Joseph Keener

“The Knights' Duel” by Joseph Keener

Trigger Warning: Death, Blood In three minutes, one of these two men would die. To the dot. The two men in question were not duelists, but still, they dueled. They were not held to standard weapons, nor made to stand at paces, or set to the hand drop of an attending witness. Still, they dueled. Gaston had never seen such a display. He had never seen such brutality. In fact, he could not believe that it had even happened. So he, like many others of their encampment, sat stunned as these two tore at each other as if they were the fiercest of b...

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“The Love of Fighting” by Joseph Keener

Submitted to Contest #252

Trigger Warnings: (Substance Abuse, Bad Language, Physical Violence) She was pretty sure her ribs had cracked. Her head buzzed, her eyes felt like they were set to pop out of her skull. Blood leaked out her lip as she gnashed down on the mouth guard. She felt fevered; as if at any moment, her body would burst open in a grenade blast of ruptured vessels and shattered bone. Still, none of that mattered. None of the pain, or sweat, or blood. She caught her opponent on the left side of her jaw, and felt the bone snap out of place. His head snap...

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“Devouring” by Joseph Keener

He shoplifted the cork-board. The string as well. Shoplifting such items was a victimless crime nowadays. No matter what way you sliced it. You could argue in whatever direction you wanted, but there was no store on earth that would suddenly run dry of cork-boards. Even the smallest of mom and pop shops that no longer existed in the bone-dry reality everyone lived in would end up liquidating a couple of the things. The artificiality of supply and demand was the original topic of Grant's research paper. He was somewhat of an agitator, and pro...

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“The Knights' Trio and the Library of Damned Fools” by Joseph Keener

Submitted to Contest #251

Far and deep into the long lost reaches of the Caucasus Mountains, two men (and a Woman), were climbing down a sheer cliff. The first man, stout of body and sharp of mind, rappelled down with the care and precision of a three-legged ewe. Mainly as he was coated in full steel plate. As he smashed against the rock wall for a third time, his first companion called down to him playfully as the rope shook. "Oaf! Do be careful! I don't want the meteor of your shelled form to alert the Quarry of our approach. This one is a wily one, so I am told!"...

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“Desperate Remedies” by Joseph Keener

Submitted to Contest #248

There was blood on the phone. That phone had been expensive. That was all Dani could think about as her father slammed the receiver until it cracked, his wrist leaking blood where the jagged plastic cut at his hand. He picked up the device and hucked it with incredible force into the safety glass of the conference room wall, a resounding thump to the people on the other side. As Wilson set himself back down on the chair, he placed his head in his hands. Concern was growing all around him, the employees were ushered away as the others: her fa...

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“The Discoverer” by Joseph Keener

Submitted to Contest #247

Letter to the Institute of History, Dear sir. Below are the last words on Nelson spoken by my grandfather, as transcribed by my late father. Your institution has pestered my poor, elderly mother quite enough with its idle threats of disavowal and excommunication. Our faith is not your faith, but still regardless, you have scared her enough. My grandfather was a man who cared very little for who heard him talk and the manner of his speaking, so direct all complaints of the letters’ contents to his grave. Go rot, Gaston du Armont "Where do I ...

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“Atop the Monolith” by Joseph Keener

Submitted to Contest #245

Today the monolith was going to shake. It meant a lot of things in Seeburg. The monolith shaking was a common expression in the town for change. People would watch their newborns teeth grow in and say that their monolith had shaken. The season would change from spring-summer-fall-winter-spring again, and at each junction, the same expression would grace lips. The monolith was shaking. No one knew why exactly it shook. In fact, it was so rare that some people never thought it would again. The last time was almost 110 years prior, and it had o...

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“The Probe” by Joseph Keener

Submitted to Contest #243

"2.1 tonnes of steel." The thought was like an ignition switch. His brain turned on, the deep dream of unconsciousness vanishing in an instant. Before the questions, before the wondering and the panic, the line of thought continued, sailing through like the meteor he was. "9.6 tonnes of carbon in various forms. 1.5 tonnes of copper to conduct energy. 7.9 petajoules of energy to run a theoretically infinite amount of data off 1.5 tonnes of silicon, gold, palladium, gallium, aluminum, germanium, platinum, nickel, zinc, and experimentally grown...

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“The Shot” by Joseph Keener

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #241

He didn't need to do anything. He could just sit down at his desk and wait. The waiting would be the hardest part. The shame would come, and perhaps it would never stop. The thousands of employees under his company would be blameless, they wouldn't put it together until it was too late. The blame would fall squarely on the men in this room. For the last one hundred and fifty years, the painstaking process of terraforming the exoplanet Gupta-2125 had fallen on his company: James Adelade Space Innovations. The process had been beyond revoluti...

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