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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020
Excerpts from: Purpose and Intent. “Friend!” The word slithers towards you like a serpent from the deserts of Armageddon. I dislike that word, friend, well not the word, as much as the context in which it is used. It implies so much, and offers so little. It is also an overused word, that begs an introduction while offering no security, or vouching for the intentions of the conveyor. I know that in most instances it is not meant to be anything other than a way to introduce yourself cordially, to someone you do not have a re...
Submitted to Contest #96
When I found Amos Bunk, he was a mess. I don’t know what happened exactly, he wouldn’t say. I think he is one of those people, who only find the good in people. And we all know where that leads. It took me nearly an hour to get him to tell me his name. He kept apologizing for having appeared to have been beaten to within an eye lash of death. He looked normal to me in most every way, except he was short. I don’t think he was much over four feet tall, but he appeared much taller. There was just something abo...
I just landed, my first flight, my nerves still on the plane, me waiting for redemption, in a box car terminal. I was to be to plucked from the land of sand and pines, and deposited in my new home away from home, by the sea. A year they said, possibly. The “possibly,” never nudged my complacency from its excited state, as I was leaving the place I had spent the previous minutes, days, years of my life, and was finally escaping into the unknown from the nebulous consistency of a past. It left my envy, envious. I was ...
“Come in! What are you doing out there. No one ever comes up here. This place is miles from anywhere. That is why I come here. I can be alone. No one around, can hear yourself breathe, think, scream if need be. I don’t get visitors. Few if any know this place is here. How did you find it?” If it hadn’t been for the car stalling, and in my haste to be someplace, anyplace, but where I was, this place would have remained his exclusive secret. And yet my arrogance brought me to his door step. I’v...
There is something about twilight that sets the stage for improvisation. Inventing a place where things can retreat back into a shell of anonymity, where choices can be prioritized, remembered, forgotten, dismissed, as having no longer the hold on you they once did. Of course that is fantasy. We do not have the power or will to transform the past to suit the present, yet, it is more than transformation, because conversion is simply rearranging facts to provide a basis for becoming oblivious to reality. Reality is the wit...
Submitted to Contest #95
Choices, always choices. White socks, black socks, blue tie, yellow, this show, that movie, all choices we make every day, but have little to no consequences, other than the ones we anoint them with. I feel like I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life deciding about one thing or the other, and what has it gained me? I’m sure I’ve benefited from my choices as much as they have added to my disappointment, so it is the fact that we have the ability to make a choice, that is important. Imagine having to stand before a door, two...
Look at this tie. Do you think it goes with this shirt, my suit, these pants? Do they seem wrinkled to you? I don’t know why they couldn’t have stayed with the polyester, it never wrinkled. You could put it through a car wash, and it would come out looking like it just jumped off the rack. Do you suppose that when this jacket gets wet… it’s supposed to rain you know. Will I begin to smell like an old sheep? I worry about things like that, because once I was accused of smelling fishy. It was a long time ago...
Times change, things change, people change, but the past only changes when we purposely change or distort it for a reason. Today we talk about slave history, the assignation of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Emmett Till. All tragic stories about death and injustice perpetrated by hate. We have a tendency as human beings to create stories, myths, our own history, to lessen the impact, make the results more palatable, because we share a shame in the fact that these atrocities were allowed to happen, condoned by inaction. Th...
“Did you notice I seem to be aging at an accelerated rate. I can’t figure it out. I don’t remember these furrows in my brow yesterday. Were they there, or have I just not been paying attention?” “What else would be new. You tend to forget what century it is when you are busy playing with those theories of yours. I ask you to pick something up from the store, and you bring me the equation necessary to calculate the likelihood of their being life in other solar systems. Your mind has a mind of its own, you know th...
We have all heard the phrase, “to be or not to be, that is the question." What does that mean? We don’t really have a choice of being or not being. We didn't ask to be born. Is the implication we can be what we choose to be? If so, when did that line begin, and where is it. This however was just the question to ask Rufus Stuntsworth. He lives down by the bus stop somewhere. No one has bothered to find out, because no one cares, except me. And I know enough not to go chasing rainbows. Some say he has the r...
Submitted to Contest #94
“Look, I don’t care what you believe, but you seem to be incapable of expressing a consistent view. Take that T-shirt you are wearing. A picture of a large, what appears to be one of those foam fingers, pointing in whichever direction you turn, like a gun barrel. And that message? You Voted for an Idiot! Now how are people supposed to take that? Everyone thinks the other guy is the idiot. If that is your point have the courage to say so. What you are doing is like leaving a tenuous note about what you ...
“If I’m wrong, and you are wrong, who’s right?” “Doesn’t there have to be a right when there is a wrong?” “Yes, of course. Otherwise there would be no winner, no one to lose, no one to gloat.” And that is how the game is played. There has to be a winner for there to be a loser, and vice versa. But it was not always that way. I used to believe that two people could disagree and remain winners. Each having their own set of facts, their own brand of skepticism, and their own sense of irony. It is the irony after al...
Excerpt from the Watchman’s Review. Translated and reviewed by Adolf Huffenslafenmaker: Circa 1936, Berlin Germany. “Because I said so. That is what I told her.” “Is that what you really said? Do you believe that works?” It is the implied power that troubles me. Not that I am influenced by power, no more than anyone else I believe. I believe that there are those who command attention, allegiance, anything, and everything it takes, to remind us that without their superior abilities, we would be nothing. Then there is...
They say I’ve become obsessed with escaping. But what alternative is there? They say I need to be here. I belong here. I have been sentenced to spend more time than I’ve been allotted by life, I know that. I do not wish to die in this place. It is not the dying that frightens me however, but the fact that in here, you are alone. So alone, even when surrounded by others, you are alone. They are alone. Everyone in this place is alone, with only themselves to provide a means of escape. Some read to ...
“I dare you to…” Dare? What does the word mean? Challenge, risk, taunt, all explanations of a solicited action, but how does it apply to us? What if we comply with the inference it makes? What if we do not? We are being asked to perform an act we agree with, or one which we cannot condone. Bullying is a good example. It asks us to endorse an action we may not condone, but allow, because we are not the recipient of the force behind the request. We in fact become complicit by doing or saying nothing, and...
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