Jed Cope

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2022

Stories (244)

244 Stories

5525 karma pts

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“He's a Very Naughty Boy!” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #172

I have only one regret in this life of mine. I may have other regrets, but this single regret eclipses all else. Besides, this is the mother of all regrets and it spawned a series of regrets that followed on from the original, because once I started, I just couldn’t stop. No, that’s a lie. I could have stopped at any time, but I didn’t, and I often wonder why that was, as well as wondering what would have happened if I had put the brakes on everything and done what I suppose was the right thing, only, even now I don’t know whether that rea...

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“The Truth Hurts” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #172

“You’re sure about this?” asked a squat figure enrobed so completely all that was to see of him was his voluminous robe. “Do we have an alternative, brother?” said a tall figure. This figure also sported a robe, but the way it hung off him was reminiscent of the caricature of Death, a caricature that deeply annoyed Death herself, because for starters, people seemed to think Death was a he. She, Death that was, wouldn’t be seen dead in a drab robe. Why opt for something so boring and shapeless when there was an abundance of vibrant and...

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“Know Where To Run” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #171

Dead. Killed. Ended. All of them. I watched them die and there was nothing I could do. I witnessed every terrible second of their deaths, but now it doesn’t seem real. I’m cut loose in the world and I want to go back and discover that I was wrong and I only imagined those final tragic moments… But I can’t. I can never go back. I managed to escape. I had to get away. They’ll think I did it. The blood. So much blood. I washed it off of me, but I still see it in the corner of my eye. In my peripheral vision I see the blood, but wh...

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“The Mountain” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #171

It’s so beautiful. It’s so very beautiful, and it will never stop being beautiful. Even afterwards. I’ve never been able to capture even a fraction of what lays before me right now. My mind never had the capacity for it, and I think that is just as well. This is one of those times that is all about the moment itself and taking it with me would somehow diminish it. I am not worthy to contain all of this glory, and the point is that you’d have to see it to believe it, and there is belief here. There is more than my eyes see. All of this be...

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“The Man With No Plan” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #170

“I’ve got a plan,” he said with utter conviction. He always said this sort of thing with utter conviction and for so long I believed him. It wasn’t just that delivery of his of course, I wanted to believe him. I was so invested in him. He’d made sure I was invested, that was how he kept me in the game, and it was a game. It was all a game for him. The problem was that that was all it was and nothing more. It was so much more for me. It meant some to me, always had. Now I was beginning to realise that that counted ...

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“You've Got Red On You” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #170

“I got nothing.” “Yeah, but that’s always…” started Lando. “Not this time, buddy,” Single was shaking his head gravely, “not this time.” “OK, but there’s the…” began Lando. Single shook his head again. “Really?!” blurted Lando. “Really,” confirmed Single. “But Roy is down there on his own!” gasped Lando. Single frowned, “I know.” “But without the mysterious and unknowable force of the power, that we all know drive the contrived plot…” Lando trailed off. He didn’t need Single to butt in this time. “He will have h...

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“Solitude” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #169

I want to say that I am not from a tribe or anything, but as I give voice to that urge of mine, I realise this is a half-baked desire to distance myself from the reality of my existence and that goes against everything I am about to tell you.I am a member of a tribe.We all are.It’s just that sometimes we forget that, or, we attempt to go against the grain denying the nature of our very existence. That contrary nature of ours is perhaps one of the reasons that we have this tradition in my extended family. A ritual that we ...

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“All Change” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #168

“It’s awfully dark out there.” John flinched at the sound of her overloud voice. He hated loud people at the best of times, but in the restrictive cigar tube confines of a train carriage it was all too much. He looked around him for the signs that denoted this carriage as a Quiet Zone, but saw none. That was strange, he always homed in on the Quiet Zone. Even when he was dog tired after a long day at work and trudged to the station on auto pilot. Surely he would have remembered the annoyance and disappointment of either the non-existence...

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“This Train Terminates...” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #168

“It should have been here by now!” This from an angry commuter stood at the very edge of the platform as though breaking the rules and taking an unnecessary risk by standing well beyond the line would prompt the late train to make its arrival now challenged to an unequal game of chicken, or perhaps the man fancied himself a matador. There were murmurs of agreement. People might not have liked the man standing there, puffed up with his own self-importance, a legend in his own lunchtime, but they agreed with the sentiment. The train was lo...

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“They” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #167

It’s all about survival. There is nothing else. I am under siege. People are animals and the world is a harsh and cruel place. Here I am in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. Worse still, I don’t know what to do about it. I cannot escape, so I keep building my survival strategy. It’s the only way. It is Monday. I am awake early, but that is not to say that I am up early. I lay awake in my bed and try to keep as still as it is possible to be. I cannot hear them. Not yet, but I know that I will. Sometimes I lay ...

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“Never Mind” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #167

He writes. That is all there is to it. There is nothing else. There has been nothing since the entire planet closed their doors on the world and hid from the angel of death. No one told him that he had to sacrifice a lamb and mark his door so that the angel would pass them by. He did not know, so he did not act. His ignorance was the angel of death. Life is a big, dark joke and he is living in the punchline. The angel of death played a prank on him. It wasn’t the pandemic that took Leo, his little lion. Not directly...

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“Enough is Enough” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #166

It was all going so well. Better than I could ever have dreamed of, you know? I had found my unicorn at the end of the rainbow and my life was right on course. I knew it couldn’t last. Nothing lasts forever, I know that much, but just throw me a bone here. Give me more than that fleeting glimpse of how it should be! I deserved more. I certainly put the work in for it. From as far back as I can remember, I looked up into the sky and that’s where I wanted to be. That was where I belonged. I knew that from the very start. Even bet...

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“Fault Lines” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #165

“It’s all my fault,” she says into her lap. “No it isn’t!” he protests, instantly regretting his reaction, he lowers his voice and says more gently, “it’s not your fault. She did this. Not you.” “It takes two, Archie,” she raises her head for a heartbeat and then lowers it back to her lap, her hands moving around each other in a display of her awkwardness in this situation. He looks at those hands and the nails that she has grown long and painted black. When did that happen and how did he not notice before, when it counted? “I just wis...

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“Home” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #164

Where I come from, people don’t treat you nice. That’s my abiding memory of where I come from. That and… Well, I wasn’t always like this, you know? I try hard, but there I am going around and around in circles. Not all of the time, but sometimes it just kicks in and there I am, doing my thing. Only the thing I am doing isn’t my thing. It’s their thing. They taught me this and a whole bunch of other things and once these things became a habit, well I don’t think there’s any way of changing that. Not really there isn’...

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“Homecoming” by Jed Cope

Submitted to Contest #164

Where do you go when you have nowhere else left to go? I went home. Not to the place that I had most recently made my home, that place had failed on one of the measures of a home. It was no longer safe. So, I made my way back to the place I grew up. They said you should never go back. I’m not sure who they were and what the premise of this advice was. You do what you have to do is my retort to them. Maybe I was resorting to the only thing I knew. I was fresh out of ideas and my head wasn’t going to provide me with much of any...

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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