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Chris Miller

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2023

Stories (44)
Comments
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112 Followers
30 Following

44 Stories

1929 karma pts

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The Chain

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...

12 likes 11 comments 11
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Senseless Violence

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...

24 likes 21 comments 21
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St. Michael's Day

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...

14 likes 11 comments 11
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The Aquarium

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...

45 likes 39 comments 39
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A Trip to South America

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...

18 likes 15 comments 15
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Whose Dwelling is the Light of Setting Suns

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...

25 likes 16 comments 16
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Is It Cake?

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...

28 likes 27 comments 27
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Post E

Shortlisted for Contest #212 ⭐️

“I need to send this.” The young man took a package from inside his heavy suncoat and put it on the counter. It was wrapped in yellowed newspaper tied with chord made from discarded plastic packaging, gathered and spun back into utility by enterprising street vendors.  “Ok, if you want me to address it for you that’ll be an extra ten pounds,” said the Postmaster, his voice a tin-can echo from behind his bulletproof window. “Ten! It won’t be that much to send it.” “Rules, I’m afraid. You should address it yourself, if you can. ...

22 likes 27 comments 27
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Stiffback Mountain

Submitted to Contest #211

Wyatt was stirred from his doze by the pop of a burning log. The fire was low but still hot and healthy. Odours of pine and smoke mingled in his whiskers. He adjusted his blanket and stretched his good leg, causing his old chair to rock softly. Brutus rolled over on the rug, thumped the ground once with a single heavy wag of his tail and fell back asleep. The other rocking chair was empty. He looked to the pegs by the door, Zeb’s jacket and hat still hung there. On a late autumn night, he wouldn’t have gone as far as the outhouse without the...

8 likes 6 comments 6
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The X Factor

Submitted to Contest #210

“In 1961 Dr Frank Drake made a list. He wrote down all the things you’d need to know to be able to predict the likelihood of finding intelligent extra-terrestrial life.” Dr Maurice Gaunt paced around his office as he delivered the lines that had opened dozens of freshman lectures. “Unsatisfied with his list, Dr Drake seasoned it with a few multiplication signs and realised that he’d done just that. The product was an estimate of the number of detectable civilisations in our galaxy.” "Yeah, I’ve seen Cosmos with Carl Sagan. People have be...

25 likes 14 comments 14
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Seven Series Saloon

Submitted to Contest #209

The car was stifling, so airlessly warm that Martin could smell the static tang of the new plastic interior. He’d let it get like that on purpose, stuffy and stagnant, despite the cold blasting against the two-millimetre-thick steel skin as he bucketed down Route Three towards Zurich. He’d wanted it to be cosy so Clare could sleep, but now he opened his window. Just a dab on the switch to let an inch of the world whistle in and chase away the soporific fug of body and nylon. This wasn’t the time for him to start feeling drowsy, and he wanted...

15 likes 12 comments 12
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Cuddlepig and the Electric Victory Song

Submitted to Contest #208

Cuddlepig had been a top rack toy since the latest movie in his franchise had hit the cinema. Admittedly, he was from the first movie, but the release of the sequel had seen him promoted from the ten token middle rack to the twenty token heights. Cuddlepig had been raised up to where he belonged. Cuddlepig was kind of a big deal. Unimoo had not been so lucky. Unimoo had also featured in the first movie, but a poorly attached eye and packaging that had become water damaged (when Weekday Marvin had not properly closed the shutters at the end o...

12 likes 10 comments 10
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Exclusive

Submitted to Contest #207

“Rufus! Come in. We loved your latest piece on the migrant situation in the Mediterranean. You’re really broadening the horizons of the readers of the Post.”                “Our readers already have pretty broad horizons.”              “Of course they do. They read the Post!”              Rufus sat in a windowless room, empty apart fr...

11 likes 8 comments 8
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Trinity

Submitted to Contest #206

The thin hiss of a distant ocean rolled around the library’s barrel ceiling. I didn’t have long left to find her. We couldn’t miss our boat.  I walked past an iron staircase that corkscrewed through the floor and up to a level above. Would climbing to the upper levels offer me a better view of the library and increase my chances of finding her? The shelves of the upper levels were partially visible from where I stood near the library’s heavy doors; they were empty. The books had been stripped from the age-bowed ribs that had hel...

31 likes 28 comments 28
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Humbrol no.23 Duck Egg Blue

Submitted to Contest #205

A Spitfire. Possibly a Mk. V heading back to Coningsby after a display. It throbbed down the coast, low enough to be seen through the front window of the café. A brown-green dream machine. He’d slept under one for years. It dangled on fishing line, high above his bed. They'd built it together on the kitchen table. Just the two of them, when that was a good thing, before the illness killed his patience and then finished off the rest of him. They’d used pungent glue from a metal tube. It had a marker pen tang and comprehensive warning symb...

23 likes 12 comments 12
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