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John Steckley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2021

Stories (78)

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28 Followers

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78 Stories

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Down By the River

Submitted to Contest #324

Down By the River A river has long been like a living creature to me, ever since I was a child. It moves constantly, changing over time, deeper and wider in rain, more shallow and thinner in long periods of dry weather. I grew up in the countryside, far from town and distant from school, driven to and from the place by one of my parents whose turn it was. I never had friends come over to my house, and I lived too far from schoolmates to visit them when school was out. But I could visit my river friend every day. I told it my secret joys ...

0 likes

Following the Ritual Path

Submitted to Contest #323

It is a ritual for me where I drive each morning to my place of work. Sure it adds about a mile to the trip from the more direct way of getting there, and the traffic is slow. Still, it is a ritual, making a connection with a place of joy in the past. I got lost driving for the first time to my new work place, but that was not what made the drive taking that route a ritual. Being aware that I was well and truly lost and that being late would not please my new bosses. I had to do something. So I decided to pull over to a grocery store to...

6 likes

Why Don't I write a Novel

Submitted to Contest #322

Why Don’t I Write a Novel? My friends and family keep asking me why I have never written a novel, although I claim to be a writer. They wonder why I seem to be perfectly content just writing short stories. Guy, whom I have known for decades now, and I consider to be a good friend asked that question straight out one night when we were in the Toby Jug and under the influence of alcohol. He had just read a short story I had written earlier that day.He said that he had enjoyed it.But I now wonder how much he meant that. A person I...

12 likes

Time for a Change

Submitted to Contest #319

Time for a Change Davy wondered whether he should change or stay the same. After all he was best known for the rather dramatic way he played hockey. It usually brought him cheers from the home team and the home crowd. He could not remember a time in his childhood when he did not want to be a professional hockey player. He started organized hockey at five years old. It helped in those early years that he was bigger than all the kids that he played against. Body checking was not allowed at that age, but Davy learned early on to ‘accidently’...

4 likes

The Second Son

Submitted to Contest #318

I am the second son in our family of two sons and no daughters. My brother Ralph was first one born. I don’t blame him for being so accomplished in so many ways. He was early on a bright light, and I was in his shadow as far as my parents have been and still are concerned. His family stardom began with his skill as a talented hockey player. He scored goals like magic even in his first year playing. He led the league at eight years of age, when I was still a toddler. Our parents loudly cheered him on throughout every game that he playe...

10 likes

Don't You Remember Me

Submitted to Contest #317

Don’t You Remember Me? This will be the most excitement I’ve had in years, possibly decades. My favourite band from when I was a teenager is playing a reunion concert in a city about two hours drive away from where I live. It is certainly well worth the drive. I have so many great memories of the boys and I going to those concerts. We cheered loudly, sang along with the songs that we knew so well, and we even danced in a circle as a group together. Members of the band would smile at us, at least that is how we read their faces when we danc...

8 likes

My Lips Are Sealed

Submitted to Contest #316

My Lips Are Sealed I was walking to the Toby Jug, where all the coolest of men and women hung out regularly on a Friday night. To get there I had the walk past the very uncoolest bar in town, named “The Elegance”. It was where snooty rich people who only drank posh drinks – martinis, champagne and the like. They would not drink what I heard one person say coming out of that place that beer was for the poor and unsophisticated drinkers. I could not resist looking through the window while walking slowly past. I was surprised by one person th...

5 likes

It Was Four O'Clock in The Morning Once Again.

Submitted to Contest #315

It was four o’clock in the morning once again. And once more Stella was wide awake and unable to go back to sleep in her bed. So now she was sitting in a chair in the backyard with a bench in front of her, a cup of coffee upon it. She was staring into the distance way ahead of her. This had been going on for several weeks now. Her father and grandfather had both worked as engineers driving the early morning trains to the station nearby. When she was just a girl, she would get up very early to wave to each one of them when she knew they w...

6 likes

To AI or Not to AI

Submitted to Contest #312

Alex had long been something of a rock star with his novels, a series of masterpieces that had begun when he was just 18 years old. For four years after that he added another novel in the series every year. It was his main income. He worked at a library, but his stories brought in much more money. An article in the local paper said that he was an A1 writer.But then, like many a aging rock star he began to lose his a chunk of his creativity. He had left his many readers hanging, with people asking him when the next one was coming out. Pe...

12 likes

His Best Theft

Submitted to Contest #310

An old man walked into my book store yesterday. He shuffled slowly forward with a book held close to his heart like it was some kind of paper pacemaker or friend. “Mister Brown, Sir,” he said in a voice a little above that of a whisper, “I have written a book, and I would like you to sell it in your store. I have been working on, it for years, and now it is finally done. No local publisher seemed interested in it, so I self-published a number of copies. It contains a revealing story concerning something that happened repeatedly in our to...

9 likes

Jessie's Beginning

Submitted to Contest #309

Jessie’s Beginning “I do not know why I am going to this high school reunion. I was only there for my final year, and I have not seen or talked to any one of my fellow students of that year over the last 10 years. My family had moved from far away from where I got all my previous education to get to this place, where my father and mother both got a better job. I did not grow up with the other students, so I was not perceived as being ‘one of the old gang’. I hope that the people who were in my class have name tags on so I can call them by...

6 likes

Whose Voice is it?

Submitted to Contest #308

Whose Voice Is It? One early Saturday night, the local police received a call from someone whose words were spoken particularly slowly and sounded like the stumbling speech of a very old man. He said that someone was being beaten up in the nearby popular bar, the Tobi Jug, in the men’s washroom. The two fellows hitting him was stealing the man’s wallet. The person who picked up the phone was a rookie police officer, who did not ask the caller any important questions such as how he knew this if he wasn’t in the washroom himself. He just too...

9 likes

A Secret Society Until

Submitted to Contest #307

A Society Kept Secret Until It was early Friday evening. One by one a group of older men, all seniors in their late sixties to early eighties, climbed up the outdoor stairs to the second floor of a building that housed the business of one of their senior members (senior in length of time of involvement, not in being older than most others). It had been his idea to meet there, and so far it had been a secrecy success. Each man carried with him a bag filled with something . They were very careful in their handling of it so that it wo...

3 likes

At the Intersection of Life

Submitted to Contest #305

At the intersection, I can go to the right and head straight home as I always do, or I can turn left where I have not gone for many a year. It would take me to a place that had many good memories. It was there where I went adventuring in the woods, seeing wild birds, even eagles, and where along with my elementary school friends, we would pretend that we were Robin Hood and his merry men. I was Little John, as I was the tallest of the group, and my name is John. However my good times ended there when I was a teenager in high school, and I sw...

12 likes

There are no stories in this place.

Submitted to Contest #304

“There are no stories in this place”. Edith had heard her husband Ralph say this an uncountable number of times ever since he retired. Part of his excitement of no longer working for a living was that he would have plenty of time to write short stories and maybe even write a novel or two. But that had not happened. She often saw him in the living room, sitting on a comfy chair, a pad of paper on the table before him, a pen in his right hand, while he stared at the fireplace. He might write down a title, but nothing or just a few sentence...

5 likes