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Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2024

Stories (20)

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20 Stories

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The Good Girls Guide to Bad Intentions

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #322

The restaurant hums with that perfect Friday night energy—not too loud, not too quiet, just expensive enough to make everyone speak in their indoor voices. I smooth my hands over my black dress for the third time since sitting down, watching Jules study the wine list like it's a particularly fascinating academic paper. His reading glasses catch the candlelight, and I have to admit, the professor look works for him. "The Sancerre is excellent here," he says, glancing up at me with those warm brown eyes that crinkle at the corners when he smil...

0 likes

The Haunting of Sarah

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #321

The apartment smells wrong without him, and I hate it. I hate how the walls seem to lean in like they're gossiping about his absence. I hate how my keys sound too loud when I set them down because there's no one here to tease me about always losing them. Three days. It's been three days since the accident. Three days of my mother making me tea I don't like and looking at me with those eyes that say my baby is broken and I can't fix this. I step inside the apartment, and the door clicks shut. It sounds so final; I want to scream. Everything i...

10 likes

The Red Ranch Brothel

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #319

CW: Includes sexual content I step across the threshold of the Red Ranch Brothel, the creaky door announcing my arrival like an unwelcome guest. The musty scent of faded perfume and cigarette smoke hovers in the air, swirling with memories of desperate nights and whispered secrets. I always despised this place, the way it exploits both the body and soul, yet here I am in the ‘Love ’Nest’-themed bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for my client to get in the mood. “Sierra, don’t let this man take charge and turn you into a pretze...

2 likes

The X Visitor

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #315

I'm standing in my kitchen, staring at the pile of bills on the counter, when the atmosphere in my living room begins to stir. At first, I think it's just the heat from my broken air conditioning unit playing tricks on my eyes. But then the disturbance intensifies, and suddenly there's a woman standing in the middle of my flat. She's tall, with silver hair that seems to catch light that isn't there, and she's wearing clothes that look familiar yet completely foreign—like someone took modern fashion and evolved it fifty years into the future....

5 likes

Nightmare of Delight

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #292

In the somber year of 1781, amidst the shadowed hills and whispering forests of the French countryside, stood my ancient manor, a gothic edifice of crumbling spires and stern facades, its grandeur a relic of my lineage long decayed. Within these oppressive walls, I, Antoinette du Vaux, the last scion of my noble house, dwelled.I was only twenty-three years old, and my beauty was whispered throughout society as a marvel to behold. My raven locks tumbled like a cascade of midnight over my shoulders. My eyes, a stormy blue-grey and tempestuous ...

7 likes

The Seductress

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #284

It was our annual New Year's Eve party. A traditional black and white tie affair. The party had been in full swing for at least an hour before I noticed her. The band was playing and the guests were dancing. In hindsight, the fact that she slipped past me without me noticing was unusual. My eyes are like radar at these gatherings, scanning for any new or intriguing faces. Somehow, she slipped past my awareness until the moment she stepped into the grand ballroom.I was pouring myself a drink, my usual gin and tonic, when I felt the atmosphere...

6 likes

Snowbound on Christmas Eve

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #283

I’d rented the cabin to escape the chaos of the holidays, not to entertain strangers. The storm hit hard, turning the surrounding forest into an impenetrable wall of white. I’d barely settled into the place, and my only company was the low hum of a fire and the occasional creak of the old wooden beams. That’s when I heard the pounding at the door—relentless, desperate.I opened it to find a young woman bundled in a too-thin coat, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. Snowflakes clung to her eyelashes, giving her the appearance of some misplac...

4 likes

The False Dawn

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #282

The Birth of RadianceThe world was darkness, and in darkness, we thrived. Shadows were our inheritance, the perpetual blackness our cradle. I remember when the first light came—a tear in the fabric of eternity, white and blinding, spilling radiance like blood from a wound. We recoiled, blinded, horrified, and yet drawn toward it as moths to a flame we had never seen.They called it the “Soluminas,” though it needed no name, for its presence was like a deity. Its brilliance remade everything we knew, illuminating the cavernous spires of Tenebr...

6 likes

The Creature Within

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #281

I stir in the abyss of my own making, an echo in the void where no sound should be. My existence is a fragile yet infinite thing, birthed not by gods or devils but by the very marrow of her despair. Isabelle—the vessel, the artist of my form, though she knows it not. She fears me, hates me, but oh, how she has summoned me! Not by name, for I am nameless, but by the resonance of her anguish, her desire, her duplicity. I am her reflection, her truth wrapped in the guise of monstrosity. I have waited, as all such creatures do, lurking in the pe...

4 likes

Vegas Nights

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #280

Xander: "Why are you just standing there? Everyone else is dancing."Moxy: "Maybe I don’t like dancing."Xander: "Then why come to a nightclub? Isn’t that the point?"Moxy: "The point is whatever you make of it. Why are you here?"Xander: "To dance. Obviously."Moxy: "You’re dancing with your drink more than with anyone else."Xander: "Observant, aren’t you?"Moxy: "It’s hard not to notice someone who doesn’t quite fit."Xander: "Not fit? That’s a strange way of flirting."Moxy: "Who said I was flirting?"Xander: "Your eyes. They’ve been following me ...

7 likes

The Serpent's Invitation

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #279

I have been told I am beautiful. A cruel kind of beauty, the kind that inspires devotion and hatred in equal measure. My name, Isabelle, is whispered with reverence in salons scented with perfume and cigarettes. I belong to them, the women who rule this gilded prison of chandeliers and velvet. Rich, old, powerful, and insatiable. They are my patrons, my jailers, my tormentors.They called it a salon, but it was a theater of cruelty. My role was simple: to be admired, to entertain, to submit. The older women lavished me with gifts and trinkets...

9 likes

How to Haunt Your Own Algorithm

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #275

My other self first contacted me through LinkedIn, of all the godforsaken places. While I was hunched over my laptop at 3 AM, eating microwave burritos and pretending to care about quarterly projections, she sent me a connection request. The profile picture was me, but a version that hadn't spent the last five years marinating in fluorescent lighting and cryptocurrency trading. Her hair was the violent purple I'd abandoned after my mother told me I looked like someone had beaten me with a grape popsicle."You've become everything we used to m...

5 likes

A Vampire's Lament

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #273

5th June, 18—In the somber hours of this night, I write my first journal entry, driven by an irrepressible need to document the transformation of my soul. Like Marcel, the vampire that made Antoine, I have stolen the fire of life itself, and now I burn with an unholy flame. Oh, that I could un-know what I have learned, un-see the depths of depravity to which I have sunk!It has been a fortnight since that fateful eve at the opera, when I, in my cursed hunger, extinguished the radiant light that was Lady Amelia Blackwood. Her visage haunts my ...

12 likes

A Lady's Last Serenade

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #272

It was a fortnight past when I, at the urging of my mentor Antoine, ventured forth onto the teeming streets of London. The opera house, that grand temple of mortal artistry, was to be the stage for my test of will. As I entered its hallowed halls, the crush of humanity threatened to overwhelm my senses. Each heartbeat a temptation, each breath a torment.Yet it was there, amidst the glittering throng, that I first laid eyes upon her. Lady Amelia Blackwood, a vision of loveliness that surely the angels themselves must envy. Her raven tresses c...

8 likes

The Way of the Vampire

Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #272

16 June, London, 1821I pen these words by candlelight, my hand still trembling from the events of this eve. Alexander's first hunt has left me both exhilarated and deeply troubled. I fear I have unleashed upon this world a force I may not be able to control.As dusk fell, I roused Alexander from his death-like slumber. His eyes, now a preternatural green, opened with alarming speed."Antoine," he gasped, sitting up with inhuman grace. "The hunger... it consumes me."I placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. “We shall hunt soon enough. But firs...

15 likes