John Steckley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (254)

254 Stories

5434 karma pts

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“A Blink on Venus” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #134

The First Event Henry Hopper looked up at the star-like planet as he did most nights through the telescope that could be considered a companion. What he saw on this night was not the usual, but the unbelievable. There was a blink on Venus. That was the best term that the astronomer could come up with for what he had seen.  It was like the planet was a giant eye, partially opening up to be seen like it never had before. Then the opening closed.  He knew from prior experience when he presented papers on Venus at ...

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“The One I didn't know.” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #133

Darlene’s First Thoughts After She Discovered It This boggles my mind. I cannot believe what I just found, a box with something very special in it, something very, very special. It is fitting that the box is shaped like a heart. On a Flight Too Late She was one of my grandmothers – the one I didn’t know. Betty lived on the other side of the country, the west coast, and rarely left work and home to visit family living on the east coast. She was a chemistry researcher attached to a university despite her being long p...

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“Finding his Religion” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #132

Max came from a very religious family, but the beliefs that his parents held so dearly were not such that he wanted to claim as his own. They were both deemed ‘survivors’ of a residential school that was run by strict Christian missionaries who strived to drive the Indigenous beliefs out of the hearts and minds of their students. That had worked with his parents, but not many others of their generation. They were regular church-goers who had forced him as a child to attend church services at least twice a week.  One Frid...

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“The Beck Brothers” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #131

The Beck brothers are a team, all five of them. This was literally true when they were in school and there was sports involved. A brother would who was choosing would pick a brother, and then another and another. No one at school would pick on one Beck as he or they would have to take on all of them before too long. The Beck brothers have no sisters, so they are not at their best when dealing with the female of the species. At this moment of time, not one of them has a girlfriend. The women in their lives had to com...

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“The Locked Door” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #130

  Not very surprising for a man who is living his lifelong dream of being a detective, Allen Johnson is a frequent reader of detective novels, particularly the older ones. He especially likes the ‘locked room’ stories that include Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story “The Problem of Cell 13, and the several stories of that genre that C. K. Chesterton wrote for the intrepid Father Brown to solve. What does surprise him on this day, is that he has a locked room case now that he...

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“Almost Snowbound in a Chalet” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #129

The whole family had waited with great impatience for weeks to go skiing, even the twins, who were generally stay indoors and dress up girls. The place to which they were now driving was a beautiful, big chalet. The picture of the place on the website, and its very close proximity to the ski hills had completely charmed them all. What’s more, they would have the chalet all to themselves the weekend they were going there. They could light a fire in the open-mouth of the large fireplace, and no one would complain of the smoke th...

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“An Unwanted Tea Party” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #128

I don’t know why my mother thinks that she should arrange my social life for me. I am a responsible adult after all. I have a good job, that pays well enough for me to have a nice apartment where I can live by myself and not with her. And I am thirty years old. Yet, she still thinks she should make social arrangements for me. A tea party of all things! She wants me to go to a tea party. Although my name is Alice, I don’t fancy drinking tea with some old queens, not unless I can be the one to say, “Off with their...

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“Gut Feelings Can Come True” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #127

Greg woke up early in the morning with an impatience that he could neither resist nor explain. It was the first morning of the new year, one of the few days in which he allowed himself to sleep in late. But that wasn’t going to be the case on this day. No sleeping position that he tried worked. Neither did ever diminishing bottles of beer on the wall that ‘happened to fall’. So he got upGregg was experiencing a gut feeling that he should be somewhere soon. He just didn’t know the location or why he should want t...

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“It Happens Once Every Year - But Then” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #126

It is December 31, five o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m riding the elevator up to the annual Office New Year’s Party. I know a few things about what the party will be like. The food will be good.  The cafeteria cook is not involved in any of the cooking. She is just serving, as she does every year for this one particular meal. She doesn’t appear to be resentful. I guess she just has to swallow her feelings, like we have to do the meals that she cooks the rest of the year. The drink will be plentiful and ever flowin...

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“Better Late” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #125

Lionel dressed in a hurry, which he often did when he wanted to get somewhere on time. He would put his tie on once he arrived at his destination, or get someone to help him with it at the church. It had been a long time since he had put one on, and he felt that he did not have the time to stumble through it now. He rushed out the door, and ran to the bus stop. Once there he kept tapping his feet while he waited.  His car was in the garage, so he had to take alternative means to travel the 90 miles to his destination. T...

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“Amazed in a Maize Maze,” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #124

I don’t generally like going through cornfield mazes, or ‘maize mases’ as I call them. I am of an age in which I get lost easily, and can have a hard time looking for my car, it’s gray, in a shopping centre parking lot. If something is designed to confuse, it makes it that much harder for me to find my way.           But my six-year-old granddaughter Mia wanted to go through it, and that made it an attractive proposition. I will try very hard for the two of us not to get l...

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“Practice Your Look” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #123

 Practice Your Look It was very much an experimental play, called “Long Ago and Far Away”. But Hal needed the work, and it had been too long a time since his last acting gig. He had no lines to rehearse, no words to remember.  And he spent almost all of the play standing in one spot, which was in a circle painted black, so he didn’t have to worry about where he should be at any time.  So it should have been an easy part for him to play. But it wasn’t. The director kept saying to him, “Practice your ...

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“A Strange Package at the Door” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #122

 A Strange Package at the Door George has a Strange Experience ‘There was a knock on the door. The dogs heard it too, as they first barked like mad, and then rushed to the front window to try to find the one who had violated their territory. I was the third and last to get to arrive there By the time I opened the door, there was no sign of the person who had knocked. But there was a fairly large cube-shaped package carefully placed on the doormat.            ...

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“A Gift to the Past” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #121

Sheila Thinks ‘What do you get a man who says (frequently) that he has pretty much everything he has ever wanted? It is Francis’ fiftieth birthday, so I have to get my husband something very special to mark his half-century (a term I will not use). I had almost given up, when I got an idea, a crazy one, sure, but I believe it will do the trick. It is a gift that he would never think of giving himself. It is something that goes deep into his past, when he was a child riding on the subway to school and was feeling invisi...

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“A Truth Unmasked” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #120

There she is again – that face becoming familiar now from three pictures in the old family album. The face told him that the two of them must be related. There was that odd diagonal dark marking on the chin that he had never seen in anyone living – just the grandmother that he had never met, but saw in the pictures in the album, and this girl of about five who was holding him as a baby in her arms. Her chin was a match for his. Here was a reverse of the saying from the Joni Mitchell song, “You don’t know what you’ve got till ...

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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.