Jed Cope

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2022

Stories (244)

244 Stories

5525 karma pts

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“Fade Away” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #182

“I hate you!” Poppy spat the words out at her mother. If she had been a foot closer she would have lashed out with her hand too. She wanted to hurt her mother. Her mother deserved it. The words were said and then she was stomping off up the stairs to her bedroom. Poppy had never said those three little words before. Those words were a culmination of a whole host of other words. Words that she drew to her and nurtured until they were dark and sharp enough to be thrown at her parents to hurt them as much as was possible. Her parents we...

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“For Real” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #182

“How did you get in here?” She scowled and looked quite annoyed. “No really, you shouldn’t be in here, you know that right?” She blasted out a jet of air and put her hands on her hips in something approximating consternation. I looked around me as though this was going to present me with an out, or rather an idea of how she managed to get in here. “Look, you’re not staff, so who are you?” I asked her. “As if you don’t know!” she poked her tongue out at me and then she did something extremely disconcerting, so disconcerting in fac...

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“Taking it Back” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #181

“Let’s go for a walk.” The words tumble out of my mouth. I’ve said them a thousand times, but this time it’s different. I am different. Everything is different and the world will never be the same again. He looks at me and time stands still. I wonder what is going through that mind of his. There was a time, when he was small and the world turned in a different direction, it wasn’t about his thoughts. We explored together and I delighted in the unfolding mystery that was him. We were in the moment and he was a gift that made eve...

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“You Are Here” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #181

“I’m forty two!” “What has that got to do with it?” I stare at her face and I will her to understand, to at least try to understand. My eyes are upon her face, but I don’t see it. They bore into her. Searching for her essence, looking for something that resembles hope. I am here, and yet I am not. She sees something that is not me. She sees something unreal. I wonder whether she ever saw me as anything other than what it was that she constructed. There must be something I am missing. A single word that will unlock everythin...

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“Dark Magic” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #180

Bad luck. She tells me it was luck, that I had some luck and my luck was bad. “It was not your fault,” she tells me this like it was something that happened in the past. A blip. The universe hiccupped and I suffered as a result. She’s wrong. They all are. The words in my head remind me of that. She’s wrong. They are all wrong. They are always wrong. Always and forever, wrong. You are bad, luck has nothing to do with it. I have many words inside of me, and they are all bad words. This is all that I know. That is all that I...

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“Lost Property” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #180

The pretty tune of dread rings out, impossibly loud. So loud in the confined space of the corridor that I cringe in an attempt to make myself smaller, unseen. Those few discordant notes pierce the ominous silence and they announce the beginning of my end. The ripples of those sounds send me reeling and I clutch my neck. I clutch my neck knowing that everything has changed. It has gone. I look down at the metal slats beneath my feet and for a maddening moment, I consider the merits of a futile pursuit of the one thing I had left in ...

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“Time to Change” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #179

Change is easy when you think about it. Change is easy to talk about. Change is always easier said than done. Tim sat at the edge of his lonely bed and resolved to change yet again. This was not the first time and he had this sinking feeling even as he grit his teeth and promised himself and the world that this time would be different, this time he would change. That sinking feeling was all too familiar. That sinking feeling was now a part of him, and yet it wasn’t, because he was sinking into the world around him. No one is ...

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“The Longest Night” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #178

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The song plays in the bar and I shake my head, “no, it’s not,” I whisper to myself. We are in the midst of Winter and the Festive Season draws nigh. The Winter Festival is ancient. Older even than I. These fragile and transitory beings that mill about me, in a frenzy of short lived lives, like to pretend thing are not as they are, they all put on an act, too afraid to show their true natures and actually be themselves. I am a rock in this stream of frantic life. I watch them painting their fa...

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“Express Your Self” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #177

I always thought that it was me. I still do. Forty years on, I know I still do. That was bad once, then I managed to make it work. I managed to take that responsibility and make myself responsible for my life, and I moved on. Only I didn’t quite manage to move on, not completely. I sit here right now and nothing has changed. Not really it hasn’t. I don’t think I will ever find the words that will show her who I really am. The words I need to unlock this circle of pain that we are trapped in remain elusive. But then, the pai...

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“Fragments” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #177

I am… Sod it! I’m… How old am I? I know I’m not very old, not very old at all. I also know that this… …should… …not… …be… HAPPENING TO ME! It’s come early to me. How lucky am I? I jumped the queue and now I get to fall apart little by little, and bit by bit before everyone else. I can’t even remember what it is that is doing this to me. How funny is that!? It’s leprosy of the brain is what it is. No one can see what is happening to me until I open my mouth. In the end they’ll see the ravages of this horrible basta...

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“Can You Feel The Magic?” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #176

All book shops are magical. This is an incontrovertible fact that is often discarded in a ditch, on the road to ignorance. Books contain worlds. Books contain life, but not always as we know it. They also contain a whole lot of stuff as yet undiscovered, even by the authors who vomited the words down on the pages in a frenzied fit of creativity that possessed them for as long as it took for the story to come alive and enter this world of ours, and our world expands in exciting and unpredictable ways every time a new book is born. The uni...

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“Gold and Bronze” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #175

He doesn’t have a favourite time of year, but if he were forced to, after considerable torture and at gunpoint, to say something, not to stop the torture, not because of the gun which holds no fear for him whatsoever, but to make them go away, he would choose the Autumn, or as the Americans call it, Fall. He is not bothered with the Americans, they are a loud and brash nation too busy making a lot of noise to ever stop and think things through, but they got something right when they coined the name Fall for this season. Fall is when it all...

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“The Narrative” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #174

“To make sense of something you have to know its narrative. If the story makes sense then the subject of the story makes sense. Essentially, what I do is decode the story. I find the story and I translate it. That’s what I do.” Harlan was being modest. He was also dumbing down what he did so that his audience might have a clue as to what his day job was, having been asked what do you do? Peggy nodded and smiled, “I like stories.” “That’s good,” said Harlan. He was doing his best to give Peggy his attention, but his eyes were darti...

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“The Customer is Always” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #173

Just so you know, I hate this time of year. Oh, I’ve heard some half-wits crow on about what a wonderful time of year it is as Christmas rears its consumerist head and people spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need ,so that after the Winter Festival, they are deep in debt and even deeper into a depression the Winter Festival was supposed to lighten. Whatever they are referring to when they say wonderful, gods know what exactly they are focused on, it’s certainly not the miserable, damp mornings and the dank and depressing aft...

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“Mean Machine” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #172

“Whereas the acts pertaining to the previous clause hereto form this part of the agreement, there is no representation, direct or implied, on behalf of the licensor…” Jeremy looked around him at the people who surrounded him in this place of worship and he wondered how it was that he was surrounded by beatific faces. Not for the first time, he wondered whether there was something in the water supply, or even in the air itself. Why was it that he was immune to all this nonsense? This was all gobbledegook, but somehow it struck a chord with ...

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Author bio

Author of over twenty novels. Please look me up on Amazon and Facebook. Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B08VJD4VBT?_encoding=UTF8&node=368165031&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=review-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/jedcopeauthor

Shortlisted 2 stories ⭐️

Contest #230

A Different Perspective – read story

Contest #220

Disappearing Completely – read story