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Martin Ross

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2021

Stories (124)

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360 Followers

336 Following

124 Stories

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Eat, Prey, Bike: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Martin Ross

All dogs go to Heaven. All humanity comes to dust. And it seems all Sarah’s retired high school/work buddies wind up within 30 miles of Casa Dodge Arizona. It’s like we never left Illinois. Sports and politics and playfully racist and Luddite nostalgia with similarly idled husbands who’d much rather be getting tastefully wasted on the Back Nine, auto-eroticized at a classic cars orgy, or not so tastefully blitzed at Sloan Park on Rio Salada. But once in a blessed while, Cyndi Lauper holds sway, and the “girls” decide to have low-carb fun, le...

7 likes

Halfway to Hell: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Martin Ross

January 2024The RoadWe were in the home stretch, the third day toward Gilbert and a winter of not Illinois. I had my own silent version of car bingo: As we’d passed The Arch onto 44 down past Rolla and Tulsa and Amarillo, the roadside raccoons became possums became deer and armadillos and furry things that might have taken us out first had we not blasted an interstate system through the bluffs and hills and cliffs and buttes from sea to shining sea.“What was that?” Sarah gasped as I scored another lupine/sasquatch and we buzzed the umpteenth...

4 likes

The Night Before

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #229

Disclaimer: This story does not reflect my spiritual or cultural views. It attempts merely to examine the pull of faith when Man gets involved. “Merry Christmas,” John grunted. The doctor looked up from the man’s chart, and did a half-turn back into the room. “Excuse me?” John analyzed the man’s dark face for signs of offense, belligerence. He didn’t know the physician – or for that matter, at this moment, anyone in the conceivable world -- but he realized now his sarcasm was misdirected. “I’m, ah, I’m sorry,” John offered, waving the p...

7 likes

Thyme Again

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #228

This time, Max tried some bay leaves and more thyme. Even had he known to remove the former at the final stage, he knew it was yet another fail. He rose dejectedly from his knees before the pale jade Crane Mauretania that had at the beginning of his convulsions been a jet-black Kohler Highline Elongated Comfort Height Two-Piece, and started down the narrow staircase. It was the first time he’d left something behind, and Max wondered vaguely about the consequences of puking across the temporal rift. Grandma’d introduced him to Ray Bradbury an...

14 likes

Fudge Factor: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Martin Ross

Jan. 1, 2024“Were the brownies off limits or something?”Under the circumstances, it was pretty tasteless. I’m not inclined toward any of the forensically accepted methods of measuring the relative temp of a dead person, so I instead embrace a “before the body’s even in the ground” kinda code.In point of fact, I had no idea how far below 98.6 Forrest had dipped. But I did know it was somewhere around minus-10 bloody F outside, with black ice on the steep, winding drive to County 650 North to the state road to and on and all the way south on I...

9 likes

Xocōlātl

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #227

Pender’s face crumpled almost as the cocoa hit his palate. A heavy “WTF?” almost escaped his lips – along with a slug of thick, acrid sludge – but he caught the self-satisfied grin pushing through Valindez’ dense beard and swallowed defiantly.“Is this some kind of childish prank?” he demanded quietly, depositing the insulated tumbler on the camp table between them with as much dignity as he could muster.Valindez arched his brows in mock innocence. “Indeed not. You had mentioned two weeks ago that a cup of hot chocolate was what you desired a...

15 likes

Souls-A-Swappin’: An Alexis Chatt Novel of Paranormal Romance as by Anita Brake, AKA J.D. Robbed, AKA Martin Ross

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #226

Disclaimer: A sequel to “Hearts A-Pfishing: A Romance as by J.D. Robbed”Chapter 12Atlanta, GeorgiaAlexis adoringly poured Dvlknsh another cup of hemoglobin-infused Mozambique AA, stroking the spot where the Latvian mob had ripped a patch of hair and scalp from the Syburslovenian hacker to create a clone capable of doubling Dvlknsh’ plagiarized output.The genetic doppelganger turned out to be encoded with probing psychological insight, and when it killed off half the male population of Cherry Stream (the Virgin River clone that regularly topp...

15 likes

Pilgrim's Egress: A Mike Dodge Holiday Mystery

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #226

“Yeah, I don’t mind that so much,” Cousin Greg replied in an octave that suggested the contrary. “It’s when they have to shove it in your face all the time.”I nudged my chair gently back, an inch or two to allow graceful egress. Load-bearing plastic against composite garage flooring does not permit such a thing, especially at Thanksgiving, and Sarah glanced toward my end of the table. Rainbow Greg was in full dudgeon, and he gave me merely a flickering side-eye as I rose. Brother-in-law Jake soon would rally as well against rampant face-shov...

13 likes

Seen: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #225

After my dad passed, I attended my first and only art auction. In my little sister’s living room. Nine pieces in all, staged on the couch, the maple hearth over the faux-birch faux-fireplace, the guest chairs, Grandma Kendricks’ old rolltop desk.It was a round-robin process, the spoils divided evenly between the three Dodge siblings. I came away with a landscape of hazy western hills and narrow pines, a study of the Alamo, and a still of two lemons and a teapot. Oil on sturdy eighth-inch boarding of the type used to ship provisions in and pr...

16 likes

Dog Day Aftermath: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #223

A insane amount of this is true, though nobody died…November 10, 1979Indiana State UniversityTerre HauteWhen a poet laureate comes to town, folks just by god gotta know about it.OK, so it was the poet laureate of Illinois, a few miles on the wrong side of the Wabash. But Gwendoline Brooks had been named to Jimmy Carter’s Commission on the National Agenda for the Eighties (get mugged, call a cop; need a little vision for what promised to be a letdown decade, you want somebody who knows their Modernist verse). Besides, this was a universi...

17 likes

Separation

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #221

Kristen’s REM cycle crashed again into the guard rail. The one constant, morning to morning, was the heron.It was symbolic of nothing -- simply the last inhuman face she’d seen before the Miata and Tod simultaneously punched holes in Lake Springfield..Something clattered above Kristen’s head, followed by a disembodied curse. That, too, was part of the morning ritual, along with defoliation, granola, stout deep roast drowned in Hazelnut Coffeemate, the digital Journal-Register, the customized multivitamin, the Zoloft, the daily trailer for a ...

22 likes

Passage

Martin Ross

CAUTION: Oh, much cursing.In the beginning, Merrill took little notice of his companion. The Gateway was a popular portal in a storm, and this late October afternoon, the worlds outside the reinforced concrete refuge were fit neither for man nor beast nor, as Merrill oft reflected, those somewhere in-between.It wasn’t a particularly pithy observation, but the combo of vestigial wit and self-deprecation was worth the occasional goodwill of some woke liberal arts/social sciences undergrad in need of a nobility fix or minimart clerk in need of ...

11 likes

Simon’s Gospel

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #219

To Cassie FinchCAUTION; Language, possible religious triggers, discussion of women’s reproductive rights.The table felt funny.That generally went without saying. Simon knew by rote the number of steps from his apartment house to Warshinski’s on Division, how many lights he must chance on the morning pilgrimage (two), and how many coat hooks he must count from the entry step-down to rear booth (Warshinski’s was OG Chicago). He could smell 30 feet before Mrs. Warshinski slid his standing order onto the formica with a mute pat on the shoulder. ...

27 likes

Aggregation

Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #217

CAUTION: Language and grisly images and reality TVNothing had happened at the mansion seemingly in forever. Which kinda, sorta was the whole point.“I don’t give a fuck about manatees,” Mason growled. He then glanced anxiously down at the headset hanging about his neck with his $350 readers and the wood-gripped director’s lens finder that supposedly had belonged to John Ford. He’d hoped for a gig on Yellowstone or at least Yellowstone 1972, and after some flunkie for Taylor Sheridan told him who John Ford was, figured it might help give him s...

21 likes

The Telltale Cup: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Martin Ross

I actually could feel the quiet tension build in the room. It was what the place was made for, all best intentions aside.Novels were being written, now faster if not better. The heart-pounding crush of late-semester reality etched the faces of scattered young people who’d imagined the clarity of stimulated isolation might somehow bring a brighter future into focus. Transactions that had begun with aspirational camaraderie were turning adversarial. At the table behind us, sisterhood was eroding rapidly into jagged shards of “sibling” rivalry ...

17 likes