John Steckley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (254)

254 Stories

5426 karma pts

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“A Bit of a Traveller” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #62

A Bit of a Traveller The year was 1969, and the graduating class had decided to put objects into a time capsule, which was buried on in the far corner of the property owned by the high school. It was where some of the students went to go to smoke. There was a large bush that they could hide behind, and not get caught. The plan was to dig the time capsule up and revisit it every ten years, to give it a look, maybe laugh. However, 10, then 20, 30 and even 40 years later, there had been no such activity, even though about hal...

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“A Turning Point and Back Again” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #61

A Turning Point and Back Again The Turning Point Still after 25 years had passed Sam could see and hear that dreadful moment in the biting senses of his mind. Sarah was his first love, his only love ever. The two of them had been going out for months and they were just about to graduate from high school. Her parents were very conservative and strict, and monitored her activities very carefully, so they hadn’t had sex yet. That was one reason of many why he was going to propose marriage to her on the last day of school. He...

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“The Last Glacier” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #60

The Last Glacier? It had the tragic beauty of a rare animal about to become extinct, or of a fire sparking brightly only to fizz out in the only source of home heat in the middle of winter . It was the last glacier on earth. For thousands and thousands of years it had lain in a valley that could not be seen at as it was covered with layers of long frozen ice. Now the valley was visible. And the glacier was shrinking, alone, without fellows in its demise. From not far away a solitary scientist named Nicholas observes the g...

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“One of those Small Towns” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #59

It was one of those small towns in which sons regularly became just like their fathers, grandfathers and so on. And daughters became their mothers, grandmothers and so on down the line. And if you couldn’t point to the stone memorializing one of your ancestors, in one of the three town cemeteries—Methodist, Anglican and Catholic, or point at a decades-old two storey office building and say, “That is where the old bowling alley used to be.” or nod your head in knowledgeable agreement to does make the point, then you did not really b...

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“What to Do when Stuck in an Elevator and the Power is Out.” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #58

Johnson worked the graveyard shift for the computer company that he worked for. He worked nine to five, but it was night to morning. His company had clients from all over the world, so it was good for their business to have someone they could talk to, and be trained by at all hours of the day and night. There were several companies in the 12 storey office building that he worked in that provided similar service in different areas of business, so he wasn’t alone there, but he certainly felt that he was, on the tenth floor of no...

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“The End of a Family Tradition” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #57

The End of a Family Tradition The Conway family had been living summers by the lake for five generations – first camping in tents, and then in the lake-wide population of 12, nearly identical cottages. And everyone with a cottage on the lake was related in some way. There was a culture to the lake that had developed long ago, and was still strong in the 21st century. There was a predictability of activities that had a security to it for family members, at least by the time that they had become the senior generation.&n...

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“He Introduced Himself as Charlie.” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #56

He Introduced Himself as Charlie He introduced himself  to us as Charlie. He was older than most of us, had a goatee and was balding up the centre, with both sides right and left puffed up. And he wore an old-fashioned suit like something out of a picture of your great-grandfather.  But it was obvious from the start that he loved writing. We are a writers group that have been together for some five years now, almost all of us from the very beginning. We know each other’s writing as if it were our own. We meet onc...

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“A Secret Society” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #55

A Secret Society “So it is Thursday night again, the night of Thor”. George then did his often exhibited imitation of the Nordic god, acting like the mop that he just picked up with his right hand was a bolt of lightning. Tina laughed lightly as she did every Thursday night when he said and did pretty much the same routine Then Tina replied, “So you and the boys will be going out to the pub tonight as usual, then?” He smiled as she was yet again allowing him to have fun with his friends, not complaining like he suspected that some o...

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“Regrets, Yep I have one big one.” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #54

Regrets: Yep, I have one big one. A bunch of the guys decided this Saturday to go to the local bar for karaoke night. We all of us are old men, living in the same retirement home. Against the usual pattern of such a place, we are all of us single, all of us but me were widowed.  A couple of us, not me, still had decent singing voices, so this seemed like a good idea. After two people in a row, fortunately not of our crowd, sang “My Way” really badly, we started talking, after we stopped laughing, about whether we had any regret...

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“It has been Three Weeks.” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #52

It Has Been Three Weeks. Lily thought to herself, almost like speaking it was so loud inside her head. “It has now been three weeks since my dear Roger died. I am walking down a familiar sidewalk alone. There’s going to be a lot of that from now on. It will certainly be a long time, maybe never that I will find his like again. Our relationship wasn’t very long, but it was so powerful, so very powerful.” That was enough for her to hear in her head at that point. She quieted her talking mind for a while as she...

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“In a Dark Moor with the Beast of Bodmin” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #51

In a Dark Moor with the Beast of Bodmin I am in the midst of a misty moor. It is the kind of place that fills my mind with scary images, of Dartmoor, with huge ghostly dogs like the Hound of the Baskervilles and of escaped prisoners hiding, ready to pounce on unsuspecting travellers. And this is Bodmin Moor, where, in a Daphne Du Maurier classic, Jamaica Inn, a fanatical fictional gang-leader named Joss Merlyn led a mad, drunken band of wreckers. In the book and in my mind they lured ship’s captains to founder their vessels...

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“The Answer is in the Sky” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #50

The Answer is in the Sky So I was back in the tree house again, Lord over all I surveyed. Well at least the backyard anyway, where I sat alone over an uncut lawn and a garden that had needed weeding for quite sometime So many happy times I’ve had here. So much looking up at the sky and letting my imagination run like a wild horse in a meadow as I watched the clouds and gave their shapes names. Named the birds too, and I learned to recognize pretty much each one by sight as it flew by. This treehouse was my retreat, ...

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“Waiting for a Bus” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #49

Waiting for a Bus Two people, a woman, and a man are sitting together at a bar. They were a few seats away from each other up until a few minutes before, but she moved over to talk to him. “Hi, my name is Jody. I’m new in town. I have a story about what happened today while I was waiting for a bus. I really need to tell someone about it, and I don’t know anyone. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to tell you the story. I’ll buy your next beer.” The man nodded his head, and said, “Go ahead and tell it. I...

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“Origin story: A Dog's Life” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #48

Origin Story: A Dog’s LifeIt was the beginning of the new and the newsworthy. But it was also the end of old and the anonymous. The day started off as many had before it. It was six o’clock in the morning and I was taking a walk in the park with my labradoodle Ross. Labradoodles are part Labrador retriever, part poodle, and in his case seem part kangaroo as well. He has black curly hair, kind of what you might expect on a shag rug. As usual we had both to compromise as to what speed we should travel. I was ...

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“Looking Through a Window” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #47

Looking Through a Window You looked out the window and, not for the first time, thought about how wrong the weather forecast had been. Sure the weather prognosticators covered their tail bones with the ‘80% chance of’ gimmick, but that was passed as usual from person to person until it became 100%. You had accepted that broken telephone message, so you felt you had no cause to doubt it. It was going to be a so-called ‘typical’ mid-June day, sunny and warm, ideal for picnics, or sitting in your backyard drinking beer and eating junk foo...

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Author bio

I am a retired college professor who researches and writes about Indigenous languages and cultures. My specialty is the Wendat/Wyandot language.