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Kathleen March

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

Stories (384)

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1482 Followers

903 Following

384 Stories

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Thou Shalt Not Kill

Submitted to Contest #60

By definition, we rarely - or never - think of a post-apocalyptic world as something that resembles a comedy. I mean, what’s to laugh at? The world as we, or the victims of such a situation, knew it, is gone. Everybody feels lost, disoriented, uncertain, frightened. However, let’s look at what ‘apocalypse’ means. After that, we can discuss what post-apocalypse means. Warning: We did our homework. We consulted dictionary.com (giving credit where credit is due, no plagiarism here) and got the following definitions for apocalypse: nou...

20 likes

Town Without Pity

Submitted to Contest #59

[Author’s Note: If you do not know the film and the song Town Without Pity, at least look them up on Wikipedia. At least listen to the song. It was one of Gene Pitney’s best. That town without pity might help us put Bristol, Maine in a better light.]Bristol, located on the Penobscot River near where it enters the Atlantic, had always been distrustful of newcomers. The Bristolians weren’t bad people; they just didn’t know what to do with new things. People who were from away always brought new things. That made most of the Bristolians u...

27 likes

Up on the Roof

Submitted to Contest #59

[Note to readers: This story has the title Up on the Roof, but there is no roof in the story itself. However, there is an old song by the same title. It was put out by The Drifters around 1962, and you really ought to go listen to it. Just a suggestion. It kind of sets the mood here, or something. Better than that, it tells you who ‘she’ is.] There she was. Packed city, lonely as blue blazes, blasting orange heat from all of its pores into every last one of her pores. It was kind of cruel, that heat was. Swarmed all over a person, form...

27 likes

Speak, Stones

Submitted to Contest #59

This place is like no other place I have known or visited. Please note that I am just as mystified as you are by this. Perhaps it’ll help if I retrace my steps. I arrived in this city, which was once one of three major pilgrimage sites back in the Middle Ages, wishing I knew how long I would be staying. I hoped for a time estimate that would be a little more precise than between a week and the rest of my life. I wanted to work, so found employment, and then realized my work was boring. I was sure I would be leaving sooner rather than later...

29 likes

Weather... Or Not?

Submitted to Contest #59

This is a place I know like I know my dead, only this city is not a cemetery of the dead but rather a cemetery of the living. A great poet wrote that line, about cemetery of the living. Therefore, I have to give her credit for it, but I agree about this place, what it is, what is here. I agree so much that the phrase is forever looping through my mind and drawing me to it, to the city, and to what it breathes and says, year after year, century after century. Don’t worry: it never gets old.I want you to know what it’s like to be in this ...

35 likes

That’s So Camp

Submitted to Contest #58

My name is Leah Waters. I’m a writer for WRST News. This is my podcast. My podcast program tries to bring the audience closer to the actual making of the broadcasts that we watch on TV and the internet. For that purpose I reveal my behind-the-scenes work as a professional journalist who prepares before she leaps, so to speak, onto the screen. Here you will follow my fascinating preparations and even be able to chime in occasionally. So... sit back and enjoy seeing how I work. I’ve been assigned to interview some people who are camping ou...

38 likes

Gray Days, Black Nights

Submitted to Contest #58

The Graystockings were meeting to decide what their next step would be. They had to draw attention to something entirely unrelated to their library of women’s knowledge, as they liked to call it. The distraction was necessary because the ensuing chaos would allow them to move the materials that had been gathered over several generations, many generations. They were spread out in several spaces that only they were able to locate on a map, but it was not so easy to access those spaces. Secrecy had been essential. The first Grays, many decade...

19 likes

A Humble Dwelling

Submitted to Contest #58

The elevator clanged to a jolting halt. Almost at the same time - just thinking about it frazzles the nerves, so maybe it was at exactly the same moment - the lights went out in my chamber. It was between the fifth and sixth floors, in the tallest building on the Southern Maine College campus. I had been going from one English class to another. One was Nineteenth Century American Literature, a third year course. The other was Post World War II Literary Trends, also an advanced class. For the first class, we had discussed Emily Dickinson’s ...

21 likes

Wordbrain

Please note: For more information on who Lavinia Rivers and Ruth Matilda Anderson are and their relationship to each other, please see previous stories with these characters. They are going to merge into a larger piece. *** “I know nothing in the world that has much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it until it begins to shine.” ~ Emily Dickinson Ruth Matilda Anderson had revealed to Lavinia that she, Ruth, was not responsible for the photographs that has made her so famous. She had given all th...

14 likes

Where There's a Will...

Submitted to Contest #57

Where there’s a will, there’s a way to get your way at last. Say that five times fast. No, seriously, I am here to share my last will and testament with you. I have taken a back seat to folks far too often, especially in my later years. Now it’s my turn to talk (so to speak, since technically if you’re reading this I am underground and will not be actually talking any time soon). Don’t worry, I will spare you all the legal language and just cut to the chase. Besides, I don’t really have a lot, so my will is going to be short and sweet. ...

29 likes

Ruth Writes

Submitted to Contest #57

You probably haven’t heard of me if you are from anywhere in the world other than Galicia, which is in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. However, in Galicia I am actually quite well known, even famous. I’m not bragging, but they’ve written some very nice things about me. They have also organized exhibits of my photographs. I definitely feel honored. However, I am someone who has become famous (albeit decades after I took all the photographs) for something I never actually did. This is what I want to speak with Lavinia...

21 likes

The Shell Game

Submitted to Contest #57

It’s quite difficult to consider breaking a long family tradition, if you’re a member of my family. I thought I might be the end of the line because there’s barely anybody left, but my daughter seems determined to have traditions. She doesn’t have any children, though, so she really will be the end of the line. Rather sad, because I come from a long line of sentimentalists. Everything comes to an end, eventually. My point here is to stress that there are two types of traditions. One is often the holiday, birthday, or wedding type, where pe...

22 likes

Learning Curve

Submitted to Contest #56

Here’s a woman in her thirties. She is intelligent, attractive, has a great career. She has also just had her first baby. It’s a cute little thing. This woman, who is now a mother and has a name, doesn’t know yet whether her child is male, female, or unisex. She didn’t want to know before the birth, and she doesn’t care now. Of course that might have to change, with diapers and all that, right? The woman is shocked to see this tiny being next to her, curled up in the crook of her left arm like a little kitten. Maybe it is a kitten? It’s ce...

39 likes

Big Brother is Watching You

Submitted to Contest #56

‘Big Brother Is Watching You’ probably doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to you. Usually it has a political connotation, but to me it refers to a big brother in the family sense, nothing to do with what goes on in Washington or the global politics. Given my own family experience, I am a big advocate of getting to choose who we have in our family. Some of us got blood relatives we didn’t deserve. I count myself in that group. Now to my story. Gino and I almost met over a period of about four years. Really. Almost. By that I mea...

21 likes

Long Time No See

Submitted to Contest #56

They had just been introduced by someone who was their common friend, Phil. The only thing was that Phil wasn’t a really close friend to either one. He knew one of them from work and the other through a foraging group. Work conversations had been about work, which is no mystery. Deadlines, reports, project design - those tasks always kept everybody busy. Foraging expeditions had involved following a guide and keeping an eye on where one was walking, so as not to miss anything for harvesting and not to step on an endangered plant or fun...

26 likes