Mack Gage

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2021

Stories (5)

5 Stories

102 karma pts

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“In Memoriam ” by Mack Gage

Submitted to Contest #284

His proudest touch, Strand reflected, had been the birdsong in the trees. Four species sang in four-part harmony, an innovation from before the war. He’d resurrected it that night, and their fluting choruses had spilled across the banquet tables and the garden maze. The birds sang that all was well. Their training could take a year, longer than it took the navy to turn out a new dreadnought, and to some, their opulence might even seem illegal. By the letter of the law, Strand supposed it was. Even genius had its rationing, and there we...

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“Portrait of a Kansas Night ” by Mack Gage

Submitted to Contest #135

“Mackenzie?” You wake at night to a name nobody ever calls you, something given up in childhood and given back in adulthood unexpectedly, like so much else about the moment and the things that brought you here. It’s a sea of sheets and more pillows than you’re used to, a bed that smells like rosewater liberally doused in cat hair, a white bedspread stained here and there with the wine you both spilled that night. An hour might have passed. Two. Her voice makes it sound like a lifetime. “Hmm?” you say. Little more than a groan,...

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“The Snowdrop Elegy ” by Mack Gage

Submitted to Contest #125

“Galanthus nivalis.” “Oh yeah? The common snowdrop. There’s a hundred freezing outside, so why is this one freezing in here?” “Common! Hardly.” February crept in through the windows, invaded gaps in the old, tumbling masonry. Thomas’s breath fogged the air, there was frost around the rim of Grandma Evie’s wine glass. Her bedroom's only fire burned at the end of her cigarette. But still, the old witch refused to die. Thomas took her hand; dry, cold cracked skin and age hollowed bones, stretched across the meanest bitch Eng...

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“Then The Jazz Crept In ” by Mack Gage

Submitted to Contest #123

Garvey Street was a wall of writhing sound. Everywhere Atticus turned guitars bent and screamed, pianists played blocky, rollicking chords. Rock and Roll warred with the Blues from the cracks of a dozen doorways. Drunken flotsam drifted from the bright pool of one dying streetlight to the next in search of the perfect sound or the cheapest drink. And Atticus, who had killed tonight, should have been right at home. He wasn’t though. The skin hung off him loosely, more like a bad suit than a man. What passed for Atticus’s soul itched, ...

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“Purely Selfish Poltergeisting” by Mack Gage

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #117

Erin was a speck of dust on the map back home, trapped in the holographic border marking the edge of Human space. All around her, specks of dust were still exploding. When she thought of home Erin meant West Virginia. Of all the places left on Old Earth, West Virginia might have changed the least. It was still poor. Still a backwater. Still hell, for a precocious young woman like her. If a person could still be precocious when they were dying, and young after they’d been to war. Home wasn’t the Olympus and it never would be. Throug...

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Author bio

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Shortlisted 1 story ⭐️

Contest #117

Purely Selfish Poltergeisting – read story