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Cameron Shanton

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2024

Stories (5)

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2 Followers

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5 Stories

62 karma pts

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Vivid Memories and Forlorn Dreams

Cameron Shanton

Submitted to Contest #295

The most vivid among my memories are those of my hometown in Waxhill County, West Virginia. Worn asphalt and cracking pavement outlined the weary brick structures and weary business fronts. A single neighborhood housed most residents, with the remaining dispersed across dozens of square miles of cedar and pinewood forests. Few walked into town, and fewer still walked out of it. People assigned any task or errand they couldn't finish in the town center to a weekend chore—this meant driving or taking a bus south toward Abraham, a place barely ...

0 likes

The Serpent in the Chasm

Cameron Shanton

Submitted to Contest #294

It was a long time ago that the lindworm Thrasir built its nest in the deep dirt of the Golden Forests, but it was not so long ago that humans first settled the village of Aldwyn. At first, there was a silent peace, as the humans had not bothered the worm, and the worm had not revealed herself to them. But in time, the tiny collection of homesteads grew. They earned themselves a proper name and then a proper boundary, and such growth demands many things. The village people began to clear the forests, and the white-barked branches and crisp, ...

5 likes

50 Miles To Morgantown

Cameron Shanton

Submitted to Contest #293

Contains sensitive content: substance abuse, physical violence, gore, or abuse. “Put that damn gun away, Bubba, you gonna get us caught.” That was the warning Mary Beth gave her boyfriend just before everything went sideways. The shattered windshield of an ambulance had replaced the cold glass of their beat up 2004 Toyota Corolla. Three bullet holes tore through it, letting in the torrential storm that had started suddenly and without warning. Mary looked down at the automated flash flood warning that flashed and blared through the cracks o...

12 likes

The Crab of Harpers Ferry

Cameron Shanton

Submitted to Contest #293

I always kept my head pressed against the window on the trip to Harpers Ferry. I liked the way the overgrown forests sailed past as dad let off the pedal and coasted down the hill toward the Potomac River and the Harpers Bridge. It always felt like a valve; the only way in and the only way out. The only thing that separated the untamed wilderness of West Virginia and its hollers and country folk from the civilized concrete fields and heavy development of Maryland. That bridge was the only thing separating the ancient realities of our contine...

6 likes

The Painter From Lindell

Cameron Shanton

Submitted to Contest #292

Witward was not a kind man and knew no kindness himself. His broken childhood home and removal from it rendered love unfamiliar to him. Now: Now, his hair was gone; his legs had grown weak, and his arms sore. Time had taken the tax owed to it by the miserable, sapping the vigor he had desperately fought to hoard for himself.The ancient man pulled his equally ancient jalopy in front of the general store, the rubber of the tires squeezing against the concrete as the rough surface scraped across familiar grooves in the rims. The hinges of the d...

2 likes