Austin Wright

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2019

Stories (4)

4 Stories

87 karma pts

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“U-Boat” by Austin Wright

Submitted to Contest #263

The days and nights pass to the rumble of diesel engines. They become your heartbeat. Your attachment to life. You have nightmares about drowning, about sinking deeper and deeper to the screams of your fellow crew mates. The hull bursts and the Atlantic gouges your eyes and lungs with burning saltwater. Then you wake up to the humming diesels, welcoming you back to life. This time you wake up to silence, to icy condensation pooling in your bunk, to the tense atmosphere of electric engines running silent and hiding from death. When you’r...

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“A Love Letter to Humanity” by Austin Wright

Submitted to Contest #255

May this letter find you in a spirit of anger. My name is Dick Neilson — renowned geneticist, chairperson of the International Council of Freedom and Prosperity (ICFP), and soon-to-be mass murderer. I greet you in anguish. This letter will serve as my confession, my suicide note, and my billet-doux to humanity. Come what may. Shakespeare originally popularized that expression, “come what may,” in Macbeth, which is a story about what happens when you let fate meddle with everything. He’s dead and won’t mind my borrowing it.&n...

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“Cryptid” by Austin Wright

Submitted to Contest #215

“There are no monsters lurking in the woods or under the sea. There are only beasts and the gnawing pulse of life, the eternal cycle of eating and being eaten in the sharp teeth of the hungry and the gentle hearts of the weak.” -Dr. Jim Dunham The summer sun beat down on the blacktop of a single-lane road winding into the Arkansas hills, radiating in waves of shiny vapor and washing everything in white heat that made Jim Dunham squint. There were no street signs, no landmarks, and no service. The land dipped and climbed in indistinguisha...

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“Leaving California in 1969” by Austin Wright

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #6

The air in California is different than everywhere else. California air is sweet like hummingbirds and ocean salt and no matter where I am — even in the mountains — breathing tastes sweet on the tongue but just barely. We can’t live in California anymore because it is time to go to the desert. Charlie said it was time and that’s why it is. Charlie talks about the war that’s coming. Everyone is going to die in the war except us and that’s why we’re in the desert. The war won’t be in the desert. The desert air tastes like ash. The ...

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Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #6

Leaving California in 1969 – read story