Chris Wagner

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2020

Stories (56)

56 Stories

1159 karma pts

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“Slave” by Chris Wagner

Oil patterns shined off the faceless black head of the thing holding my leash. I struggled with my dog collar, but my captor's bulky black spacesuit concealed strong muscles. I grabbed at the collar clip, pulling down to get more air. I stumbled through rows of bright multicolored vendor tents. The whiff of stale onions and Zevo bug spray assaulted my nostrils. Extraterrestrial food smells. <...

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“Empties” by Chris Wagner

The doors shone unnaturally bright in the shadowy recess of the dripping cavern. One bore a fanciful round shape, covered in arcane designs in ornate gold leaf, the other a plan looking but polished wooden square with a number sign on the door. I frowned at the latter, with its ugly push handle, the mystifying label: `WARD 32.' "Gearhead, which one yields the treasure?" My clockwork mechan...

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“Cyrano” by Chris Wagner

Candles flickered in the Shadow King's throne room, illuminating walls and vaulted ceiling surfaced entirely from skeletons of innocent victims. Their blood gushed from grotesque magical fountains. I could see nothing out the windows - the Shadow King's power had filled the daytime sky with winged man-like abominations and insects in such great number that it blotted out the sun. The throne room itself, bereft of its own...

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“Bea Aglacya” by Chris Wagner

I lay in a hospital bed with a mattress the texture of a bunch of flowers, framed with something like rubbery vines, boa constrictor thick, with metal facets. It seemed like someone had grown it in a lab somewhere, stabilizing it with machine parts. Pictures and other decorations hung from walls resembling pollen under a microscope. Homelike, to an alien. A guinea pig-like nose and mouth wiggled on the nu...

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“Long Live the King” by Chris Wagner

If Mom fully understood my fixation with Googly Goose and Friends, I doubt she would have left me alone in the house so much. Mom was a visiting home health nurse, and a single parent, which means I spent a lot of time alone in front of the television. I must have watched every episode of that puppet show. Googly is Canadian. He lives in a town with twenty five other alliteratively named p...

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“Dude” by Chris Wagner

My bonfire crackled, sending dancing sparks between the twisting oaks of Death Forest. Fully orchestrated music flowed through the creaking boughs, a song I'd heard at least ten times since I'd arrived. Sages called it Ballad of Death Forest. Rather uninspired, if you ask me. I'd once tried to locate the string quartet, but it only led me to a tree near a goblin encampment, where I ended up hog t...

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“Happy New Year” by Chris Wagner

Every day at The Compound felt like an enormous April Fool's joke. More than a year ago today I had become imprisoned in this place, a collection of garishly colored townhomes situated in the apparent middle of nowhere. The interior of each building resembled a hotel room, and in fact we had room service. Although for the most part a convenient luxury, contraband seemed to walk off on its own, an...

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“Spring At The Compound” by Chris Wagner

Spring Harvest Festival had arrived at The Park again, the watered down Easter-without-religion distraction they established to keep the peasants of The Compound docile. I paid no attention to their bright banners, light soulless jazz, or the pastel clothing of the milling throng. My attention focused on the brass plaque they had beside the Parrott guns in the Civil War display, far from the central plaza. <...

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“Alone in Bencap” by Chris Wagner

My alien girlfriend and I lay side by side on a giant Victoria Water Lily thing in an indoor lake, staring up at the starry night sky. "What do you think of Bencap?" she asked. I thought about it, but couldn't quite come up with an answer. Bencap was the kind of city I'd always dreamed of visiting ever since I was a kid watching Star Wars, but not everything was that fun. ...

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“Emojti” by Chris Wagner

Dogos Facility M-39 Qaltozz Kaybok System Jutrogol Planetoid Please excuse writing, I was in a hurrah. I gotta get up at the asscrack of dawn. 12/31/2322 Dear Pal, This here's a shit way to start out the New Year. This horseshit is not what I signed up for. Don't ever work for no dam alien company unless you really like rocks, and wanna live ...

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“Date at the Gejzol” by Chris Wagner

The purple waves of the Rocbish sea crashed on ash white shores. Unclothed or swim harness clad furry aliens sunbathed, frolicked in the spray. I paddled after my alien girlfriend until my feet touched sand. An eel thick as a rainbow python brushed up against my leg. Lucky it was friendly. I waded toward dry land. Clouds obscured planet Pathilon's giant moon, and flocks of dark winged shap...

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“Featherstone Heights” by Chris Wagner

We only intended Featherstone Heights to be a fun simulation app to play on your phone or X-Box. We added a bunch of randomly generated stuff for replay value, and an artificial intelligence to make each gaming session lifelike and unpredictable. We used some experimental algorithms for our AI. All of it, we assumed, only gave the appearance of life, enough to fool our would-be customer, but some...

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“Bea Aldoyi” by Chris Wagner

The bright rays of Kaybok graced the ash-white sands of Zurewwa beach and its furry sunbathers like a warm blanket. Purple waves crashed on the shores. Hearing mooing sounds, I looked up and saw humanoid figures flying on the back of an immense bird. They passed before a moon twice the size of earth's. Although I'd been on Pathilon for over a month, I still couldn't get used to sights like that. I found myself accidental...

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“The Hatching” by Chris Wagner

My dad was getting open heart surgery the day the mutations happened.  Nothing would ever be the same for anyone ever again. I got the day off school due to the family emergency, but it wasn't any damn fun. To ten year old me, it seemed like I'd spent eternity in that hospital waiting room, long enough to get sick of the two game cards I had for my Nintendo Switch, and the ...

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“My Friend Googly” by Chris Wagner

Whenever people ask why me and Brian are so close, I tell them we're brothers. It's not a gay thing, I swear. What brings us together is a big bird, and a toy compass. The Goose Compass came in select boxes of Googly Goose Cereal. Like every other TV tie-in, the cereal didn't taste good, and my parents said it was too expensive to keep buying. Mom actually bought my compass from the thrift...

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Author bio

See more of my fiction and artwork at: https://kayboksystem.wordpress.com/

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #61
They Talk Back To You – read story