Benjamin Boxer

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2020

Stories (15)

15 Stories

382 karma pts

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“Entertaining Strangers” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #259

             Apparently, you don’t have to be very different to be entirely too different in the town of Great Falls.             “We don’t get a lot of Catholics around here,” the preacher said when we met in his office. “Not with a capital ‘C’ anyway.              The local preacher was a jovial man, and I do mean THE local preacher. Most of t...

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“ Codetta and Fugue” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #215

  You can call me Anthony, even though the name would have meant not a thing to me before I fell to Hell. On my last day of blissful anonymity, I sat on a heavily bleached concrete-form garden bench wearing an unrestricting, white flowing gown. We, the angels of eternal bliss, walked in the sun-soaked garden under magnolias’ leaves, surrounded by walls that seemed to match my favorite bench in both color and austerity. The walls’ sole purpose seemed to be—or so it seemed to me—to hold up humble ivy that neither obscured the walls nor re...

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“Night Terrors” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #215

The child's laughter was the worst of all. With her red hair cascading down her rotting face, she laughed, always facing Charles, looking dead into his eyes. The wind blew through her tattered dress and tattered torso, the ripped flesh at one moment seeming like a terrible injury and at another like a part that had fallen off naturally. She opened her mouth wide and wailed a screeching laugh that pierced the drums of Charles Wallace's ears. The child did not walk but appeared and disappeared and re-appeared as a random apparition in the d...

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“Wine and Revelry” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #204

Agave's drinking was tearing her son Stephen Pence apart. Joanne from down at the Oceanview Bar and Grill would have called Stephen out of respect even if he were not the Bethesda County sheriff. She was older than thirty and owned a business, separating her from the other forty-nine-and-a-half percent of voters who opposed, even if in keyboard warrior fear, the law and order Stephen had brought to the once cutthroat crossroads of drugs and human trafficking. "Hey, Stephen. I'm glad I caught you," Joanne said when he answered his perso...

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“Benali's Finale” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #201

Johnny Benali took two solid shots to the face, ignoring his coach’s countdown from the corner. Everybody in the Milton Arena, including Johnny, knew he’d lost the first round. Staring into his opponent’s face, he mouthed “Come on, punk!” as best he could without losing his mouthpiece. Not having the right angle to throw an elbow or enough time to take Johnny to the ground, Diego Alonzo--the number one light heavyweight contender--seemed content with doing exactly what Johnny had told him to do. Alonzo threw two undefended punches, one to ea...

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“Steamed Crab” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #200

Dr. Harry Lightfoot dressed like a man, but he gossiped like a deacon. He drove a decommissioned mail van that had been painted to look like an ice cream truck with pastel playful animals frolicking and fraternizing as painted decoration on the sides, back, and even on the top. An amplified bullhorn had been fastened to the top, and from it, Dr. Lightfoot poured out loops of three tunes that seemed to have been played on a Fisher Price xylophone: "Merrily We Roll Along," "Jesus Loves the Little Children," and a generic little ditty that some...

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“That Which Nourishes Me… (A Psychobilly Romance)” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #163

NOTE: This story contains a scene where a body literally hits a floor.ďťżPsychoBillieJean was a real rock-n-roller with a chip, a good head, and a tattoo on her shoulder. The tattoo read, "Quod me nutrit, me destruit." Whatever made her feel good--or just feel--she'd do it. She put a lid on her past because she couldn't unscrew it. When she found a good fit, she immediately threw it, and when she wanted to fight, everybody knew it. Her brimstone eyes stared their way through Hell's souls. I needed her; she needled me--her moan, a pandemonious ...

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“Good Will at the Corner of Fifth and Broad” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #146

People who say ten thousand bucks isn’t life-changing money don’t know Diedre Morgan. In a time when pro ball players pay fifty to a hundred large for missing a practice or a media day, and celebs pay that much or more for a week of rehab, ten grand ain’t a Hell of a lot. But when you work two jobs not only for the money to support a drunken, shiftless, louse of a husband and a hypochondriac mother but also for the peace of mind that comes with getting out of the house, finding ten-thousand dollars in a sports coat is a life-changing maybe e...

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“"'Every day' is Two Words"” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #145

A thick layer of pitch-black oil shot out from the top of Nat Taylor's world and engulfed everything in sight and in mind. It oozed quickly down his peripheral and then hid everything before draining down the bottom. His world, that once held a vast array of colors from a high-speed car wreck, now contained only egregiously bright lights that blinded more efficiently than the oil itself.As the light washed away the oily remnants, Nat's ass poked out of a hospital gown, and he could tell that decisions about him were being made around him. He...

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“110 Penitent Ghosts” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #144

Stepping onto his mother’s covered porch, I stiff-armed the purgatorial ghosts of pointless memories. Vague reflections looked up from a murky pond of rippling time, and even the ghosts that resembled me laughed with blame. Especially the ones that looked like me. Those familiars mocked attentively, the rest in spurts and fits.They came up from the ground like watery smoke and wafted through the rails. Sitting, standing, running, lying—they fought, they laughed, they hoped. They also huffed, sniffed, and puffed—rolling their bright potential...

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“Rufus Leaves Legacies” by Benjamin Boxer

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #143

One day, Rufus simply stopped killing mice.He’d once taken great pride in his work, sitting for days in front of the oven, waiting patiently—stealthily still—for a mouse to venture out from under the warmer-drawer or in the recess between the oven and cabinets. The target would poke its head out several times before running out and back in. This is where most cats would lose patience and, consequently, their quarry. But not Rufus. He waited—statuesque and frozen—until the mouse walked out and felt comfortable enough to sniff around for food....

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“A Memory that Counts” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #70

The Crowe family farmhouse stood two stories high in a flat field of windswept broom grass. Ivy climbed the barbed wire fences that designated pastures for the six head o’ cattle that lowed, often, in the lower field—the one down by the creek and the parallel rows of pulp pine. A huge, largely unused barn opposed the house roughly two acres away. A single silo leaned slightly to the left—too tired to stand upright, too proud to downright lie. The farmhouse, especially after the trauma from recent events, protruded like an exposed beating hea...

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“A Trust You Can Bank On” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #68

Maurice Stevens appeared to walk straight out of the nineteen-seventies and into the South Texas Bank and Trust. He wore a wide collar, a full mustache, and some half boots tucked into some flares. The older teller at the counter thought Maurice resembled her late husband. He carried himself with a strong sense of class that the younger teller wouldn’t understand. The recently hired young black teller seemed to be shaking her head in a badly hidden sense of disbelief.The bank president’s wife stood at the loan officer’s desk watching Ma...

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“A Witness with One Red Shoe” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #67

Carol Lyndon found the man who called himself Miles to be a charming gentleman. She’d enjoyed a dark stroll at Waterfront Park after a negroni and a plural of pink ladies before she realized his marital status. She hadn’t asked outright, and he hadn’t admitted anything, per se. This was Charleston after all, modern or not, and she wouldn’t be any man’s low-hanging fruit. Besides, it had started to rain. “I thought we were having a nice time,” he said. Carol let another kiss sink into her neck, but her eyes slowly rolled back into place a...

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“Deus Ex Machina: My Afterlife in Art” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #65

   I was enjoying my usual nightmare until I realized that I was the nightmare. I had become someone else’s nightmare. It's the default actor's nightmare: I’m standing offstage in the wings. The play has already started. Lights rise to a blinding intensity, and an actor I don’t recognize anymore allows the first lines to fall from his or her androgynous mouth into a lapel mic. The wall-mounted speakers expectorate that line into the seat-planted audience, composed mainly of the actors’ obliging relatives and thoughts-and-...

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Author bio

Writer, teacher, editor, rider. Old School, New drive. Bad whistler, good listener.

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #143
Rufus Leaves Legacies – read story