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John Steckley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (254)

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435 Followers

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254 Stories

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For a Change

Submitted to Contest #75

Bob and Mandy both would have agreed, had they talked about it, that their relationship needed to change for the better. As they both sat on the couch in her apartment waiting for the new year to arrive, the two of them both vowed to themselves that they would do whatever was necessary to effect such a change. If it stayed the same, both would want to say to the other, “It is not you. It’s me.” Neither wanted to blame the other for how the relationship was failing, so they each came up with a separate and hopefully succes...

6 likes

In Just Ten Seconds

Submitted to Contest #74

Backgrounder Three Friday Nights Sam met Sue at a party. It was on a Friday night. They were both reaching for the same butter tart on the treat table, the last one. Their hands met unintentionally. They both laughed and then divided up the tart into two equal pieces. Thus began a conversation that lasted until the end of the party. They discovered that they had so much in common – love of hiking, canoeing, dogs, and beer. It seemed to Sam that he just might have finally met the woman he could spend the rest ...

8 likes

Whatever Polly Wants

Submitted to Contest #73

Whatever Polly Wants Paula Paula puzzled and wondered what to get her younger brother Paul for Christmas. It was 2020, the year of Covid – 19. Paul was home all the time, doing his work on-line as a programmer. He had no social life outside of his workplace, no real friends, and no wife and children. So he was feeling very lonely. He wouldn’t say that, of course, but as his sister she was good at reading what he felt, even if it was mainly through the tone of his voice on the phone, and the look on his face when s...

6 likes

The Little Drummer Boy

Submitted to Contest #73

Before the Christmas PartyI don’t usually go to these all-musician gigs. They’re usually boring, people talking about the same old things. How close they once came to fame. How many famous musicians they have met. That kind of thing. And you usually don’t see many drummers at these kinds of gigs, either. There are far too many drummer jokes, and we kind of feel picked on when we are outnumbered. “What do you call a drummer who breaks up with his girlfriend? Homeless.” “Did you hear about the ...

13 likes

Inherit the Wind

Submitted to Contest #72

I just like to keep to myself, not bothering anyone, no one bothering me. I have been that way ever since an extremely embarrassing incident my last year of high school. I was on the stage in a minor part in a serious play, a drama that owing to this incident became more of a comedy, a farce. Recently, I have had a pushy lawyer pursuing me on my cell phone, on my landline, on both my e-mail addresses, and even through the mail. What next? Carrier pigeon? It is crazy. He told me that he wanted me to meet him a...

16 likes

Parading Big Cookies

Submitted to Contest #71

For the town’s annual Santa Claus parade there was each year a strange new entry in the parade. For many adults and even some kids it was the highlight of the event. What would it be this year? No one but the planner and the maker of the entry knew what weird and wonderful piece would grace the parade in any given year. There has been some big mistakes. The nine cats dressed as reindeer (with tied on antlers, and one with a very shiny nose added) pulling a sleigh around a flatbed trailer came to pretty much everyone’s mind wh...

18 likes

Condemning the New Guy

Submitted to Contest #70

Condemning the New Guy.I didn’t really know him. No one in our high school class did. He had moved into our small town in August just before school started. It is late November now, and we are still calling him ‘New Guy’. The rest of us had all grown up together, so he probably would be New Guy for quite some time.I was surprised to see him at the Friday night school dance. As far as I knew, he had not been to one before. He would be easy to spot as he is rather tall. When he sat down beside me, I didn’t know what to...

16 likes

Rites and Rights of Passage

Submitted to Contest #69

“Call me when you have a real problem buddy.” Arthur couldn’t think of a good response to that statement from one of his best friends – Fred. So he quickly made up a story of how he was in the middle of creating his latest painting, and he didn’t want the paint to dry before he finished what he was doing. So he had to hang up. There was no such painting at this time. After they both hung up at about the same time, he had to agree with Fred somewhat. He was being offered the plum job of being the well-paid CEO of a very ...

21 likes

From Dawn to Dusk

Submitted to Contest #68

The sun was rising into the clear blue sky. In the soft sands that crept down into the cool waters of the lake, two people sat next to each other, hand in hand, looking across the water. Their faces appeared happy enough, what you would expect from such a scene. However, inside both of their minds and hearts there was turmoil, distilled by an unasked and unanswered question. Ten years ago, they had sat at the same place, at about the same time of day. They hadn’t seen or spoken with each other since then. They...

16 likes

Telling a Secret and Telling a Lie.

Submitted to Contest #68

Sam walked over to me with a very serious look on his usually smiling face. He put his hand on my right arm, which is a serious gesture on his part. He is not a touchy, feelie kind of guy, more of the fist-to-fist and high five kind. “We’ve been friends for a long time, right George?” “Of course Sam, we’ve been buddies since grade school. You know that. And from there to high school, and then to our jobs here working for the same company.” “I need to tell you something, and you are not to share it with anyone”. He...

18 likes

The Venusian Marketplace

Submitted to Contest #67

It was only Phil’s second trip to Venus. His first such voyage had been during the early days of interplanetary exploration. The ship he had skippered had been the first to land and make contact with the inhabitants of the planet. He figured they found him and his crew just as strange to look at, as he and his crew viewed them. The Venusians were similar to humans in that they had one head, four limbs, and a body. They were different in that they had what could be called soft scales over much of their body, a large h...

22 likes

Not Just Another Competition

Submitted to Contest #66

It started out as just another competition between the two of them. They were long time rivals since they were in public school. But Mark began to realize that in this instance it was going to be so much more. Mike had been talking, bragging really, about his ability in a canoe. He used the term ‘master paddler’. Mark could not take much of that, so he was drawn in, questioning out loud whether Mike was really any better than anyone in the room of drinkers that was Mike’s audience. He eventually came to se...

17 likes

The Graveyard Vigil

Submitted to Contest #65

“Don’t do anything on a dare.” That’s what Tom’s older , and acknowledged much wiser brother Frank had told him more than just once throughout his life. But this dare, Tom hoped, would win him some of the respect he had long lacked from his fellow 15 year-old classmates at school.The dare wasn’t for Halloween night, as they figured there would be too many people there in the night, especially other teenagers. So Tom and his buddy Stan were going to spend the entire night, eight to six in a local cemetery on Friday, a week befo...

16 likes

Messages in an Old Manor House

Submitted to Contest #64

I am the founder and leader of a group of writers. There is a steady membership of 10 of us. Every other Monday we have a meeting in which people read and hand out copies of short stories they have written since the previous meeting. One of the pleasures of being part of this writers group is the different approaches and styles that each of us takes: the beginning of one romance after another, supernatural stories with plenty of portals and contacts with the dead, comedic tales, semi-autobiographical/heroic, and the continuing...

17 likes

The Grandfather Tree

Submitted to Contest #63

The two boys walked towards the remains of a once much bigger orchard. Only a few of the trees still produced apples. One of those fruitful trees was the one they were headed for. One of the boys, Tim, called it the grandfather tree. His friend, Emerson wanted to learn all about it, and why he had given it that name The field and the farmhouse beside it had been in Tim’s family for generations. It would soon be so no longer. Emerson’s family had just purchased farmhouse and field. For Tim’s grandfather, wh...

13 likes