Leigh Johnson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2023

Stories (6)

6 Stories

120 karma pts

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“Sarah” by Leigh Johnson

Submitted to Contest #237

When I was sixteen I went over to her grandparents house to borrow a lawn mower and she told me I reminded her of someone she knew. I told her we had never met and she said, yeah obviously, and I thought she sounded very grown up when she said it. When I took the mower back later that day, she asked me if I was the one that mowed her grandparents yard and I said yes. Do they pay you? she asked. No, I do it for free, but they let me borrow their mower sometimes. Oh, she said. We stood there for a second and then she asked me if I wanted to ha...

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“Invaded” by Leigh Johnson

Submitted to Contest #235

We were already running when the assault began. She had seen it, a brief vision, just a snapshot she said, of their ships in our world. Then they were there, hanging low on the horizon like locusts. Then the darkness came, rolling forward from their ships like an unnatural thunderhead, choking off the daylight, smothering the city. I was breathing and we were running and I was radioing to tactical our position, our direction, and listening to the terse orders in one ear and the sounds of panic in the other. Then the radio started to spit and...

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“Perfect” by Leigh Johnson

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #219

We had achieved perfection: total equality, immersive community, life sustained; not by death but by living in balance. We left behind our baser instincts: war, reproduction, gluttony and envy. There were no unwanted babies born, no addicts, no starvation, or deaths from preventable disease. There were pleasurable activities: walking, sports, gardening, art, performance. Not for the purpose of winning, or outshining others, but for the collective enjoyment of participating. We had transcended the need for pairing off and spousal ownership. W...

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“T-shirt” by Leigh Johnson

Submitted to Contest #218

Musky and a little sour, personal, too intimate. My nose is pressed into the underarm of your t-shirt and I’m there again, in the little apartment with no view, watching you strip after the gym. You’d hold up your arm and chase me until my face was buried there. I pretended I didn’t want you to, but I did. I loved the smell of you. I think of your sharp mind and gentle spirit and the way you held me. ***Dusty and damp, it smells like knowledge. I’m full of ideas and myself. You’re full of skepticism and mystery. When we are thrust toget...

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“Malinda” by Leigh Johnson

Submitted to Contest #217

Magic was the way most folk described Malinda, but that was the least thing about her. She was cruel, spiteful, beautiful, kind, selfish, generous, capricious, brilliant, and the person I loved most in my life. I started working for her when I was five years old. She lived in a house outside of town that had big flower boxes spilling over with blooms, even in midwinter. She was the only healer for thirty miles- I call her healer because that’s what the local folk called her; she told me once her training had been as a sorcerer. My mother had...

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“Alive” by Leigh Johnson

Submitted to Contest #216

It was a bar, but it more closely resembled a set from a science fiction movie or a Gothic castle: black velvet and polished heavy wood lit in lurid neon.She sat in a booth, alone. The texture of the fabric made her conscious of the bare skin of her thighs and shoulder blades. She swiped on a phone screen and opened a messaging app. There were no messages. She smoothed her hands over her abdomen, compulsively.The space was strange, a grotesque hybrid of Old World luxury and harsh modernity. One wall of the space had been ripped away and repl...

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Author bio

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Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #219

Perfect – read story