Gip Roberts

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2020

Stories (36)

36 Stories

1851 karma pts

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“'Ding, Dong, The Year Is Dead!'” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #74

Ten...Ten months ago, it was late in February, and early in 2020. It had started out a pretty normal year. In ten seconds, all the memories come flooding back. Pictures saved in the files of the mind. Remnants of festive wrapping paper still cluttering the carpet here and there. It had been a perfectly normal holiday season, and now the question: Will it ever get back to normal? You, like everyone else, has been asking this nearly all year long. As the last ten seconds of the undisputed worst year of your life disappear, one by one, into the...

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“The Catch” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #72

Byron's stomach sank when he got the news. Four hundred thousand dollars! From a distant cousin whom, as far as he knew, he'd never met in his life. His name was Jeffrey, and apparently he knew a thing or two about Byron when he'd made out his will."What kind of sick sadist was this guy?" Byron asked himself while further reading the letter. He held onto his forehead with one hand as he scanned the lines. "How could he do this?"As he visualized the proposal, his irritable stomach sank even more. He could feel the G-force already, thrashing h...

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“Your Clock is Ticking” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #70

You switch to your right side. You can't tell if the beats have slowed or not because you can't hear anything. And you prefer it that way. There's this habit that you've always hated of ending up on your left side while tossing and turning, begging your overactive mind for relief in the form of slumber. That always results in heartbeat awareness as the muffling of the pillow amplifies the inner workings of your organs. Your legs are moist and cold, but your face feels like it's severely sunburned. This isn't a tanning bed, though, this is yo...

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“From Rags to Redemption” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #68

I assumed the mask was for keeping the dust out of his lungs. Here in Alva, Oklahoma it was pretty normal at the time. I hated those hideous-looking things. They always ruined my makeup and made me question what the point was. They made it hard to breathe anyway, so how was that any better than the dust? We were all sick and tired of wearing them, fed up with the economy, and desperate for any kind of change just to break the monotony of the Hoover years.The fine, beige particles bellowed through the door of the bank in a small cloud as the ...

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“Candice Takes the Challenge” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #66

Candice couldn't lose. The stakes were too high. A slew of ingredients covered the kitchen table: carton of eggs, sticks of margarine, sack of all-purpose flour, five-pound bag of sugar, the chocolate chips, everything the online recipe she'd printed said to use.She grimaced at herself. Sixteen years old and had never so much as even boiled a pan of water. But somehow, she had to pull through on this. The timer was ticking, and she felt lost as a foreigner in a new land. Her frizzy, strawberry hair was already soaked with the same perspirati...

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“The House of Inner Demons” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #64

It felt like there were spiders crawling all over me. The heavy glass door rolled open with ever such silence, like some kind of unseen force was standing there to open it. I was there. This was home now. The faltering daylight cast shadows in imitation of every shape of every object in the place. My throat twitched. The hanging lamp above the oval dining room table was gently swinging, I guess because the house was settling again. I pulled the chain to turn it on, my imagination expecting to see anything. I listened and held my breath.&nb...

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“All Because of a Cookie” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #62

You will rise to the top. Victor had lost count of how many times his mother had told him that. It was just a dumb fortune cookie. But to her, it was stone-written prophecy. The very name Victor was chosen with that in mind. Victor of what? He doesn't get it. He's never been victorious at anything. Vindictive, but never victorious. Does anyone else really know what it's like to be a complete failure? Everyone's good at something, so they say. And everyone is, except for Victor. Like swimming upstream, with everything you've always want...

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“When God Closes A Door” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #60

It. That's the only fitting label for what this has become. It's alive, yet isn't. Walks, breathes, hunts, and eats. Walks more like a machine than a man. Breathes more like a beast. Hunts more like a cannibal. Exists more like a deity. And it's the only living being walking on two legs left on this earth besides the one intact human it pursues. It's gaining on him. His chest burns like his heart has burst into flames, pounding rapid drum beats. His lungs can't keep up with the hopeless demands this game of survival keeps belting out. His ...

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“The Boy Who Didn't Cry Wolf” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #58

"Rattlesnake!" Jeremy cried pointing a chubby finger at the small kitchen of the farm house. He had the seriousness down to an art. His voice, that of an eight-year old being given a tetanus shot; his body language, that of an eight-year old being taunted by a wild boar; his facial expression, that of an eight-year old who'd just seen the ghost of Jesse James. His papa could see it all somehow through the corner of his eye as he stared straight ahead at the radio playing his favorite station: the one that regularly featured Bob Wills on the ...

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“Expect Delays” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #56

Was it Sigmund Freud who said: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? Well, for most people, a bridge is just a bridge. Especially one being torn apart the way this one is. It's ugly. Downright ugly. And for me, it's not just a bridge, but a force of evil. It needed to go. It deserves to be destroyed. It's as old as me, yet I'm the one truly dying here. Just the sight of that chipped concrete shoots pain through my ribs all over again that no pharmaceutical can phase. And I have to sit here - eye to eye with it - every single day. The noise of...

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“Our Hideaway” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #54

This "forest" has always had special meaning to me. I say that in quotes because it's not really a forest per se; it was planted here about a century ago, and it only covers a few acres. You can tell by the uniformity in size and the perfect spacing between the trees. Aptly named "the Parallel Forest", it's a sight that's hard to find anywhere else, and one that's certainly unique to this National Wildlife Refuge. Most people come here for the mountains. Very few know about our special forest. There's no sign to mark the spot, only a...

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“To Be Able To Forgive” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #52

Trigger warning: depictions of drug abuse As he's leaving for work, of all times! "Ding, ding," the bell sounds again. There's no getting around answering the door. He has to get past whoever's there in order to leave, and he's already running late. He flings it open and it bangs against the wall. "Great, there's two of them!" he thinks, eyeing them with a rapid scan from the business shoes to the tops of their fedoras. "Whatever you're selling or preaching, I'm not interested!" he asserts with a cringe-accented tone that has a...

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“The Comment Section” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #50

"Yo momma shaves and wears army boots!" "Fkk you!" "Learn how to spell, idiot!" "Learn how to think, idiot! If you'd read the terms and conditions of this web site, you'd know certain language is not allowed here." "What would you know about reading? You probably never made it past Dick and Jane in elementary." "Careful, buddy! There was a swear word in what you just said...Oh yeah! That's right, you have to think in order to be careful. My bad." "Yes, you are! Bad at everything. You SSSUCK!!" "No, YOU suck!" "Learn from the Ma...

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“He Could Make Himself Invisible” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #48

I don't know why everyone considers the ability to become invisible a superpower. For me, it's always been a curse. I've had this ability ever since the Seventh Grade. All it took was one goof while having to give a speech in front of the class to gain it. I'm nearing fifty and it shows no signs of going anywhere. It will be a haunting fact of existence until I really do become invisible as a ghost, or until I've deteriorated into raw nothingness with but a sentence of cold facts about the date I appeared and the date I vanished. The incons...

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“We're Not Quitters” by Gip Roberts

Submitted to Contest #46

An absolute masterpiece! No question about it. The next New York Times bestseller rested on the table in all its polished perfection beside the torn-open package in which it had been returned. The ink on the three-inch thick manuscript still gave off the same fresh aroma as when I submitted it to the acquisitions editor a little over a week ago. The fancy, cottony fiber of the pages that held these myriads of double-spaced lines shouted Look out, world, here I come! in figurative neon, guaranteeing a new-found career laced with fame, fortune...

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Author bio

I finally did it. Thanks to an awesome Reedsy editor and book designer and lots of manuscript revision on my part, my first book has been published on Amazon. These weekly prompts played a big part in keeping me inspired enough to get there. Some Reedsy authors I recommend: Amy Jayne Conley, an aspiring screen writer who deserves recognition for her intense stories with their face-smacking twists. Rachel Smith, who practices the "like for like, comment for comment" principle and always gives valuable feedback. Nainika Gupta, who first got my attention with her hilarious story about the world's largest cookie. Graham Kinross. His "Daughter of" series transports you to a well-built fantasy world of knights, creatures, magic, and the triumph of the human spirit. All writers who are either new to this platform or otherwise struggling to get established.