that I find it difficult to match her gaze. Still I try, but I find my mind addled with doubts, bogged down by dread. We haven’t discussed what’s next for us, except to agree that things must change, and soon.Without a word I turn and walk away, out of the dim bedroom and into the hall. I flip the switch by the door reflexively, leaving her in the dark, as I so often ...

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“The Death of You” by A.G. Scott

The 'RECORD' button on my old Panasonic resists; I have to put nearly all my weight on it in order to get it to click down. Finally the L.E.D. glows and the cassette tape starts to spin, permitting the examination to commence.“Deceased is a thirty-year-old female,” I say, my voice echoing in a cube of cold cement.Your body lies on a sterile metal table, bathing in ugly fluorescent light.Sudden movement in the basement window, high up on the wall, catches my eye. Against the moonlit fro...

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Author bio

Born too late to peddle fake spice on the Silk Road, born too early to peddle fake spice on Arrakis. Born just in time to be subjugated by intelligent automatons. Rugged indoorsman. Hit me up for whatever at agscottwriter@gmail.com

Shortlisted 6 stories ⭐️

Contest #124

The Box – read story

Contest #115

Doomscrolling – read story

Contest #112

What are the Odds? – read story

Contest #106

No Time At All – read story

Contest #99

To Want, and To Be Found Wanting – read story