Keelan LaForge

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2023

Stories (49)

49 Stories

1290 karma pts

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“The Swear Jar” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #233

1st January The challenge begins. I’ve promised myself and my friends I won’t swear for an entire month. On the 1st of February, I’ll be shouting expletives all over the street, but until then, I have to keep my big mouth shut. ****, this is going to be hard. You don’t realise how much you do something until you make a rule that you can’t. A mate of mine suggested it as a joke. He bet me if I started a swear jar that it’d be overflowing by the end of a week, but I’m determined to prove him wrong. Now that I have to be aware of it, I’m rea...

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“Polaroid Night” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #232

How I ended up on Svalbard simply comes down to work. I was given an assignment to cover the Northern Lights. I had photographed so many things in hot, dry countries the world over, but I’d never been a fan of the cold. It was something that filled me with dread: going to stay on a remote island where Winter reigned, and darkness dictated the unfolding of our days. I knew it would invite depression, just being there for a number of weeks. I knew not a soul there, and that hadn’t mattered on any of my other assignments, but there was somethin...

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“Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #231

I set the anthology down on the side table and thought about the words that still lingered in my mind. It was a beautiful piece of poetry and it made me think about hope in a new way. It was always there, whether I chose to acknowledge it or not. I always lost it a bit after Christmas, when the decorations were stripped away and I succumbed to the January blues. I knew I wasn’t the only person to do that. Whenever I walked through a day the colour of granite, I could sense others feelings of depression too. There was a heaviness in the air a...

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“January 1973 - A List Written by a Northern Irish Mother” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #230

Don’t forget to: Take the decorations down, wrap them in tissue paper and box them up to be stowed away under the stairs until next year. Carefully take down the crepe paper decorations so they don’t tear. Keep the Christmas cards and fill out the address book with anyone we missed this year. Send belated Happy New Year cards to any we did forget. Get some iced fingers from the bakery for whenever Joan calls round for a cup of tea. Get fruit soda for breakfast and a Belfast bap to go with some stew this week. Pay the milkman and the ...

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“A Reunion with Eggnog” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #229

The snowfall didn’t abate on my journey home. I hadn’t been back in a long time. I lived on a different continent, so it wasn’t exactly easy to hop across the water and be back at my family home. It was worthwhile making the visit to spend Christmas with my folks. They were getting older, and so was I, and I suddenly didn’t feel like celebrating the holidays alone anymore. Once I got within one hundred miles of my birthplace, I knew it by the characteristic snowfall that used to plague us every winter. It was beautified by distance and me...

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“Groundhog Day with Grace” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #229

Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? I loved it until that became my Christmas every year. It always felt like a laughably improbable concept, until it came to fruition in my own life. One year, I started going to my great aunt Grace’s for the entirety of Christmas Day. I planned for it to be a one-off. She’s a pain in the proverbial; everything always has to be “just so.” She put me in in charge of bringing a decorative garland for the table centrepiece. I’m not a centrepiece kind of guy. I didn’t even know where to get one, but s...

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“Clementine Cake” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #228

I have always known about food nostalgia. Food has the power to take you back to a moment long ago that had almost fallen into the recesses of your memory for good. One bite and bang: you’re back in that moment, tasting the flavour you associate with something you weren’t even conscious of. For me, it evokes more than a feeling of wistfulness for bygone times. Clementine cakes are the taste of my childhood. My grandmother used to bake them for every family celebration we had. They were little cakes that contained a powerful flavour, like lit...

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“The Promise of Snow” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #227

Sensitive Content - References to Death and Grief Jean saw the first snow of the season. It surprised her when the nurse opened the curtains. She was used to looking at the grey Northern Irish sky. It hung heavily above her: oppressive and a constant reminder that she was closed into the world and her husband had departed to the sky. George had died the previous year. They used to share a room in the nursing room, but now it was all hers. She’d never wanted to have her own space, even though it was a room made for one. Slowly, her family h...

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“Seeker of Stories” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #227

The whipped cream towered over the rim of Rachel’s mug. It had a gentle dusting of cocoa powder and a layer of marshmallow melt cushioned below the swirl of cream. It smelled as inviting as it looked: like carefully collated Christmas memories in a cup. Eve had arrived just in time for them to both make it to the head of the café’s queue. A minute later, the whole town seemed to spill in. There was a blizzard after all. The coffee shop was the engine at the centre of everything; like a heart that kept pulsing no matter what transpired around...

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“The Turkey's Done” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #226

The turkey was basted. It looked moister than usual. That was a real achievement for the Conor Family. Dry turkey was as much of a tradition as family fights were. Everyone served up the sweet potato pie and then they fell into disgruntlement with one another. There were six members of the family that attended dinner at the Conor’s family homestead each and every year. They could grow vegetables quicker than most people can grow the hair on their heads, but the turkey was always bone dry, and Aunt Clarissa would always be first to comment on...

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“Typewritten Treason” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #223

Trigger Warning - references to sexual abuse. I was an overeager reporter with a dodgy laptop and an unquenchable thirst for stories. My university had its own newspaper and I’d signed up to it as soon as I’d enrolled in my classes. I didn’t know what on Earth I’d end up writing about, but I knew when I got to hear that comforting clickety clack of an overworked keyboard, I was bound to be happy. Whenever I walked into the paper room, it was strangely quiet. I’d expected the buzz of a typical newspaper, but maybe there was limited news...

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“A Guardian in the Rough” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #222

I walked in the door with two strange women that would soon become family, carrying all my worldly possessions. They amounted to one suitcase and a shoulder bag. I was broken. I’d been granted entry to the refuge after a long debate with myself about whether I should ask to go or not. It should have felt like progress, but it felt like a huge step backwards. I was starting from scratch, building upon the rubble of my recent life. I didn’t know where to put myself. The old building was warm, but it felt vast. I didn’t know where I was going, ...

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“An Unconventional Haunting” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #221

Haunted. That’s the only word that adequately describes it. It mightn’t sound like that to other people that have dealt with true hauntings: ghostly apparitions that appear at night in old Victorian houses with more history than future possibility. To be haunted by something is no less unnerving. It conjures up images of Halloween in my soul; the worst parts of it. I feel the prickle of hairs standing on end like pins shoved into voodoo dolls. I feel the tremors that come when my heart is filled with terror, and I can see my breath in front ...

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“The Secrets I Associate with Baking” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #220

I remember the day that altered everything. It feels like it was only yesterday, but in truth, it was decades ago. The kitchen air filled with cinnamon scented steam. Nana and I were having a baking marathon, filling another empty Saturday afternoon with our favourite pastime.  “Darling, would you get me the brown sugar from the pantry?” Nana asked. I loved baking with her. It had always been predictably fun. It was when I felt my most carefree. Nana had a knack for baking, and she loved involving me in it. She never seemed to m...

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“This is my Home” by Keelan LaForge

Submitted to Contest #219

Sensitive topic warning - themes of death and imprisonment. This is my home; it's a funny kind of home. The walls are cold to the touch. They have shiny paint that covers bumpy plaster. Names are scored into it – messages that have been painted over, written and painted over again. Thoughts have been recorded there and then muted with cheap emulsion. I have scratched my own into it too, but they will soon be erased with fresh paint for the next tenant. I have four equidistant walls. If I stand up and stretch my arms like an eagle, I can to...

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Author bio

I am a mum of two and a writer. I have twenty published books. I have a blog called "The Funky Thrifter." I used to write for Vintage Life magazine and other online publications.

Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #203
Typical Jimmy – read story