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John McDonald

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2022

Stories (4)

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4 Stories

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The Finish Line

Submitted to Contest #192

Around noon, my feet start to get numb. My hands are glued to the handles. My clothes are wet from sweat, and my knees feel like they are about to pop out like champagne corks. "You're almost there." said an automated voice through my headphones. "Ten thousand more cycles and you'll reach the finish line." I looked up at the monitor to see if this was true. The simulated forest looked the same as I started, but the map on the far corner claimed I was halfway down the path. I must have missed the lake view about an hour ago, when I was starin...

11 likes

My Little Brony

Submitted to Contest #190

"All right, you can pick out one toy" were words every child wanted to hear. Shopping at Walmart would have been a bore for Rachael if the possibility of any toy of her choosing wasn't promised. Otherwise, she'd just stand there in the middle of the grocery aisle, running back and forth till she got tired. Then, she would beg her mom to let her ride in the kart. The answer was always no. Eventually, Rachael caught on to how this worked. If she was good and didn't run up and down the aisles screaming her head off, she would get a toy. If she ...

17 likes

The Trap

Submitted to Contest #170

He held the zip drive by the tips of his boney fingers, staring at it as it was shaken by his heartbeats. A small strip of tape with the words, “For William” written in black sharpie could be seen on the side of the stick. Then he turned to his grey, out-of-touch computer, that only had a few links saved to the desktop and nothing else. Then he turned back to the zip drive. It took all the strength he had, but the old man was able to thrust the drive into the USB slot, allowing the disk’s link to pop up on the screen. Without thinking,...

9 likes

My Grandfather's Story

Submitted to Contest #169

“Have I ever told you about the time I was nearly killed by a panther?” My grandfather always asked me this whenever I came to visit him. He started when I was five and never stopped. I might have been a little kid who believed in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, but I knew for sure my grandfather had never been to a place that had panthers. He had lived in the Midwest his entire life. He wasn’t fooling me. That is until I started my studies, and I came across something that triggered alarms in my head. I remembered I was just browsi...

8 likes