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Jack Kimball

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2023

Stories (43)
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125 Followers
100 Following

43 Stories

1856 karma pts

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Five Minutes Left

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...

14 likes 5 comments 5
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Against the Current (Idaho Territory - 1885)

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 ...

12 likes 8 comments 8
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Compliance Protocol

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...

19 likes 16 comments 16
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The Dream Thief of Cusco

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 ...

17 likes 14 comments 14
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High-Speed Train

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...

19 likes 17 comments 17
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Love Lost

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 11 comments 11
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The Teahouse on Khan Tengri

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...

16 likes 14 comments 14
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The Faults of Our Fathers

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...

19 likes 14 comments 14
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Return of the Time Traveler

Submitted to Contest #285

"One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return?"— H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, An Invention, 1895•───────•∞•Ж•∞•───────•Chief Minister Cloe Martin stood at a floor to ceiling window in a conference room six floors up from the streets of London. Her spine tingled with a newfound fear that had struck her days before. She was overwelmed with gnawing thoughts telling her she was over her head; she couldn't sleep. The twisting grip deep in her stomach hadn’t waned. From this same window, on what had started as a city workday as any other, s...

16 likes 21 comments 21
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A Table for Two at a Cafe

Submitted to Contest #280

Should we order wine?Sure.Don’t be that way.What way? Order wine if you want.I will then.Go for it.…Waiter. Please bring me a wine menu.Yes madam.…See. You can do it.Now you’re just being difficult. Stop it.Or what?Or I’ll leave.Leave then.…What happened to us?Life. Life happened.Life happened? That’s it? A cliché?Life is a cliché.Did you ever love me?What is love?Don’t give me that. Did you?…Madam. Your wine list.Thank you. Leave it.…Did you?Did I what?Love me? Did you love me?Maybe not.…I could always tell when you were...

16 likes 15 comments 15
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Hail Mary

Submitted to Contest #280

The man lay prone on the edge of thick woods sighting down the scope of a thirty-aught six hunting rifle. Snow flurries melted on the back of his neck. For an unknown reason, and mixed with the smell of pine and gun oil, the phrase ‘veil of an endless winter’ entered his mind. He shook his head. Poetry is the vice of fools, he scoffed. Through the compressed distance the telescopic lens thickened the falling snow, proving the chalk house a quarter kilometer away a miraged dream. A woman came out on the porch centered in the crosshairs. ...

14 likes 14 comments 14
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Earth's Quest

Submitted to Contest #277

“Can you lose yourself? Why do I long, a lonely desperation, to find myself again?”“You’re not alone,” my father, Time, answered. “Many feel an emptiness, a search for meaning. Although within your heart you ache, you also aren’t the same as men.” I saw my father as heaven’s strength, but Time was running old. “It’s true, Father, I often lie awake in early hours, my memory’s fingers barely touch the thing. The hound slips its bounds and taunts me in a fog. I know it’s there, but when I grasp the thing firmly, only mist escapes my h...

21 likes 11 comments 11
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Revenge of the Crows

Submitted to Contest #275

“You won’t have your internet or TV for three months,” Oscar said to his son.Emily exhaled from the passenger seat. “Can you leave the poor boy alone? He’s only seven.”John ignored his father and continued to stare out the back window of their silver SUV. After turned onto a jeep trail, they rumbled along over rocks for two-miles, the dust trailing behind. Finally, the SUV pulled in front of a falling down rusty sign, “Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch”. “The Idaho wilderness,” Oscar said. “This will be fun. Those hills over there? I remember ...

20 likes 12 comments 12
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Psychography of Fear

Submitted to Contest #272

May 25, 2024Lieutenant Michael DonavanHomicide DivisionHarrison Police Department465 Avenue AHarrison, Michigan 87078Lieutenant Donavan,Should this letter reach you in time, you will find me entombed within the Bartholomew family mausoleum at the Bayview Cemetery. Buried in the floor near the north wall is a crypt covered with a clear quartz-like stone which forms the lid. Depending on when this letter reaches you, I may still be alive.Now, before you judge Clarisa, know I loved her dearly. My wife enjoyed a generous trust and she gave back ...

34 likes 14 comments 14
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Rocket Man

Submitted to Contest #265

Adam Daedalus Rocket was not born with the middle name Daedalus, or the last name Rocket. He chose his own names. The kids in the orphanage taunted him relentlessly. “You’re a moron to dream you can go to the stars, the shortest kid in the class. Elton John’s Rocket Man is not even a real astronaut, but some character in a dumb song!” The jeering that stung the most? “Your parents didn’t even care enough to keep you. You were unloved.”There was no time for anything but school as far as he was concerned. He made no friends and kept ...

21 likes 13 comments 13
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