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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2023
Submitted to Contest #272
My new wife adopted a rescue dog that came into my surgery for a simple vaccination. Typically, I try to keep a professional distance, but she fell in love with the shaggy mutt, and I was trying to be a good father to her son, little Nate. She called the dog “Ketch”. What fun it was to make Ketch fetch! Fetch Ketch! Fetch Ketch! It was a big tease, faking throw-ball, making that big dog lope about looking for the ball, and one day my stepson joined in the fun, “Fetch Ketch”, he cried, swinging his arm in that clunky ...
Submitted to Contest #271
I was a tunnel rat for Halloween, and my nerves were on edge right from the start of my shift downtown, strap hanging between Canal and 14th Street, following my nose. A full moon brings out the crazies and the repeat offenders, but Halloween doubles down on the madness, lets them operate in disguise, indistinguishable from the civilians. Tonight, it was both, Halloween and a full-moon, and the city was febrile and electric.Gangs are hard to spot on Halloween. Is it just a bunch of revelers, or is it a marauding pack of animals, their blood ...
Submitted to Contest #270
The Recipe.“No, you are staying home and helping out with Rosh Hashanah.” said Naomi, who was starting to wind up to full-on manic mode and looked like she’d blown in on a storm. She threw her son’s laundry on the foot of his bed, then pulled up the window shades, throwing light on things best kept obscured. “There’s only one other trombone player, and she’s got Covid,” said Adam, hitting the pause button on his computer game. “Don’t they know it’s a high holiday?” said Naomi. “There’s only five Jews in the entire school,...
Submitted to Contest #269
A black limo with tinted windows pulled up on Washington Street in Hempstead. Two burly men, dressed in black shirts and slacks, got out of the vehicle and headed for the front door of a small run-down house. Their arrival was observed by two Englishmen crammed inside a Mini Cooper, parked further along the road.The buzz of excitement around the start of the new school year had worn off. For Nick Palma, a Senior at Hempstead High, widely considered a nobody, it was a just another fall afternoon, the intermission between the drag of school an...
Submitted to Contest #268
Tiffany, wife number four, was eye-candy, every inch the All-American cheerleader, but – frankly – I was relieved when she’d left the room. Yes, I’d miss that smooth youthful skin and the sinuous curves, but I’d see her again in a year or two, maybe a little bit longer. All she had to do was live within her allowance, sign some paperwork, and stay out of trouble… out of other men’s beds. Simple enough. Anyhow, she’d gone now, part of Larry’s big scheme. It was nearly the end of the long goodbye. “Not goodb...
Submitted to Contest #267
Flag down. “Pack, dismissed!” The small boys of the Fort St. Angelo cub scout pack scurried off to get their sweaters and bags; it was supper time. Charlie Harkness, Sixer, son of the naval base commander, ordered his small group – the gray six – to stay behind; they had unfinished business.“We can’t have two Georges in our six,” said Charlie, a tall blonde boy with freckles, supremely self-assured.George Clarke agreed; son of a lieutenant, he was the first George, so the new George, a weedy little boy newly arrived from England, needed...
Submitted to Contest #266
Martin had absolutely no idea where to start.“What ya doin’?” said Clara, cheerily, as Martin started descending the stairwell to the basement, coffee in one hand, phone and notebook in the other, a scowl on his face. She knew what he was doing; it was the same thing every day.“Going down,” said Martin, making it sound like he was on a one-way trip to the underworld. His mind was on this week’s creative-writing story prompt.“Have fun writing! I’m going to the market, then visiting Trish. We’re having halibut for dinner.” ...
Submitted to Contest #264
Friday evening, straight from work, in two minds about the party. The tube train was approaching Richmond, south of the river, where I expected to find promenading gangs of boozy Henrys in blazers and straw boaters. Three-Men-in-a-Boat land. I hated the idea of the place.‘I say, old chap, which regiment?” I thought it must be some kind of joke, but the stooping man. slightly older than me, was a genuine toff. He was accompanied by a beautiful woman with a ski-jump perm. They were wearing matching Barbour jackets and faded des...
Submitted to Contest #263
It was a warm August afternoon, a gentle sun blessed the immaculate fairways of the Long Island Country Club, an oasis of tranquility and temporary shelter from the violent storm raging on Wall Street. Lehman Brothers was in trouble. Four elderly men, dressed in polos, colorful slacks, were ambling toward the club house, heads down, pensive.“My God, Bernie, your chip shot on 17 was a doozy”, said Danny Solomon the suave Gold Coast realtor. It had been an unusually subdued round of golf, opportunities for small talk few a...
Submitted to Contest #262
“He is such an idiot”, said Dennis, my brother. It was the summer holidays, so he was living with us again. I preferred it when he was staying in London with Nan and Grandad.“Mind your language,” said Dad. I could tell that he wasn’t totally in control anymore. Dennis was almost as tall as Dad now.“But he can’t bring the stupid Airfix kit with him to the beach. He’s going to make a mess of things, he’ll lose pieces and get paint on everything,” said Dennis, “and it’s too bloody hot to mess around with plastics and gl...
Submitted to Contest #261
“Oh, there’s all kinds of witches,” said the gray-haired crone as she pulled the leather-bound journal from off the shelf behind her desk.“And which are you?” said Pippa, enjoying the banter with this cranky old lady in the Wicca World retail store, who was playing the part of mischievous witch to a fault.“Depends on the situation or the person, I can be good or bad”, said the old woman, placing the book on the desk so that Pippa could examine it.Pippa flicked through the writing journal to make sure it was suitable. The paper felt old ...
Submitted to Contest #260
The story might seem small and whimsical in the re-telling, but that does the people of Wormroth, Maine, a disservice, because it has been a harrowing few weeks and there is a palpable sense of relief in town, now that the mystery of Rankin’s midnight music has been solved. I ask the reader to suspend judgment and show some sympathy for the actors and brace yourself for a sad denouement.True though, Wormroth is a small and isolated town where not very much happens, and the locals do therefore tend to blow small things out of propo...
Submitted to Contest #258
Trigger Warning: This story may offend the devout.“This makes absolutely no sense,” said Jack Roberts, interim head of the International School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, bending his long lean body over the small crate containing an earthenware jar packed in straw, “Where did you say you found it?” Jack exchanged an uncharacteristically worried glance with Antonio Fornelli, the Vatican scholar and Jesuit priest. Surely this was some kind of mistake. “Qumran, Cave Six”, said Hasan Al-Kahlil the field archaeologist, who had r...
Submitted to Contest #255
“Kill him, kill him. He is a worm”, the voice in Josefina’s head was louder.“Josefina, why don’t you sit down? Why don’t you drink this water?”, said Margherita, placing a glass on the kitchen table in front of the girl, “maybe it will help you calm down.” Margherita placed a hand on the Josefina’s shoulder and was shocked at how thin she was, just skin and bone beneath the woolen jacket. It only made the message more difficult to deliver.Josefina gulped at the water, spilling as much as she consumed, then held the glass ...
Submitted to Contest #254
Some arrived on foot from East Side apartments, others alighted from 5th Avenue trolley cars, and a swaddled few pulled up in automobiles. Regardless of starting-point, mode of travel, or status in the upper strata of Manhattan, they each faced the same bitter wind on the sidewalk, the same battle for advantage at the cloakroom, and the same squeeze into the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria.The Women’s Entertainment Club was host of a Metapsychical Evening featuring the most prominent Psychics, Spiritualists, and Clairvoyants of the day. ...
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