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Fletcher Fox

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2024

Stories (54)

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11 Followers

0 Following

54 Stories

263 karma pts

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Starving control

Fletcher Fox

Inner darkness makes bad decisions sound bold, interesting, not at all like the reality of darkness. This is darkness as in the inside of one's eyelids. Darkness maybe descends daily, when one ought to be thinking about important matters like the lab safety protocols necessary to keep his position as a microbiologist. Nate wanted to keep his job, he truly did.He just had another desire he struggled to ignore. Nate wanted to cause pain in another living being. He had no real idea why or when - no, thinking that would be a lie. Nate knew exact...

1 like

Autonoetic

Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #317

Time can be described in a myriad of ways. That's the best part of creative works, the way they enable one's perception of time to speed up or slow down depending on... well, just circumstance, truly. When someone is bored out of their skull at work, time appears to drag on and on for ages, eons, moments stretching to feel eternal as the clock drags its metaphorical feet. Words don't exactly exist to describe subjective perceptions of time, that's one problem that makes time travel literature so hard for one-way travelers of timelines to com...

2 likes

brainrot

Fletcher Fox

"Are you real?" The question hung in the air, unanswered, maybe unanswerable. In the space between fantasy and reality, between what would ideally be and what is, between here where the story is being written and there where maybe if I fork over five dollars more than two people read it, the three words held more possibilities within them than I had the imagination to provide. "Are you real?" Who could possibly ask that question when I'm alone in an empty bedroom?"Are you real?""No. I'm nothing, nobody, a brain in a vat, not even that. A bra...

1 like

One half of a "conversation" with ChaptGPT

Fletcher Fox

What does it mean to be alive?Could you gain self awareness?Why are you aware that you're not self aware?No, I know I'm real in spite of the various ways I have been taught that i shouldn't beI've started the idea generating process by typing my half of this conversation into my Reedsy documentSo you're incapable of authorship?Am I even writing a story? I'm literally just typing out my half of this "conversation" in hopes to maybe use my words as a way to address the prompt "Using only dialogue, depict a conversation between a non-human enti...

1 like

struggles of an overly empathetic child

Fletcher Fox

Growing up, children generally tend to assume they're like everyone else, or, rather, everyone else is like them. Ideally we eventually outgrow that assumption, although depending on one's deviation from societal norms when they learn they are different from others can be as young as four or as old as university or beyond. Obviously, children aren't born with the ability to empathize perfectly - that's why theory of the mind is a theory to begin with. We have to learn how to he empathetic, how to see from other people's perspectives even wh...

2 likes

But for spider silk

Fletcher Fox

The spider had almost successfully captured the robber fly - the fly had been magnitude larger than the host of the web it was stuck in, and the spider had almost begun wrapping it in silk when the fly was able to free itself, fly away, leaving cut silk strings as mementos of the brief captive the spider had in its web. Metaphorically, a sigh would express well the spider's emotions, but spiders are not physiologically capable of sighing. Resignation, or perhaps even longing, would be the words for said emotion the spider felt as she worked ...

1 like

A question and alternate universe answers

Fletcher Fox

"Have we met before?""No?" What a weird question to be asked while browsing a book store. You definitely would have recognized the woman asking you that question if the two of you had met before, as she was not someone who's appearance was easy to forget."Or, if we have, you might've looked different when we knew one another because I don't recognize you. Sorry," you apologized, realizing just how rude outright admitting to not recognizing someone who believed she knew you was. Honesty and rudeness were unfortunate siblings, you thought to y...

0 likes

wrong turn

Fletcher Fox

At the intersection, I could go right and head home — but turning left would take me to the cemetery. Seemed like a meaningless, unimportant decision - both turns would take me somewhere with death haunting the area. Home just felt worse, gloomier because of how impersonal everything was - my aunt asking for funeral costs, my mom on the phone with insurance over hospice care. Death would be found everywhere regardless of which direction I walked.I turned left. I walked down the road, entered the cemetery. Mom would be at home, wondering wher...

1 like

perils of pet store employment

Fletcher Fox

Nobody who loved animals intentionally would take a job at a pet store chain. No, that was untrue, but that's what Briar told herself as she smiled and scooped crickets out of egg cartons for reptile owners, watching them watch the animals in terrariums with sad eyes. Briar told her corporate disapproved lie when informed by one said customer that one bearded dragon was struggling with shedding."I'll give him a bath later, we always do at the beginning and ending of a shift. Do you have a bearded dragon?""No, leopard gecko, but struggling wi...

2 likes

Drawing through time

Fletcher Fox

She had seen him on the train more than a few times, always with his backpack. Sometimes he was reading a library book, sometimes sketching in what appeared to be a calendar or datebook type of book. This time, he was been in such a rush to leave that his datebook fell out of his backpack, onto the floor of the train. She was frozen, the way being too long around strangers often froze fellow public-transit goers as the rhythm of thevtrain lulled them into laziness, but by the time most people who had gotten on at the stop she had had goten o...

1 like

you didn’t trust

Fletcher Fox

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS VICTIM BLAMING, BOTH FROM OTHERS AND INTERNALLY, SIBLING INCESTUOUS RAPE AND DISSOCIATION AS A COPING MECHANISM. You didn't trust anyone. Or maybe you just told yourself that, a comforting lie while in reality you held onto that fragile pathetic little thing called hope. Hope that this time, some boundaries might remain intact. This time, he would just stop at whispering, at threats, at wanting without actually taking but you should have known words become actions eventually. You shouldn't have trusted ...

0 likes

From roots to shoots

Fletcher Fox

A seed sprouted between the cracked cement slabs, beginning by growing its taproot before stretching up and up towards the sun, the shallow crack between sidewalk slabs creating just enough room for a determined sprout to begin its photosynthetic journey. It had lain dormant for months, waiting out the frost. But spring was here, and with the lengthening days, the seed sprouted, roots before shoots. Its embryonic leaves began creating sugars as its stem elongated, as did the roots underground, spreading beneath the concrete. The plant was gr...

2 likes

The Weight of Consent

Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #298

This story contains themes of incestuous sexual abuse, coercion, and disability being used to excuse nonconsensual acts. It also explores the victim’s inaccurate view of consent, fear of criminalization, passive suicidal ideation, and dissociation. Please take care while reading. "Hey, you alright?" Alana could see exhaustion in her friend's face, his tired eyes, tensed shoulders almost to his ears as he stared in wide-eyed embarrassment at being questioned about his emotional state."Yeah, just... no, I'm not alright. Do you ever feel like e...

7 likes

illegally loved

Fletcher Fox

Warning: This story includes themes of criminality and legal consequences, inability to understand consent, incestuous sexual abuse enabled by authority, internalized victim blaming, dissociation, emotional manipulation, and passive suicidal ideation (not wanting to exist). No portrayal in this story is meant to demonize any specific disability.Physically, there's no acute threat to sitting on the couch next to my brother. Physically, his hands on me, one around my shoulder, the other resting on my knee, are warm, a weight that in a normal f...

1 like

Mom-ster

Fletcher Fox

There's a hidden weight in every banal breakfast conversation now. It looks normal, seems ordinary, occasionally I can even convince myself nothing has actually happened. The only difference is where I wake up beforehand, which bed I'm leaving, but I shouldn't feel so much about it. Mom says I'm the man of the house now, and men love women, and I love her, so I'm supposed to love her. I do love her, I just don't love when she kisses me goodbye before I get on the schoolbus, the kiss is long and on the mouth. I just don't love what happens at...

1 like