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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2022
Submitted to Contest #207
“You’ve gotta move with the times,” he says this brightly. He feels the need to be cheery and inject some life into this place. It’s getting to him already and he’s only just been collected from the sanitised reception area. His efforts fall flat. The scientist in the pristine white lab coat smiles a cold and imbalanced smile, “yes, quite.” The scientist’s name is Bolton. That’s what it says on his security card. Jonny doubts he’s ever been to Bolton and he isn’t sure why the doc, as he has an inclination to call him, needs the car...
“Cut!” Bren Halfleck looks stunned. Then he looks around him at the crew. Green screening is an art in itself. It’s acting in its rawest form. Precision make believe. There is nothing there, but he has to make sure the audience sees what should be there. Then the tech wizards colour everything else in and there really is a dragon, or an alien, or a talking boat or whatever it is that is trending this year in the weird and wonderful world that they call Follywood. “Is that it?” he asks as the crew start wrapping things up. “Ye...
Submitted to Contest #206
It was always going to be the nineteenth. As a teenager, he expected that he would die in his nineteenth year. Not when he was nineteen. That would be past the time that had been allotted to him. Never would he admit to another soul, his disappointment at living beyond his nineteenth birthday. He knew he should be thankful for the reprieve and the extra life it afforded him, but he didn't know why the plan had changed. He didn’t know what it was that he had done wrong, this made him feel smaller. He no longer measured up. He’d fa...
I remember being terrified. I was the most frightened I’d ever been in my life. Forget the monster under the bed. This was real. Just the thought of it now, it makes my breath catch somewhere in my chest and my heart swells, threatening to burst in my chest, seeking a complete end to everything in preference to what I am yet again confronted with. There had been a build up to this moment, of course there had. It was a culmination of all the components of a life. There was a feeling of inevitability as all the strands led to this p...
“Daddy, I’m scared!” His words are shards of glass in my heart. They bring it home to me in a way nothing else can. I’ve lied to myself so many times in an attempt to convince myself that I am not scared, that I have risen above such things. The truth is I’m about as scared as it’s possible to be, and I can feel myself coming apart at seams I never knew I had, and my collapse into chaos terrifies me. I know that I could let go right now and there would be no coming back. That I would disintegrate into a million pieces and tho...
How did he know?Howdid he know?How did he bloody well know!?“You bastard! Let me go! You can’t do this to me!”For what must have been at least the tenth time, Jonathan rattled the chains and tried to break free. The gesture was futile and robbed him of precious energy, but he had to do something. Something.Anything.Anything at all to escape this dire eventuality.In a wicked twist of events, he cried.His tears of anguish and humiliation wet his cheeks and as he felt them, the crying transitioned into laughter.You bastard! ...
Submitted to Contest #205
“Are you sure about this?” asked Tiffin as he peered all around at the foreboding trees. Trees that probably hid all manner of ferocious monsters. Granted, these would be quite small monsters, but they were the worst kind. At least you could see a dragon from a mile off. That level of visibility gave you a fighting chance, not that Tiffin would fight a dragon. Tiffin was small and had a lot of hiding options. His thinking was that given that amount of hiding options it was obvious that hide was exactly what he should do. In a similar vein, c...
Winter is death. That is all there is to it. Everything comes to an end and even the Sun God distances herself from the cursed land, abandoning us to the cold and the dark. Leaving us with nothing but a dwindling hope that a new life will arise from within the earth and afford us another portion of time and a harvest that might just see us through the next time of death. I wish that was all there was to it, but there is more. More death and despair. The dying land summons forth the Winter Demon and we are compelled to make a suitable...
Language is a conspiracy, it ties you up in lies. Language tricks you, it seduces you into a state of languorous complacency. It’s what isn’t said that is the worst of it, language then masks what should be glaring omissions and turns your world into a mush of mild confusion. Smoking, drinking and not washing your hands after you’ve paid a visit to the loo are referred to as bad habits. What a joke! Well, the joke is on me. The joke has always been on me. I’ve got all the way to thirty two years of age and only now do I get that I am...
It was a night to remember and the Moon was full.The full Moon shone with reflected radiance and gazed down upon its planet like a parent peering down at its sleeping baby. Content with being present and the sight of what it cared for the most in all the world.All the world.A blue planet that brought forth and nurtured life. A rare and precious jewel in the infinite cosmos.The Moon was the luckiest of Moons.A witness to the birth of life and ever present as that life grew and transformed into billions of unique miracles.This Moon had se...
[This story contains sex, violence, abuse and swearing] “The joke’s on you.” “The joke is on you all.” “I’m not fucking around. Things are going to be different around here. I’m different. It’s not like it was. It’s never going to be like it was.” “There’s a new clown in town and he’s here to stay!” “I’m The Clown!” HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! HaHa! OhgodhelpmewhathaveIdone… Mummy? Where are you, Mummy? I miss you so much. Come back. I need you! Mummy? Mummy! * No one knows about his place. Ever...
Submitted to Contest #204
As he submitted his hundredth story to the short story competition he ground and gnashed his teeth and gave his mind free reign. His mind, let loose to do as it pleased, gave forth with a flurry of expletives. The writer should have taken note as rare, if not unique, combinations of swear words reeled through his mind. He could have dropped them into one of his next stories to convey a joyous and entertaining anger, the swear words releasing doses of positive endorphins as they hit home, happy anger darts conveying said anger, but making the...
He did not tell them his name.And he would not tell them his name.The name was power and the power was all his, and his alone.He was a man of few words, never speaking, never introducing himself, nor commenting on the quality of the day. For he was taciturn, sparing the world of needless speech. This was noise that he could do without, so he did not create it, there was already too much noise in the world. Senseless and meaningless words that amounted to lacklustre wails and lamentations rising up from the pain of a tawdry and misspent exist...
Old Town hadn’t seen change for as long as it could remember and it didn’t know what change looked like, not until he came along that was. Some places fall into a way of things. A rhythm that feels a lot like the gentle beating of a heart. The residents of Old Town were in synch, their hearts beat as one. Everything had its place and there was a place for everything that was necessary for Old Town to circle around and keep doing its thing. That’s not to say that people didn’t come and go, because they certainly did. Those people were alw...
Submitted to Contest #203
He only did it once. Only the once. Not twice. Certainly not three times. That was how he recalled it, and that was how it was. One innocuous and tiny act when measured against the span of a lifetime, and the foundations of his whole life shifted sideways, tearing the walls down and leaving him dazed, confused and filled with a fire that, far from being a passionate rage, propelled him downwards, removing anything left of worth until he felt like he was going to implode, crushed by a black hole of pain. When it was done, he went back...
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