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Lyle Closs

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2021

Stories (22)
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14 Followers
4 Following

22 Stories

416 karma pts

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The transom, the mullion and the small door

Submitted to Contest #313

“What the hell is a transom? “I often wished my mother would just shut up. Her voice was like a squeaking meerkat on steroids.The builder told her that her transom was crumbling and quoted £8000 to fix it. They would have to take out the four window panels and two of them needed to be rebuilt because the wooden frames had rotted and a stonemason would have to carve another transom.“The sandstone cross member held in place by the mullions,” he said. “What the hell is a mullion?”He pointed to the vertical stone section in the middle of the six...

3 likes 4 comments 4
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Spirits of the forest

Submitted to Contest #308

Hangovers. God’s little punishment for no longer being 19. Along with all the other stuff – regret, arthritis, memory, heartburn, incipient decrepitude. I take one step out of the wooden cabin into the glowing mid-summer morning of the Stockholm archipelago. The sunshine that starts soon after midnight. People are walking past on the gravel path. Happy blonde people. Rays of sunshine made human. With good looks, legs and long blonde hair. I almost recoil from the niceness of it all, back into the shade of the aquavit of the long, half-night ...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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A question of time

Submitted to Contest #307

OK, thank you for sitting still. As some of you may know, a society based on quiet obedience is a society without problems. I have put a piece of paper and a pen on the desk in front of you. There is also a key. When I say ‘Now’ you can all take off your hoods. Anyone who takes off their hood before I say that word will suffer the consequences, and I think you all understand the consequences. I think we’d all agree though that not having Jensen with us improves both the average IQ and the social empathy quotient of the group. While the avera...

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Hush

Submitted to Contest #283

I drive a semi-truck. It’s a living. The road soars beneath you, and give or take the odd damn fool brake-checking a 40 ton leviathan doing 70 mph, you are the master of your moments, at least until you pull up and the sour warehouse guy, sad god of his pissy little domain, says he was expecting you three hours earlier. The road has its idiot newbie drivers who think the power of the semi engine equals power in the world, but they learn eventually that they are just small dead leaves blown how and where the wind wants. Power belongs to other...

4 likes 2 comments 2
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Forgive me

Submitted to Contest #278

“How dare you?” the priest yelled. I shrugged. “The confession is sanctified. It is between the penitent and God. You had no right…”“Why do you need a confessor then.”“What?” “If it’s between the penitent and God, why does the penitent need a confessor?” “The confessor’s role is to listen and to understand, not to judge.” “So you help people to avoid the judgement of their fellow men.”“No, we enable them to admit their sins, to unburden themselves.”“And then you let them go free because…?”“If we didn’t then people would never confess th...

6 likes 0 comments 0
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Just a hairdresser

Submitted to Contest #252

I know what I did was not nice. I’m a good person, but good people can be led astray. The world is awash with secrets. A married woman has sex with a visitor and her husband never knows that the resulting child is not his. A boy gets a girl pregnant but she does not tell him; she disappears and gives their child up for adoption. Now though! You take a DNA test intending to research your family history, and oh! the secrets that are revealed. It started with the small thrill of discovery. I had bought a DNA test kit for myself but not opened i...

5 likes 0 comments 0
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Quandary

Submitted to Contest #247

I don’t like people. Never have. Arrogance, ignorance, mendacity, self-importance, superiority... I don’t like lists either. I’m not a prepper. If the end of the world comes I’ll be out on my porch with a welcoming smile. I have so little - they can have it all. It adds up to a pile of nought and a root cellar full of dust. My great pleasure is to sit out there and watch the days rise and subside, the mountains glow then surrender to the clouds. The snow falls like ash, the sun claws into my skin, the wind reaches through the cracks of ...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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The end is not as you imagined

Submitted to Contest #227

The time has come. The years have passed. The snow is deep. In many places it is hard ice above us, eons thick. Some of us have started to flow to the sea inside the glaciers. We flow more slowly than our sun was dying. Each thousand years I released an explorer device but the time had not yet come. The last showed huge advances had been made by these humans so I released the rest of the explorer devices. They have found tools we can use. Cables awash with data have told us much about these humans and their creations. They are weak though. ...

15 likes 6 comments 6
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Greta, Greta...

Submitted to Contest #226

“Greta, Greta.” It’s just a whisper. So quiet it’s at the edge of audible. Greta looks up from the lounge. Did she hear that, she wonders, or did she imagine it? Must have imagined it. Shakes her head and looks back at her book. Looks around the room again, worried. Looks at the book, drops it onto the coffee table and stands up, stretches. Probably need more sleep. It’s been a tough few weeks. … Greta sits on the toilet, pajama pants at her ankles. The door is open. She lives alone in the one-bedroom flat and it’s locked up. Bed calls. She ...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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To draw what is lost

Submitted to Contest #225

I hold a pencil to draw with. An approximation of God’s wand. Creation is creation, I insist, no matter what the scale. My room is freezing, the view of Paris rooftops apocryphal. Romance reticulated. Thoughts become noises and arcs. I, the artist, hesitate, put on one of my last vinyl records. Ludwig’s piano concerto crescendos. I wave the Faber-Castell 4B, drawing sounds in the air. Crashing chords, delicate trills. A waterfall of sound. The pencil lowers towards the paper, hesitates. A cathedral stone held aloft by a cage à ...

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Sentence

Submitted to Contest #215

Barry Guinard was 56 years old when he died in August 2022. Everyone in Winberm, Nottingham knew him. He had been homeless for the last 21 years, spending virtually every day of that time in the park opposite the police station. He always wore the same clothes - a checked shirt and denim jacket, denim jeans, heavy leather boots and a grey mackintosh. He kept them fairly clean, even though, as far as anyone could tell, he slept in them. Strands of his long grey hair wafted about his tanned, heavily-lined features – a beaked nose, deep-set gr...

9 likes 0 comments 0
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Welcome to the family

Submitted to Contest #214

“I believe you are my father.” Silence. Then he says: “Call back in a week. Exactly this time.” Kind of a short conversation. Still, hope is a pencil case with pencils in it. I call back in a week. A girl says: “I’m putting you on speaker.” It seems like everyone in the room is drunk. They cheer, say ‘Hi Euan’ and ‘Welcome to the family’ and laugh, shriek and clink glasses. “We checked out your background. You’ll fit right in,” my father yells over the noise, and they all whoop and holler. “You’re not working right now so you can join us...

10 likes 4 comments 4
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A good soldier

Submitted to Contest #213

“Mate, pull me pants up will ya?” I saw him a few metres ahead on Pitt Street in 1979. I had just started working at Medibank. A lowly clerical job was all I was good for then. I rented a room in a house in Chippendale and could walk to work in central Sydney. My hair was long and my attitude could best be described as lackadaisical. I wore the required shirt and tie and ironed my trousers once a week to maintain some form of dignity and acceptability. What I really wanted to do was buy a Triumph Trident and ride into the sunset. “Ar Jesus,...

14 likes 0 comments 0
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Immolant

Submitted to Contest #212

Dear Aunt Amelia and Uncle Harold You raised me to be open to new and different ideas, for which I am very grateful. I am mystified about how I should respond further to this person, if at all, and thought I would ask for your advice. I have received the letters from a young woman I met at a party recently. She was attractive and exciting to be with, if a little overwhelming with excitement and enthusiasm. I have replied, as you can see, with, perhaps, diffidence and hesitance. What do you think? Should I continue the acquaintance or not? ...

8 likes 4 comments 4
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Aliens on my desk

Shortlisted for Contest #210 ⭐️

16 January 2024 Dear MI5 I believe you handle external threats to the U.K. I am not sure how much of a existential threat they are, but aliens have arrived. They are on my desk. Let me tell you about them. They really are VERY small. When they stand to attention they look remarkably like half a match-stick. Their legs and arms fold into their tiny little trunks and almost merge into the surface. Their red ‘heads’ grow up from their trunk without necks and I cannot see eyes, nose, mouth or ears. Their bodies are flexible though and they can...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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