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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2022
Submitted to Contest #228
Nursey always said, “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an arm!” Well, he didn’t always say that. In fact, he only said it a few times. I would say a handful of times, and even then I’m probably overegging it. Sometimes, there is something that is said, or that is done and it stands out in a way that makes it seem like it’s always been there and it’s been there a lot. Significance attaches itself to a thing and gives it a whole other life. Naughty significance! I used to laugh at big old Nursey and dismiss his s...
There is still magic in the world. I thought it had died a death whilst everyone was busy thinking they were clever. In an age where people have access to more information than they could possibly take in, there is more ignorance than there has ever been. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me when I stumbled upon my own piece of magic. But a surprise it was. And a shock to boot. I suppose that I was never going to be immune to the ignorance. After all, there’s a lot of it going around these days and we have this knack of surviving. When...
Submitted to Contest #227
Like age, the numbness crept up on his blindside and entered unannounced. He was somewhere else as it happened, but there all the same. The set changers scurried around, unseen and unheard, and there wasn’t even a curtain to hide their ministrations. He sat quietly at his screen, but the energy of his slight movements spoke of action and brought a noise along with them anyway. Tapping at the keys, the outline of words appeared upon the virgin snow of the page, the heat of them holding the fresh fall at bay. Intent silence surrounded him ...
Peter was warned by Jesus about his pending state of denial. He went right on ahead with it anyway. I don’t think I’m supposed to take consolation from that, but it’s there for the taking all the same. Sometimes, I think Jesus stitched his mate up. He put thoughts of denial in his head, and when Peter was confronted, his panicked mind grabbed a hold of the nearest concept. Without that warning from Jesus, Peter might have jumped to The Lord’s defence, played the hero and died. Where would the Christian church be then? Without a rock to build...
It was a pet hate. Bev fed it. And she watered it. She walked it around with her to give it plenty of exercise. At this time of year she even groomed it and then set it on her lap and poked and prodded it until it growled back at her and reminded her why she hated it so. There was of course a build-up of bad and ill feeling that reached a crescendo in December. Each and every year she would escape the insanity of her pet hate. She would run away and pretend it wasn’t happening, returning when it was all over. She could not escape all of ...
Submitted to Contest #226
Jake had to travel about as far as he could from what he had to see it for what it was. Even then, it took a while for him to regain his sight. Australia was different. He’d been warned that it would be, but like most tourists he disregarded everything he heard, apart from the danger presented by the spiders. For the first two weeks he lifted the toilet seat and refused to sit on it for fear of the ignominy of a death sat atop a porcelain throne. He knew of the myriad unique dangers this strange and wonderful island held and the lo...
I wanted to kill him. Not all of the time. Not much of the time at all. This was not an obsession of mine, more a temptation. Like chocolate, a second helping of my mother’s lasagne or that car that’s been buffed to the most seductive of sheens and placed under clever lighting. You want it, but vying with that want is a knowledge of how it’s bad for you and that things won’t work out the way you want them to just because you want them to work out that way. That isn’t how it works. The world turns and reality has its way. Why? Because it’s ...
The death of Terry was the final straw for Bert. Once again, life had short changed him. English Bull Terriers were supposed to live for more than a decade. Terry Bull only made it just past his sixth birthday. If that wasn’t bad enough, Terry checked out with what the vet referred to as complications. Translated into layman’s terminology, this meant that the vet was going away for two weeks all-inclusive and Bert was footing the bill. Soon after Terry passed Thanksgiving reared it’s fat and ugly head. A holiday of excess enjoyed...
You can’t choose your family, and I lost the family lottery big time. I doubt anyone ever wins big, not unless they are gifted a very limited number of family members who have mastered the art of not inflicting themselves upon family members. There is supposed to be a compensating strategy to make up for family and it has something to do with friends. Apparently, you can choose your friends, but that all falls down because it’s not like you can form a cadre of friends who you take with you wherever you go to protect you from family and the...
Submitted to Contest #225
I have to admit to noticing him a number of times before taking the time to attend to his existence. Fleeting glimpses in the midst of a crowd. A chance sighting as I sped past in my car. The blurred reflection in the train window. I dismissed each and every occurrence as a waking cheese dream. You see, I have a pet theory, a half-baked hypothesis that I concocted on the hoof as it were. My musings centred around the simplicity of faces. There are only so many combinations of features and this helps explain my regular encounters with the f...
John’s mum used to say that you ended up with the house that was meant for you. When he was younger, he was uncharitable towards his mother’s sayings. He found them to be twee and ultimately irrelevant, but as he calmed down and relaxed into his life, he found merit in what she said understanding that she’d done a fair amount of living, mostly before he came along and changed her into a parent and mother. She’d been more like him than he had cared to admit. He still struggled with that admission. Finding and securing a house had been a pro...
Submitted to Contest #224
I can’t remember the last time. We all have this in our lives. We have done something in the past. We know for sure we have done it and we have instances that we can recall, or we have a collective recollection, a bundled up set of experiences with a blurb that explains what they are. But when we come to think about it, we cannot select the most recent instance of that experience. For me, I was sure that I had made a point of this simple act on a cyclical basis. That a shaming bout of time elapsed until I felt the building pressure...
“Tell us the story of the sun and moon, Grandpa!” Shell smiled her best smile at the old man and he returned her smile warmly. Faun, her older brother looked up from his play and scowled, “that isn’t right. It is the tale of day and night, not the sun and moon.” Grandpa smiled again, the same smile for the boy as he had had for the little girl, “both are right in their own way. After all, you cannot have day without the sun and the moon lives in the night.” “Please tell the story, Grandpa!” she tugged the leg of his trousers as thoug...
“I can’t sleep.” “Well, at least try!” Maureen harrumphed, grabbed a fist full of duvet and span over taking more of the bed clothes than was fair. This was her protest. On the face of it, her protest was about George encroaching upon her precious sleep, but as with many arguments there was more to it than that. This argument had history. George was aware of some of the history. He wasn’t a dolt. He also knew that there would be elements of Maureen’s chagrin that he was oblivious to. Things that had had their day and he’d let go of,...
Submitted to Contest #223
By the time I discovered the room my Uncle James had told me was hidden in the Bodean Library I had discovered far more than the room itself. In fact, my voyage of discovery almost eclipsed the original reason for my search. I had hunted high and low and had long since given up on the room as I suspected that it was a device of Jimmy’s to hook me and have me undertake something useful in my three years away from home. Such subterfuge was not beyond my uncle, he knew that I was a kindred spirit. Everything came easily to me and as a result I ...
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