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Christopher Kooker

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2024

Stories (8)

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4 Followers

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8 Stories

142 karma pts

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Urns

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #275

It’s a strange thing following a cat. Excruciating waits melt into bursts of activity, forewarned by nothing more than a shift in the air too subtle for the human senses. But the cat feels it, or hears it, or smells it, and trots off, puffed up with purpose. It takes tortured, serpentine routes that dive under and squeeze between and double-back, avoiding the road most traveled for hazy night-reasons. The cat must know it is being followed, but it neither runs away nor explains where it is going, nor why it’s going there so very slowly. To f...

6 likes

Outbound

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #265

Morning. Time travel is mostly waiting, so Bryan leaned against the faux marble pillar and waited. His official designation was specifically a Counter, so he kept an eye on the Burger King across the concourse and made a token effort at tracking the customers that petered away from the counter in fits and spurts. According to the black tick marks on his notepad, two hundred and eighty-eight chicken sandwiches sold (ninety-five of them spicy) so far today. He knew from experience that the first hour or so was OK. During that hour, people wer...

6 likes

Smoke

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #249

DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE. The yellowed road sign was already a dwindling speck in his side mirror, hardly worth devoting any extra energy on, but Bryan couldn’t shake the nasty thought that a sign like that was just the sort of unimpeachable non-action that authorities like to take in a crisis. Notably, he didn’t put much thought into the actual substance of the warning. Wispy gray clouds of smoke rolled somewhere ahead, their exact distance impossible to judge against the resolutely flat landscape. Besides, driving into the smoke didn’t see...

17 likes

My Father's Study

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #242

I was five years old and had not yet grasped the extent of my father’s failings. As children do, I accepted the world as I found it. Here I was, flitting up and down the carpeted halls of our family home, skipping between the patches of light refracted through the high windows. There was my father, nestled somewhere in the corner of our home known to me only as his study, wholly absorbed in whatever affairs occupy men in their private moments. It seemed natural if not inevitable that we should exist on opposite sides of the stately French do...

8 likes

Overnight Rain

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #239

It was scary at first, but I’ve decided I like the Overnight Rain. The storms are so loud after dinner, clacking hard off the roof and pinging against the windows like a rubber band shot from the back row. The whole world gets jostled up and no one wants to talk about it or anything else, even though you couldn’t hear them anyways. By early morning it’s different though, there’s something nice about when it’s still dark but the noise has softened into little plinks, and it starts to form piles on the ground and fill in all the tiny spiderweb...

6 likes

A Grape in Hand

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #238

Gallaudet raised two calloused hands to his chest and shook them, palms up and fingers splayed, as if in prayer. Then he held up two fingers by his head, flicking his wrist forward to draw attention to the gesture. Want. See. Nervously, Sawyer studied the deft forms. Then he raised his own hands to sign as he mouthed the words. I don’t understand. What do you want to see? Apparently favoring emphasis over clarity, Gallaudet repeated the gesture several more times with mounting intensity. Want! See! Want! See! Sawyer knew from ...

12 likes

John Paul, from TV

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #235

Two weeks before election day in Columbus, Ohio, everybody already knew that John Paul Anderson would win. After all, abortion had become a swing issue and his challenger was saying all the wrong things. Furthermore, several key precincts were majority Black, so it was simple demographics. Perhaps a select few people even knew about the internal scandal brewing in his opponent’s camp, which threatened to topple the nascent campaign and all but gift wrap the seat for John Paul. The actual voting promised to be little more than a display of ci...

7 likes

In the Hall of Two Truths

Christopher Kooker

Submitted to Contest #234

“We have all the time in the world,” she said. I think that was supposed to be reassuring, but her expression was hard to read. The Assessors sat silently, heads bowed in fealty. I tried my best to emulate their formal demeanor, but I desperately wanted to ask about the turquoise feathers sprouting from her arms. After an excruciating wait, I was finally at the head of a massive line that wound its way through the dimly-lit hall. Throngs of people bunched together just enough that you felt obligated to ask each one if they were in line ...

7 likes