Jack Kimball

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2023

Stories (19)

19 Stories

769 karma pts

?

“A Table for Two at a Cafe” by Jack Kimball

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?...

23 comments 23
Read story

“Flaws” by Jack Kimball

We'd been dating for about six months when Linda looked at me with a final decision in her eyes, resolute firmness in her voice, and said, "I can't see you anymore." She was standing in the foyer of her tiny single mom house, her five-year-old son, Blake, sleeping in the other room. I was getting ready to leave and putting on my cool single man's p-coat, collar turned up. I was thirty-seven and never married. Linda was t...

8 comments 8
Read story

“Breakout 2.0” by Jack Kimball

Slinging low over the trees, the Bell V-s80 Valor helicopter angles in, a lethal locust descending in a joyless moon. Rotors tilting to hover configuration, she banks into the landing strip. General Huxley Longfellow, in fatigues, steps to the tarmac and salutes the two aids on the ground. Running low, they dash to a Quonset hut a hundred yards away. As they enter the room twenty men stand to attention while four civilians huddle at the end of a long conference table. The general, after a lifetime in the milita...

4 comments 4
Read story

“Mountain Rescue” by Jack Kimball

“Here. Careful, it’s hot.”I take the soup in the green plastic cup, steam rising, blow on it, then use my camp spoon to skim the yellow broth off the top. In another day we’ll be out of soup, out of fuel, and down to nothing but four Clif Bars: one chocolate chip, two white chocolate macadamia nut, a peanut butter. I hate peanut butter. Until the rescue, I’m thinking maybe go with half a bar each day. There has to be a rescue.Phil and I are lying in our snow cave, and we have been, three days now. Body ...

11 comments 11
Read story

Author bio

You can reach me at: jack@jack-kimball.com Currently reading: "Fates and Furies," Lauren Groff "Grammar as Style," Virginia Tufte "Philip Larkin Poems," Selected by Martin Amis I am a retired small business owner living in Ketchum, Idaho. Favorite writers: Ray Bradbury, Hemingway, Hunter Thompson, William H. Gass, Nathaniel Philbrick, W. H. Auden, Phillip Larkin