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Michael Novak

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2023

Stories (9)

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9 Stories

206 karma pts

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Don't Fear the Beeper

Submitted to Contest #221

Thunk! That was the sound of a long-awaited package hitting the concrete stoop of Ray Rosetti’s split-level house. He sprung out of his chair and dashed to the door, like a dog that had just heard its owner’s house key in the deadbolt. He flung open the door and eagerly snapped up a little cardboard box covered in tape. “Thanks Jim!” he called out to the departing mailman as he closed the door and ran back inside. He eagerly placed the box on his kitchen table, crowded with papers, contracts, and print-outs, and carefully opened it with ...

10 likes

Thank Gods

Submitted to Contest #220

Boom! There was the thunder again. This time it was so loud it was as if there had been an explosion in the air. The lighting stretched across the sky in hot white fingers, before vanishing just as quickly as it had come. The rain was still pelting down, just like it had been for the past half hour. Tommy Hayes, age 11, sat by the side of the deserted highway under an overpass. Out here, it was pretty normal for him to walk the couple of miles between his house and where his grandmother lived. There were hardly ever any cars on this stre...

14 likes

Blind Eyes, Four Eyes

Submitted to Contest #219

The park was all but deserted. Why shouldn’t it have been? It was midday on a Friday. Everybody who could have potentially been there was at school or work. Besides, the weather was awful. It was hot and humid and the sky was grey, always threatening to open up in a deluge but never actually going through with it. It was a smallish sort of park, divided into four grassy quadrants by a pair of brick walkways that intersected at the park’s middle, where a monument to some hero of some long-ago forgotten war stood, its copper body having long...

16 likes

Party of Four

Submitted to Contest #218

Note: Contains physical violence and references to substance abuse. I should probably start this review by saying that I wrote this from inside a police station. My friends and I had been wanting to try Blackrock Café for a while now. The place only opened last month, but the buzz it was getting on Facebook was wild. It seemed like everyone we knew had been already, and everyone was like, “Guys, you gotta try this place; best restaurant in the city!” Now how could anyone pass up the best restaurant in the city? It was hell to get a r...

18 likes

No Fairy Tale

Submitted to Contest #217

I could hear the rain coming down hard outside. It sounded like a giant was drumming his fingers on the roof. My office was dark. I had the Venetian blinds shut, the lights off. I sat at my desk alone, about a third of the way through a bottle of dangerously cheap scotch. I couldn’t afford anything better, and right now I felt like I didn’t deserve it even if I could. My head felt heavy, and not just from the booze. My chest felt tight, as if someone had my heart in a chokehold. I felt myself nodding off for a minute, but forced myself to ...

9 likes

When the Next Train Comes

Submitted to Contest #216

“Evening, Mr. Manzelli. The usual?” “Yeah Frankie, what I always get.” “One Scotch and Soda, coming up!” Vinnie Manzelli sat in his usual stool in his usual bar, about to have his usual drink. He heard Frankie the bartender drop ice into a highball glass with an audible thunk, followed by pouring a measure of scotch, and then finally the hiss of the soda siphon as he finished off the drink and slide it down the bar. Vinny caught the slid drink with reflexes surprisingly fast for someone of his age. He was around 50, impeccably dresse...

13 likes

Bloodwind

Submitted to Contest #215

“Hurry up! The sooner we start, the sooner we can make it to the next inn and I can get out of the cold!” The frozen Alpine wind stung the coachman’s face as his breath turned to mist in the freezing January air. He sunk his head as far into his high-collared wool coat as he could, waiting impatiently for the coach to finish loading. Granted, he was being paid handsomely for this job, almost double his usual fare. Even so, transporting passengers over the Alps in January was a hard burden to bear. Soon after, an elderly, balding man emerge...

9 likes

Just the Three of Us

Submitted to Contest #214

It was August in Washington, and it was hot. Not just any heat, but the evil cocktail of heat, humidity, and absolutely, positively no breeze anywhere that has plagued our nation’s capital for every year of its existence since the citizens of the young republic first began the project of draining a swamp along the Potomac River over 200 years ago. It was the kind the kind of heat where opening your window is like opening the door of a running oven, and anyone with any sense stays hermetically sealed inside their air-conditioned home for as l...

8 likes

Peanut Gallery

Submitted to Contest #213

Look up the word “average” in the dictionary, and next to the entry you’d probably see a picture of Harold Painter. In his late 30s, with a thinning hairline and a forgettable face, Harold wore the same white shirt, and brown pants and suit jacket almost every day. He sold life insurance, and lived alone in a small bungalow with only his German Shepherd Rex for company. In other words, he was the concept of boringness made flesh. Unlike many other boring people, however, Harold was painfully aware that he was indeed boring. He wanted to ch...

13 likes