Chris Miller

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2023

Stories (37)

37 Stories

1705 karma pts

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“End Credits” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #271

I stood by the side of the road out of town, my sodden suit jacket failing its audition as a coat. My small flight case waited beside me, a teenaged LAX luggage tag flapping in the dead black breath of the sea that steered the rain sideways through the rays of approaching headlights. I raised my thumb in surrender and pointed my gaze somewhere above the procession of approaching lights to where it might find the eyes of a merciful driver. The last of my money had been drunk in a brown, out-of-season bar the day before. The summer street fur...

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“Just Like Taylor Swift” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #270

Just like Taylor Swift “You’ve had it done, haven’t you, you crazy bastard?” said Keller. Mitchell looked across the restaurant table with affirmative eyes. “Show me then,” said Keller. Mitchell placed his tanned hands on the crisp white table cloth, the ringed fingers of the left one drumming lightly as he set himself, before poking the tip of his tongue out at Keller.  The lozenge of flesh was pure white. Mitchell had bleached his most social organ, turning it from a muscular, cave-dwelling tool, into an accessory, an iTongue. His f...

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“Oil and Water” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #225

The scrutiny of the gallery guard weighed on Spencer like a wet dressing gown. He’d felt watched since he pushed through the heavy doors into the guard’s peacefully unvisited room. Spencer was tired from his unplanned journey and thought that the gallery of the unfamiliar town might offer sanctuary. A place where he could clear his head sufficiently to be able to plan his next move.  He had ignored the guard who lingered near a door-sized slab of a painting on the right wall of the gallery. He had turned immediately to the left wall a...

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“Major M.K. Grayson V.C.” by Chris Miller

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #224

“Wake up, Sarge. It’s half-past-four.” Catherine walked away from me across the village green. It was a Sunday in May and we had nothing to do. Swallows cut the clean spring air into cloudless curves. She was carrying her shoes. She looked back at me and opened her mouth to say something.   “Sarge! Wake up. It’s half-past-four.” “Thank you, Grayson,” I said, stretching a hand out from my cocoon of grey wool to take back my watch. Grayson was a black shape in the burrow of the dugout. The tiny stove gave off just enough light to ma...

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“The Shift” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #223

Barnaby gazed out of his office window and imagined himself smoking moodily on the steel footbridge three floors below. He missed smoking and in his daydreams about it he was often overcoated and windswept in some gritty urban setting, giving off a sort of vaguely eastern European vibe. The footbridge over Chancellor’s Drive wasn’t exactly the Berlin Wall, but the mean little bridge which stapled the concrete campus to a surrounding fringe of woodland was the best he could do.  Three papers was all he’d got through before his mind ha...

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“What's Your Favourite Type of Pie?” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #222

“How long have you been doing this?”“Twenty-five years, sir.”“Remember your first, do you?”He did.*The air was so cold that the thick skin of clean white gloss that covered the room of steel and brick could have been ice.“Now, Albert, remember everything we talked about. We’re here to do a job. Simple as that. I’m the lead, you’re assisting. Easy money for you today, you’re here as a witness more than anything else. I’ll see to his bindings. Nothing for you to worry about.”“Yes, Uncle Tom.” As they waited Albert found that his main concern w...

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“The Waiting Room” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #221

A pot noodle is not an acceptable breakfast for a homeowner, but the cat’s got conjunctivitis and there might be a nuclear war. The diesel shudder of the crowded bus made a cocktail shaker of my nervous gut and my vibrating seat was mixing up the dirtiest of martinis. It took a super-human effort not to add a bellyful of rehydrated beefy noodles to the oily hair that spilled over the back of the the seat in front of me. The number thirteen mercifully puked me out before the consequences of my lifestyle choices were exhibited before the jury ...

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“The Tall Stone” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #220

The gravestone was unusually tall. It stood at the head of an unmade bed of earth. Tom had missed the funeral, but not by much. Filled but not finished, the grave still smelled of the turned earth. A pink worm flexed and headed into the heap. Tom thought of the grave he’d dug for Bruce. No headstone for him, just a spot under the tree where he’d played in the autumn leaves as a puppy. Cleanly cut in rain-beaded granite were the words: Samuel van Wyk I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom ...

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“The Chain” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #219

“Good evening, Team! Are you ready to save the world?” Ford’s level 6 astronaut themed avatar glowed on the screen above his credit score, which was rocketing thanks to the enthusiastic start he’d made to the briefing. “The Citvore nightshift security chain is entering its 567th night of unbroken vigilance, you should all be so proud!” Clapping emojis floated up and hearts exploded in a tumbling column down the right side of the screen. “Remember, nightshift is a sacred duty entrusted to only one in ten people. It is vital to the security of...

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“Senseless Violence” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #218

An imperfect joint in nearby tracks causes a slowly passing tram to pump a metal heartbeat through the hotel room. Now a voice, amplified by the late hour, and Guinness, calls something unintelligible to an unseen audience. Music strikes up in response. It rises from a basement deep in the roots of repurposed homes of Georgian stone to pick up the tram’s ectopic beats and thud out the message that I’ve picked the wrong street for sleep. A female voice shrieks and wheels like a gull over the waves of a drinker’s enthusiastic tenor. The be...

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“St. Michael's Day” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #217

“What are you waiting for?” The idea occurred to Kala that the weight of a gun changes depending on what, or who, you are pointing it at. On the ranges as a cadet pistols, rifles, shotguns had all felt light. Tools of the trade, things to be cleaned and maintained, serviced like the photocopier in the office. They did exactly what he needed them to do. Kala was considered a talented marksman, but to him, putting a tight group of holes in a paper target was no more important than getting the punctuation right in the final draft of a repor...

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“The Aquarium” by Chris Miller

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #216

Oh God, it was her. The copper curls. Unmistakeable. Oh God. From the pavement the people inside had been nothing more than unthreatening blurs. It had reminded Eric of the time when the council had fitted one way glass in the large front window of a social services office he had worked in. In an act of miraculous incompetence they had fitted the glass the wrong way round meaning that the vulnerable people waiting for help on the horrible plastic chairs were clearly visible to anyone who happened to be passing, while the identities of ju...

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“A Trip to South America” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #215

The plane was coming back, it was definitely watching him. A small crucifix, dark against the blue sky, drawing and redrawing the same ellipse over the house. Honeypie watched it slip out of sight behind his tree. He loved his garden, and he loved his tree most of all. He loved it now for hiding the plane that was beginning to freak him out. He suspected it was trying to make him leave the garden, possibly force him to abandon his house altogether. The buzzing plane, the visitors who ignored him, the cat that he often felt staring at him fro...

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“Whose Dwelling is the Light of Setting Suns” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #214

I was warned as a child that looking directly at the sun would result in the retinas being burned out of my skull. That they would be fried like onions, sizzling unfunnily in vitreous humour. Nobody ever identified the point at which it was not only safe, but positively medicinal to look directly at the sun. Rays robbed of retina sauteing power by virtue of travelling on an angled path through the atmosphere now painted me in the same milky peach as the few thin, gilt-edged clouds that teased over the horizon. She was next to me, but would n...

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“Is It Cake?” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #213

“So now, for fifteen thousand dollars, what’s it going to be?”Jamie stooped and squinted at the five objects.“They’re all so real…”“They’re as real as wrestlin’, Jamie,” said the host to a ripple of spontaneous amusement from the audience, “but which one is cake?”Real as wrestling. Jamie knew real when he saw it. When Hulk Hogan hit The Macho Man Randy Savage, hit him square in the eighties (when fifteen grand would have bought a new Corvette), it was real. Really real. The Macho Man staggered like a blasted buck. Stiff legged and rake-in-th...

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Author bio

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” ― Ray Bradbury Challenge accepted, Ray!

Winning 1 story 🏆

Contest #201
The Bequest – read story

Shortlisted 5 stories ⭐️

Contest #224
Major M.K. Grayson V.C. – read story
Contest #216
The Aquarium – read story
Contest #212
Post E – read story
Contest #194
Efcharistó – read story
Contest #193
The Totem Pole – read story