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Josh C

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2020

Stories (17)
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92 Followers
26 Following

17 Stories

711 karma pts

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Beneath the Canals

Submitted to Contest #103

Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, I tied the boat in front of the boarded up door. At one time every canal in the city would be alive with noise, criss-crossed with drying clothes, bedsheets and banners. I needn’t have worried. With so many houses left empty and boarded up the canal was silent save for one lone laundry line flapping in the light breeze. Nonetheless, I wanted to avoid being seen. People would think I was breaking into a historic building and causing yet more damage to the city of Venice. They would never belie...

25 likes 18 comments 18
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Enginestart_Test (A Neo Kosmo Story)

Submitted to Contest #101

Kyler typed in the command to the shuttle’s console and slumped back in the chair, expecting to hear the engines roar and reverberate around the colony ship’s hangar bay as they span up to 100% thrust capacity. He’d lost track of how many times he’d entered it in the last month in an endless series of diagnostics on the colony ship’s fleet of shuttles. Enginestart_test, enginestart_test, enginestart_test. It was important of course. When the shuttles did get called up to descend through the atmosphere of the vibrant blue and green planet b...

13 likes 3 comments 3
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Broken as a Pane of Glass

Submitted to Contest #97

Thunder clapped, and Joel jumped as two aimless bolts of lightning lanced across the sky, illuminating the small apartment through the broken window. A gust blew through the hole in the glass, water dripping from two dagger-like shards hanging from the top of the frame. How long had it been like that? 3 days? A week? Joel quickly grabbed the piece of tarp he had been using as a temporary barrier and hung it in place, then walked over to the fridge. On the sea of judgmental, unchecked items on his to-do list, he found it.Get glass replaced. T...

13 likes 12 comments 12
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No Way Back (A Neo Kosmo Story)

Submitted to Contest #94

Luis stared at the Earth in the far distance, little more than a blue and green marble floating in the pitch black of space, perpetually spinning. He gazed unblinking, alone as the planet slowly but surely vanished from his view. When the Neo Kosmo had first launched there would have been crowds watching, entranced, but the once busy viewing decks now stood silent and empty. “Luis,” a voice called over his headset, and he snapped to attention. “You’re in the next group of crew going into cryo-sleep. If you want to send a final message back...

18 likes 15 comments 15
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Drops of Hope (A Neo Kosmo Story)

Submitted to Contest #90

Squalor. That was the only way Cairo could describe the scene. Even at 11 years old it was apparent. Far from the gorgeous green fields and full, flowing rivers that had been promised, his family had arrived to a barren plain, skulking grey skies, and the only view an enormous concrete wall separating them from the European Federation of States.“Can you watch your brother please? Go meet your father, he should be coming home any moment.” Cairo’s mother called from the entrance of the temporary prefab shelter, one hand on her enlarged belly, ...

21 likes 18 comments 18
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Only a Change of Scenery (A Neo Kosmo Story)

Shortlisted for Contest #86 ⭐️

Jenna opened her eyes to a small blurry, display blinking in front of her. Cold air swirled around her face and rays of red light jumped through licks of mist in the claustrophobic cryo-pod. The frigid air stung her nostrils and caused shudders along her body. Each twitch of a muscle added a new sensation as another synapse connected, her body slowly coming back online after 500 years of deep, dreamless, cryogenic sleep. Memories of the last few moments flooded back. The chills as the temperature plummeted, her heart desperately trying to ...

54 likes 30 comments 30
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Our Marriage for the Kingdom

Submitted to Contest #81

Katarina stared at the heavy wooden gaol door and adjusted the crown on her head before patting down her elaborate dress. One of her soldiers fetched the keys and she traced the dark stains on the wood with her eyes, spying the rusting bolts on the frame. Behind this very same door countless prisoners, mostly peasants, had wasted away. This cell had probably never held such a distinguished prisoner as the current occupant: Katarina’s husband and the former King of Diovasille. The heavy latch unlocked with a loud metallic clunk, and one of ...

16 likes 11 comments 11
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The House of Seth

Submitted to Contest #79

It was 2 years to the day that I cut contact with my mum. In my defence, it’s kind of hard to have a relationship with a mum whose friends want you to get smote from the face of the earth by a wack job cult leader with bad hair. A cult leader who literally hasn’t done anything notable in their entire lives, yet somehow has such a big following that we can only hope they don’t go into politics. And yet a letter from my mum, handwritten on beautiful cream paper with a stamp for next day delivery that now sat on my kitchen counter and read: ...

10 likes 26 comments 26
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A One Way Ticket on the Neo Kosmo (A Neo Kosmo Story)

Submitted to Contest #75

Roland stepped forward, shouting into the throng of people trundling past as he stood beneath the kaleidoscope of neon shop lights that filled the Central London Shopping Centre. “Step right up! New opportunities, new horizons, a whole new life awaits! 34 days until the Neo Kosmo departs to Lamperi Gi, the first habitable exoplanet, and spaces are available!”  A few faces turned from amidst the sea of people. Roland smiled, scanning for anyone who looked to be just inside 30 years old. Younger people had too many living relatives. O...

11 likes 9 comments 9
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Mince Pies by Firelight

Submitted to Contest #71

I could tell mum was trying not to cry again, even with the mask over her mouth and nose. Her eyes were wet, and she was blinking hard. She did that a lot this Christmas. For a second she stared at the oversized fake pine tree in the shopping centre, surrounded by equally fake presents, watching the man dressed as Santa listen to children shout from 6 feet away. Santa was wearing a mask too. I knew what mum was thinking about. She was thinking about how grandma always loved taking me to see Santa, even though he wasn’t real either. Mum wor...

16 likes 14 comments 14
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You Do Not Get Three Wishes

Submitted to Contest #61

It was over when I found out she had been unfaithful. I came upon them together - her and that bastard Samual Granger. That should have been the end of it. I should have burned the pictures, threw away the keepsakes and changed my number, putting the whole thing out of my mind, but I didn’t. In my bed, lying in the dark, my mind was running over everything.  She said it was an accident that only happened once. But every unanswered call, every time she said she was working late, every friend she hung out with was replaying in my min...

16 likes 10 comments 10
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Offline

Submitted to Contest #58

Hughes looked out of the cockpit as they exited hyperspace, the planet popping into view ahead of them. Planet 52ABX-32QJ was a desert planet. He slumped in his chair. On joining up as a deckhand on the deep-space courier he had a very different idea of his future; one of finding new planets that would bear the future of the human race, discovering beautiful all-female alien species and fighting off vicious, savage bugs against impossible odds. So far he had seen nothing but sand, ice and rock. Rocks in particular, he had now seen in every...

17 likes 9 comments 9
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Summer at 2AM

Submitted to Contest #53

I realised my playlist had finished and I had yet to start a new one. Had I been quicker, I might have missed the ring of a bell, indicating a new message. I frowned, it wasn’t from social media. Cycling tabs on my computer showed me it had come from the company instant messaging system...but who was working at 2AM? Aside from me that is, but I’m strange. Listening to music and talking to friends on Instant Messaging programs in the early morning was the story of my teenage years. As school turned into sixth form, and then university, it b...

16 likes 10 comments 10
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Supernova

Submitted to Contest #49

They gathered in silence, lost in their own thoughts in the observation deck of the research station, Jupiter visible through the windows as if hanging against the starlit sky. From their station the gas giant’s red, brown and orange storms looked frozen in time, even though they all knew that the storms were raging at hundreds of miles per hour. James broke the uncomfortable silence with the words he was sure all the scientists in the room were thinking were thinking. “Did we doom us all?” No one answered. No one could know. Not for anoth...

9 likes 0 comments 0
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Partially Cloudy

Submitted to Contest #47

Tomorrow will be a better day. You say this to yourself while looking out of the living room window. Despite the forecast saying it would be blue skies today, it is now raining a steady gray drizzle that casts everything in a faded, drab light. You shake your head and collapse onto the single sofa, maybe pouring a glass of wine first, and try to speed up the last few hours of the day by flicking through the television channels. It offers some background noise and a distraction from the day if nothing else. At 8.00 AM your alarm goes off. P...

14 likes 11 comments 11
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