Chris Wagner

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2020

Stories (56)

56 Stories

1159 karma pts

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“The Ghoulish Gourmet” by Chris Wagner

The host of Shadow Chef always seemed a little...strange. He never took his sunglasses off, his studio had several dimly lit corners he did his announcing from, all outdoor shots were at night, and any recipes involving garlic sent the contestant packing. His personal life, though, proved this to be more than just quirky showmanship. He never went anywhere during the day. People asked abou...

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“Goodbye Sam Hain” by Chris Wagner

We named our rock group Sam Hain because we only play on Halloween. I guess you'd call us a novelty band because we wear big pointy hats and robes and have a bubbling cauldron on stage with us. The magic is real, but we let everyone think it's just special effects. It was our 'sexy witch' Judy who came up with the idea because we were so busy with our normal lives that we couldn't find a good time to get...

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“Spinoff” by Chris Wagner

A nanny job for the biggest name in the comic book industry. When I saw the want ad, I jumped at the chance. It shocked me to find out Drew Kirby had a child at all. Nobody talked about it, I saw no pictures, and heard absolutely nothing about there even being a woman in his life. Perpetually single, many people assumed he was gay. Of course, if you looked at his comics, you'd notice his fixation with fem...

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“Madness Manors” by Chris Wagner

We developed the game with the aid of the I-Ching. When I drew Hexagram 29 during the final stage of completion, I didn't take it seriously. Just another thing we did to make our work fun, like dressing up in medieval costumes and having play sword fights. I mean, we made Eldritch Dungeon last year with a freaking Ouija board. Little did I know that my 'flooding ravine'...

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“Machu Piccu Gold” by Chris Wagner

I had just begun my shift at the Lodestone Cafe when the pandemic hit. We'd just rolled out a new drink, Machu Picchu Pumpkin, for the fall season. I wasn't aware they grew pumpkin in Peru, but we've got smoothies made of stuff I didn't know existed, from places you could only reach on the back of a mountain goat, if you believed the advertising. Pretty average stuff, if you ask me. Other than an extra p...

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“Freddie's Last Flight” by Chris Wagner

Nobody knows that Freddie Phoenix keeps a dark thought diary, but there's a lot people don't know about me. There's only so much that can fit in a thirty minute day. The diary started one midnight when I started to have worries, and questions that couldn't be easily resolved by my friends on Rosedale Square. There was only so much you could do with a song and dance number, or a giant foa...

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“You Should Know This” by Chris Wagner

"Sheila, can you hear me?" My eyes flew open. I was...in a blue flight suit, strapped to a chair facing a bunch of instrument panels in a cramped compartment, two similarly clad people staring at me with expressions of concern. I was...in the small cockpit of...a strange airplane?...And weightless. "Sheila, what's wrong?" I stared. The one on my left had bushy brown hair, a...

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“They Talk Back To You” by Chris Wagner

The Googly Goose talking phone came out in the early eighties, a push button toy that 'dialed ' your favorite Googly Goose characters and piped their recorded voices through a tinny corded handset. Consumer complaints around that era said that the device was prohibitively expensive and the thin wire often broke so you could no longer hear the audio, but dad was obsessed. He took it everywhere when he wa...

9 comments 9 SHORTLIST ⭐️

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“Goblin” by Chris Wagner

People have a lot of ideas about the end of the world. Atomic annihilation. Disease. Zombies, perhaps zombie bovines if you're being fanciful. A few have even given vampires a whirl, but nobody would have seriously expected a twelve year old goblin queen. Her three foot tall minions creep up to you from the cover of darkness, inject a magic needle in your body, ...

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“U-Bank” by Chris Wagner

I awoke naked on a bench in a depressurization tank. The tank had rusty steel bulkheads bearing old dripping pipes and weathered ventilation ductwork. Someone had cranked the AC to an uncomfortable level, raising goosepimples on my bare flesh. The chamber deadened most sound, save for the blower, the dripping water, and Sportscenter. The plasma TV had been fastened to the wall in such a way that...

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“Goose” by Chris Wagner

A house makes a weird sound when the power goes out. A dying wail comes from some unknown electronic device hidden among the multitude of appliances. The day of the blackout, the image on the plasma TV narrowed to a slit like a closed eye. The dog was the only one not traumatized by the event. Freddy only raised an eyebrow and looked around a moment before resuming his impression of a rug. <...

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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