Menu

Menu

Prompts

Contests

Stories

Blog

Directory

Contests

Magazine

FAQ

Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

Stories (191)

Comments

Library

30 Followers

41 Following

191 Stories

310 karma pts

?

The Window At The End of Ward C

Jethro Pili

1They say the window isn’t real, but I have pressed my palm to its pane so often that I could draw the faint frost-flowers with my eyes closed. It lives at the very end of Ward C’s corridor, past the nurses’ station and the peeling mural of a meadow that someone, long ago, thought would be “soothing.”Dr. Halvorsen calls it a hallucination. “A projection of desire,” he says, pen scratching in his leather notebook. “You imagine a way out because you cannot face your circumstances.”I am not so sure. The city that glitters beyond the glass has t...

0 likes

The Phantom Cat

Jethro Pili

The rain over Kiev had turned the battlefield into a quilt of ash-gray puddles and shredded earth. Smoke coiled out of the ruins like the last breath of a dying dragon. Somewhere beneath the churned mud and scorched rubble, something was waiting.Sergeant Ilya Kovalenko crouched behind the crumbling wall of an apartment block, goggles streaked with grit. His unit had been wiped out in the predawn assault; only he and Corporal Sloane, a lanky American liaison, remained. Drones circled high above, scanning for survivors, but the real danger lay...

0 likes

Somebody Goofed

Jethro Pili

CONTENT WARNING: Substance abuse, suicide, vehicular accident/slight hint of gore The sirens painted the alley red and blue, ricocheting off brick walls slick with evening drizzle. Paramedics crouched over the limp body of Brady Kane—twenty-two, bones sharp against paper-thin skin, a needle still dangling from the crook of his arm.“Charge to two-fifty,” one medic barked. The defibrillator pads stuck to Brady’s chest like white flags.A crowd pressed against the yellow tape: neighbors, stragglers from the liquor store, kids with phones raised....

0 likes

Tabi-Tabi Po, Mapaglarong Engkanto

Jethro Pili

Jayrald hadn’t meant to stray so far.The morning had begun clear and gold, the kind of day that begged you to leave the path and see what lay beyond. He’d driven up from the city to stretch his legs on the Ridgewood Trail, needing a break from spreadsheets and the hum of traffic. The pines promised quiet, and for a while that was exactly what they gave him: the soft press of needles under his sneakers, the clean air that smelled faintly of sun-warmed sap.But somewhere after lunch he’d lost the ribbon of dirt that marked the official route. A...

1 like

Vanishing Point

Jethro Pili

Elias Mercer hadn’t slept in three nights.The dorm room around him was a blur of papers, highlighters, and half-empty coffee cups. Snow rattled against the window of Orton Hall, softening the world beyond while fluorescent desk lamps kept the inside sharp and unforgiving. His statistics textbook sat open in front of him, its graphs and formulas swimming like minnows on the page.He told himself he only needed to stay awake one more night—just until finals were over. Then he’d collapse, catch up on a week’s worth of rest, and laugh about how c...

1 like

The Whispering Canopy

Jethro Pili

I have counted the seasons of this forest the way a river counts stones—never exactly, yet always knowing how many lie beneath its surface. My name, given long ago by the elders of my herd, is Thalen of the Willow-Mane, though most creatures of the wood call me simply Keeper. For as long as I can remember, I have walked the green corridors of the Westvale, half man, half horse, wholly bound to the life of the trees.At dawn the canopy glows with a copper wash, and mist curls around my legs. I lift my head and breathe in the spice of pine need...

1 like

Out of the Woods

Jethro Pili

The clock on the operating room wall had stopped meaning anything hours ago. It was only a white face with two hands circling endlessly, a mute reminder of how long they’d been standing beneath the lights.Dr. Lazaro Laz Santa Cruz squinted over the surgical field, fingers steady on the last suture. Beyond the drape, the patient’s chest rose and fell in the shallow rhythm of the ventilator.“Clamp.”Nurse Mary Santa Cruz, his younger sister and the charge nurse for the evening, passed the instrument without hesitation. Marta, the third Santa Cr...

1 like

The Door Beyond the Pines

Jethro Pili

The air was sharp with alpine chill when Nathan Keller zipped up his sleeping bag. Lake Louise gleamed a silver-blue beyond the treeline, moonlight flicking across its surface like thrown coins. It was supposed to be a quiet, solitary weekend—just him, his battered rucksack, and the Rockies. He’d driven up from Calgary the day before, craving a reprieve from the hum of fluorescent office lights and email pings.Now, in the hush after midnight, the forest pressed close. Lodgepole pines lifted like black spears against a sky pricked with stars....

1 like

The Reckoning of Lt. Carter Hayes

Jethro Pili

1. The Decision Lieutenant Carter Hayes crouched low in the dirt, his rifle pressed close to his chest. His eyes scanned the mud-walled compound at the base of the ridge, its silhouette etched against the Afghan dusk. Intelligence had said it was a Taliban stronghold. Drones had picked up chatter confirming three American contractors were being held inside.The order from command was clear: Hold position. Reinforcements ETA thirty minutes.But thirty minutes was too long.Carter’s pulse thudded in his ears as he whispered into his headset, “...

0 likes

The Very Thing She Hated

Jethro Pili

Part I: Legacy of AshesVivian Larios was sixteen when she first smelled the smoke of her father’s pyre. It carried with it cedar, sage, and iron, the old hunter’s way of ensuring the body could never be raised, never be defiled, never walk among the cursed he had hunted. The fire burned her eyes and lungs, but nothing seared her as much as the sight of him—strong hands folded over a chest scarred from years of war against the undead, now still, silenced, gone.They told her he died a hero. They told her his last act was driving a stake throug...

0 likes

The Moon Over Room 203

Jethro Pili

Oscar Reynolds was the kind of teacher the kids remembered long after they left third grade. He wore mismatched ties with cartoon numbers, told math jokes that landed only half the time, and had a habit of drawing little wolves in the margins of their worksheets as if the animals themselves were cheering the students on. The kids loved him. The parents tolerated his quirks. The principal admired his results—his students performed better than most, not because he drilled them endlessly, but because he had a way of making math feel alive.But w...

0 likes

The Lay of the Land

Jethro Pili

A Story from the Journals of Astoria Yee, Vice Principal of Bear Mountain High School I. MorningI loathe mornings.The sun should be my undoing. Should blister my flesh, curl my bones, reduce me to ash on the wind. That’s the natural order for my Kind. But Bear Mountain is no ordinary place. It sits on a web of ley lines—ancient, humming rivers of earth-magic that bend the rules of nature. Here, my people walk beneath daylight without smoke or scream, provided we stay inside the lattice of power. Step beyond the invisible threshold, and the s...

0 likes

Bloodbath In The Mayor’s Mansion

Jethro Pili

BLOODBATH IN THE MAYOR’S MANSIONBy Sam Ihle, Crime Correspondent, and Jodie Williams, Political ReporterSeabrook Viking News — August 27, 2025 A City Awakes to HorrorSeabrook awoke yesterday to the kind of news no community should ever have to confront: the violent, ritualistic-style murder of its sitting mayor, Elroy Oakes, and his family.Mayor Oakes, 58, was discovered in the basement of the Mayor’s Mansion along with two wives — his first and second — and their blended children, both step- and biological. Sources familiar with the scene d...

0 likes

The Longest Watch

Jethro Pili

The clock on the wall read 11:42 p.m.Most people Noah Klein knew were either asleep or winding down with a book or Netflix. His apartment lights blazed like a ship lit for battle.On the kitchen table:A sprawling hex-map of the world’s oceans in 1799, printed in high-res and laminated like a museum artifact.Laptops open to spreadsheets with labels like Quarterly Trade Revenues – East Indies.Graph paper crammed with doodles of cannons, flags, and figureheads.Dice—lots of dice—ranging from tiny four-siders to golf-ball-sized twenty-siders.And a...

0 likes

O Canada

Jethro Pili

1 — The FallDr. Emily Hayes had been in the cardiac wing for nearly twelve hours when it happened.A code blue on a patient she knew by name, by history, by every lab result for the past six months. She was at his bedside in seconds, barking orders, running compressions, calling for epi. She thought she’d brought him back—until the monitors told her otherwise.The autopsy called it a pulmonary embolism. The family called it negligence. The hospital called it a “failure of protocol.” The press dubbed it The Hayes Disaster and ran her photo—hair...

0 likes