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Joe Smallwood

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023

Stories (94)

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62 Followers

25 Following

94 Stories

2182 karma pts

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The Broad Strokes

Submitted to Contest #215

“Some people start talking to themselves whenever I am around,” I observed one fine Saturday.“How so, Peter?” my wife replied while she checked the firmness of a Cucumis melo reticulatus, otherwise known as a muskmelon or cantaloupe. “Too firm, that one,” she said, rolling it over to grab the one that made her smile.“See what I mean?” I huffed.“I was talking to you, not to myself!” Into one of her numerous cloth bags that melon went.We should have gotten a cart. Goodness knows how heavy a load I would have at the grocery checkout. And I woul...

12 likes

It Had to Be

Submitted to Contest #215

You’d think I would know better. Really. It was a simple thing: just be normal, like everyone else. Enter a crowded room and not wonder about everything.Oh, how I would try! Let’s see. Work hard at not working hard! Absurd enough? Absurdism had nothing on me. Master of Dissembling that I was! Or am, whatever!You wonder if there will ever be enough of me to go around. There wasn’t enough of me for myself. What a thought. Where was me for myself? Going gone done! Sold to the gentleman who had better things to do than think about these things!B...

11 likes

Natal Day

Submitted to Contest #214

Trigger warning: death of a child.The road by our house was sand-sealed, not paved. It would heave and tilt every spring, shedding gravel and tar clumps for the graders, men, and dump trucks to set right again.The kids in our neighborhood were friendly enough, and when we weren’t in our backyards, the road was our playground. We played Red Rover until too many scraped knees made tearing up and tossing frisbee-shaped chunks of sand-seal more fun. We never got in trouble for that.Trouble unlike any we had ever known before started on a sunny S...

13 likes

The Pavilion

Submitted to Contest #210

It should have happened to someone else. As St. Germain said, everyone had already been through the wringer. A parade of people, the who’s who of SETI, scientists, politicians, ordinary people, wackos, and children. Yes, children.“So, you’re right where you belong,” St. Germain quipped. “Children being SETI’s last try.”He looked me over like he was meeting me for the first time, even though he was supposedly the boss of Regional Health. “It's down to the local authorities,” he continued. “Health Services, Port Hansen, as you know.”...

9 likes

Zippo

“I can see my whole life, start to finish.”“There shouldn’t be a finish. You’re seeing it wrong.”That trip. Together. Shouldn’t be something you could even talk about. He wanted to go one way, and I wanted to go one way. One and one makes two trips, but it's one.Say again?Second try. We were very different. But we are the same. Except he sees an endpoint, and I don’t. What are we talking about?Third try. He thinks I can’t make sense of this. But he is wrong. The fact that there is an end to his life, his trip, is the key. That shouldn’t be.#...

6 likes

Burning Down the House

Submitted to Contest #209

Discussions of family breakdown and abuse.As the upper floor of the old farmhouse yielded its secrets, I was near to overflowing with excitement. I turned to my brother, who, lacking experience in adventuring, was wont to throw caution to the wind in his explorations, although I observed that he arranged matters to the best of his ability, given his tender years. Of such was our journey to the ends of mortal longing. Alas! It was not to be!“Will both of you get down here?” yelled a familiar voice. “You know you’re not allowed up there! What ...

18 likes

All That Fitz

Submitted to Contest #208

“You are supposed to believe certain things, don’t you know?”“What? Am I supposed to be some bible thumper now?”“Why would you assume that?According to Michael, I was the one with a problem. Our friendship depended on me making the right choices. He always took the lead to sort things out for us. Then it got so weird. He chose a set of beliefs all right. Things that made no sense to me.He was right and everyone else was wrong. His beliefs were fashionable too. Everyone agreed with him. I mean everyone. No one else dared to disagree. Except f...

10 likes

The Final Visit

Submitted to Contest #204

I would rather not go see her.I would have ignored her pleading phone call, so low-tech and useless. I imagined her fumbling with her cell phone and being so ridiculous. She couldn't make a cell phone work if her life depended on it! No wonder I never answer her calls.I called her back but it was a wasted effort. I tried to get her to use her Instagram account. She didn't know how to sign in or use a password! She would apologize and say "Emma! I'm so sorry to be wasting your time like this." What? Did my time really count for anything?So he...

12 likes

That Was Easy!

Submitted to Contest #202

“You know that red button you can buy? The one for five bucks? When you press it, it says “That was easy!”“Yeah, uh I think so,” I replied.“Well, I got one marked down! Only two fifty!”“Sweet, I think.”“I’m going to get another one.”“So, things will be twice as easy?”There he went, back in line at Staples. Couldn’t resist a deal. Then he was pressing those buttons all the way home until I was sick of it.“What are you doing now?”“Every time something is easy at work, I’ll use it there too.”“You can’t be serious!”“Way serious dude!”“But you’re...

19 likes

Through The Eyes of a Child

Submitted to Contest #202

Discussions of Hell. “Hell doesn’t exist, right?” “Why do you ask?” “I need to know.” With that my idyllic afternoon was shot, done for. Kaput. Young Francis, my nephew was in a state. Or more correctly we were now in a state. Of something. It isn’t normal for people to ask questions that just hang there, like an unanswered cell phone or the insistent ringing of a microwave. I’m done or I’m beginning, do something, these things say to us. Worse than Amazon Alexa talking for no reason, was how this question sounded. I stopped on the path we...

13 likes

Flowers of Destiny

Submitted to Contest #202

That delightful spring moment upended Ethan with its delicious smell of peonies. Flowers of all sorts wafted their allure, now one meadow assortment, blue with golden pollen, followed by ravishing red clusters sprinkled with sparkling dew. Ethan had so many to choose from so early in the morning. A smile bloomed on his misshapen face as he staggered forlornly for one spray of lilies, only to be entranced by purple larkspur, starry arms to steady his gaze so that even the air itself was untroubled by any bustle of importance.All thought was b...

10 likes

My Dumb Phone

Submitted to Contest #201

“You know, I was at church the other day and something weird happened.”“What?”“No one’s phone went off.”“Who is No-one?” my friend asked.“Nobody’s phone went off! There was no disturbance!”And that was the start of it. The new me. The next day my smartphone fell down my apartment garbage chute. Ker-plunk! Accidentally or was it on purpose? Only my subconscious knows! It didn’t cost much anyway. Super small squinty-eyed-cracked-dim-screen, and five years old. Android had already given up on it. No more updates. So, no big loss. I sauntered in...

13 likes

Almost Famous

Submitted to Contest #201

It was probably going to be my last day working for Green Associates. The employees in the union who worked directly for the stadium had nothing to worry about. They worked for the stadium in jobs that some of them had been doing for decades. I wasn’t one of those lucky individuals.You could tell who worked for the Mean Green and who didn’t. It was in how they moved. Garbage glided down garbage chutes for union employees with smooth enveloping strokes, a side comment or sly observation often accompanying their light loads.Mean Green dirtbags...

10 likes

What Can't Be Seen

Submitted to Contest #201

Discussion of hardship and death.It wasn’t my life that was being reviewed. It was their idea of me. I never had a say in it. Like a book that you open at a random page, their ideas of me were always lacking a context.What context could there be to make sense of everything? See that is the problem. I could be anything or anyone and without knowing anything about me, you can’t make sense of my life at all. Like a bare light shining into an empty dark room, the glare is all you see.Like that time when my sister didn’t share with me those miser...

13 likes

Progie Paradise

Submitted to Contest #200

I wasn’t just an only child; I was supposed to be progenated. Pasteurized, homogenized, progenated. New word for a new time. Humanity can be perfected. We came out of the slime and if we don’t plan to stay friends with what made us forever, then progenation is needed.Now don’t start saying that I’m in league with the antiprogs, just because I didn’t complete the treatment! I have a perfectly good reason for that. It’s true an antiprog came to me and got me to quit. She was my own mother! What would you do? Besides progenation wasn’t mandator...

14 likes