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Jack Kimball

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2023

Stories (50)

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140 Followers

124 Following

50 Stories

2123 karma pts

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Denial

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #314

A gray mare carried a twelve-year-old girl through the town of Evalsne. Horse troughs lined the empty, dust-strewn street on either side of her, and gray pine buildings bore false fronts in the old Western style. Mountains, majestic, but drought-stricken, rose in every direction and formed a kind of hollow where the town lay. The girl rode bareback, guiding the horse with a halter and the pressure of her thin thighs. There was no bit, and her bare feet couldn’t reach the stirrups.She neared a blacksmith shop where flames spiked in a forge. A...

8 likes

Did They Design Us?

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #312

If the adage was correct, ‘I think, therefore I am’, I suppose we had some pride in the method of our demise. This, of course, reminded me of another adage, ‘pride before the fall’, which was ironically just then punctuated by both the thumping sounds of feet on the roof above and the pounding on the door, both of which were the beasts trying to get in.CHU+, my research assistant, hadn’t interjected into the dialogue in days, leaving me only AC& to talk to. But AC& is just not that interesting. He’s in charge of security, which means...

18 likes

The Bautzen Prison Incident

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #311

East Berlin, 1952 Amidst the sound of dripping water and boots on stone, two guards dragged Gestas Milovik down a prison corridor.“Los!” barked the tall guard, and sharp garlic spilled from his breath.In front of a rusted steel door, the second guard rattled his keys and a door squealed open to reveal a wide chamber. The guards dragged Gestas to join two ragged men who were on their knees facing a far green-streaked wall. The guard’s thick hands pressed him down to take his place in line.He stopped breathing for a moment. This was how they d...

22 likes

The Quarry

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #308

I’m parked in the same overgrown field where Marty’s ’66 Mustang sat ten years ago. But I don’t have a Mustang. I have a ramshackle rusted Ford, and it's now the only home I have left. A sleeping bag is in the back seat, boxes are everywhere. Now that I'm back in my hometown, my mind drifts to my mother. I would guess she's still in the old house, but I don't have the courage to go see her.Ahead of me, bulldozers knock down trees. A real estate sign says, ‘Lakeview Estates—Waterfront’. I know the flooded quarry is beyond the tree-line and th...

38 likes

Blue Roses

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #307

"BLUE ROSES" is a contemporary Gothic tale of guilt and transformation set against the ancient backdrop of Puglia, Italy. This atmospheric story weaves together elements of psychological horror and magical realism, exploring themes of atonement, family loyalty, and the price of immortality.______The Real Estate Commission circled like vultures. I'd drained escrow deposits of over three million dollars—money meant for new homes, for retirements, for my friends' futures, and worst of all, my sister's life savings. The investigators were asking...

16 likes

Farewell Address

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #306

Farewell AddressRain tapped the windowpanes in soft pulses. The sound of a lone siren rose and fell faintly in the distance. Inside, the Oval Office lights were harsh.The president sat at his desk with his sleeves rolled up. In his hand was a printed copy of George Washington’s Farewell Address from 1796, double-spaced and underlined in blue ink.He started to read from the document, but then looked up to finish what he’d memorized. “The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity… must always exalt the just pride of patr...

14 likes

SINGULARITY

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #304

May 2025I remember the breaking heat, a late spring reminder of the summer to come. After parking, I made my way to the Pentagon, trying to ignore my gnawing anxiety about the weather. The article in The Times was on my desk. It broke hot as well. Like the weather, it had its own early message.OpenAI was buying IO, a startup run by Jony Ive—the man who helped develop the iPhone. Six and a half billion dollars. This gave me pause. As the Chief Technology Officer for the National Security Agency, the NSA, I knew every coder’s career in the wor...

15 likes

Five Minutes Left

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #297

My eyes are closed, and I keep them closed, not wanting to wake up. What was my last thought before sleeping? I already know the answer, the same as every night: Please—not the dream. Not the one where the clocks bleed, not the one where she won’t wake up.Today, like most days, my head throbs—another self-inflicted wound from a night at Jake’s: the shots, the beer chasers, and was there cocaine on a woman’s room vanity? And was there a guy named Andrew? Or was it Andy? I tell myself today will be different, today I’ll stop drinking.A familia...

16 likes

Against the Current (Idaho Territory - 1885)

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #296

The boy was nine and his father was dead. Abe found him by the rocks where the trail turned north, his face streaked with dried tears and dirt."Got a name?" Abe shifted the Sharpe's in the crook of his arm. He kept his distance, letting his voice do the reaching."Nick."Abe studied the lengthening shadows. The temperature would drop twenty degrees once the sun slipped behind the ridgeline. He could backtrack to Boise, maybe make Warren, but either way that was three weeks of walking, no way he would last. He just didn't have the strength. "I ...

14 likes

Compliance Protocol

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #296

The bank of diagnostic equipment blinked and hummed in Harold’s garage-lab. He crouched at the center console in a wall of consoles. The screen cast an eerie green, a waveform which pulsed like something alive. Something hungry. And the signal was there—buried in the digital noise.His cellphone buzzed. “Dad, stop being paranoid. Mom’s fine. Everyone’s fine. You’re the one acting strange.” They think of me as a retired curmudgeon, he thought, at first for leaving his cell phone at home, refusing to watch TV, ignoring social media. But who say...

20 likes

The Dream Thief of Cusco

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #295

“Dreams are dangerous things to steal,” my grandmother cautioned, smelling of roasted corn and burning copal in her shop on the The Plaza de Armas. “The ancients knew dreams needed to arrive willingly, like a warm caress in the night when you’re sleeping comfortably. When you force them…” She trailed off, her eyes distant.“Not so dangerous we couldn’t steal more, and keep the best for ourselves,” I said, thinking my grandmother could do better.She grabbed my wrist, her weathered hands surprisingly strong. “Don’t be an idiot, Morfeo. Is your ...

16 likes

High-Speed Train

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #293

Congressman David Chen found himself where he never guessed he'd be: the dining car on The Express, a high-speed train humming through the Hungarian countryside. A patchwork of browns and gray-dirty snow flashed by. Abandoned Soviet-era factories passed surreal in skeletal frames, riddled with broken windows and crumbling walls. David’s head pounded. Nausea caused him to sweat. He hated trains, but loved his wife, and the Prague conference was over. Just one more meeting, and then he and his wife could take a river cruise out of Budapest.Stu...

17 likes

Love Lost

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #290

McKenzie’s eyes were sunken, shadows of exhaustion. His hands twitched where they gripped the table. Sweat streamed down his face, stinging his eyes. After three days of interrogation, he searched his mind and flung open door after door, only to find them all empty. Opposite him, a hulking man directed a spotlight (Thegor was his name). He rasped, “We’re running out of time. We can still help each other.” The man was deformed. His back revealed a grotesque formation of vertebrae creeping up his neck.After noticing McKenzie’s taking in his ve...

17 likes

The Teahouse on Khan Tengri

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #287

"The big mountains are high. Understand, they don’t bury the dead, they climb past them,” said the old man. He spit in a white china cup. “There’s a code, and it’s hard to explain to a flatlander.”The young reporter’s back flexed in condemnation and judgement. He was taking notes and didn’t look up. "How do you justify ignoring a frozen body, someone’s loved one?”The old man lifted his gold tipped cane off the arm of his leather office chair. He limped to the window with the cane tapping and stared out with a voice so low the reporter set do...

17 likes

The Faults of Our Fathers

Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #286

Jason was concentrating on his computer screen. He would type a sentence or two, and then stop, think a bit, then type a sentence more. The story he was writing unfolded in his mind and transposed to the page. It was a story about a boy, no more than ten. He began to type:****The boy sprawled on the living room floor, the snow blowing against the window. He was excited to be missing school. Earlier, his mother, haggard, with little sleep, black circles under her eyes, had taken his temperature.“It’s 101,” she said to the boy who was lay...

18 likes