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Sam Jacobsen

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023

Stories (10)

Comments

Library

15 Followers

10 Following

10 Stories

205 karma pts

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Death of the Prize Baboon

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #294

And so, this is how it happens—slow rain on the glass and sad music crooning over the record player. Tommy Wilkins—proud proprietor of Wilkins Wonderful Traveling Menagerie—slumps in a plush chair. Tween his teeth is the remnant bud of a Cuban cigar; his eyes are hidden behind heavy, round sunglasses the gloom of the evening doesn’t require. His little train car is littered with a collection of oddities. The snaking skeleton of some deep-sea monstrosit...

7 likes

Shoreline

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #293

I can see it passing behind me in great fronds of light, drifting back along those grey shores of yester-years. I cannot tell what it is, only that I am cold now. I feel like I have been stretched. A great breeze rolls in from the sea, tasting of salt and something like rust. Looking out upon the grey-glass waters I spy the distant shapes of oil rigs, wading in the mist. Drawn to them, I walk on, finding that my feet do not break the water. ...

6 likes

Dinosaur Marshmallows

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #290

Rad storms peeled across the desert. Sheafs of old metal—big, red-painted ads for Blue Panda Cigarettes, Misericord Stilettos, The Leassin X-9000—tumbled on between the dead skyscrapers, bounding off the broken windows and rusting beams. Somewhere within the dusted carcass of a shopping mall, You Are My Dream by Phyllis Kenny droned on old speakers. A plastic bag bustled down the street; an automated taxi rolled lazily through the gutter. ...

7 likes

Sea-Witch

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #288

Hence the storm came, and tore across the endless wastes of the sea. Green glass shattered, frothed, billowed at the seams. Guls cried along the growing winds, their voices going lost in that plutonic gloam. Waves the heights of mountains rose to block the setting sun—that great, orange sore upon the world. Its heat was yet irous, grown jealous of that blossoming cold which set upon encroaching night with the speed and wrath of a forlorn specter. ...

12 likes

In the Tent of the Ceaseless Sun

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #284

It is the desert night and the sky is alight as with phytoplankton. All is still save a subtle tendril of wind from the west. A vision: she sees rows of golden trees growing...growing...catching fire and going as ash in the wind. A golden woman walks just beyond. Something is not right. Above, the sun goes out. She is returned to the night. They moved with sullen gravitas across the distant plains--banners burning blue across the endless sky. Behind them: an entourage which stretched for miles, all armed and deadly as the storm. Great...

5 likes

The Flowers on Wulver's Peak

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #206

"And the poison?" "Spreading, Damien. Like wildfire. She will not live long." The words hung like heavy cobwebs in Damien's mind, echoing for a moment before settling fully. "What must I do then, Father Gespie?" Father Gespie--a man as old and dust--sighed and ran his hand across the face of a pale woman. Groaning, the woman shifted across her sweat-drenched sheets and fell silent. "You must climb, Damien--climb a long way and then some. Up...up to Wulver's Peak. There, cut me a petal from a Black Wedonnna. Bring it to me, and she...

13 likes

Socks for the Toeless

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #206

The house that saved me is haunted. At night a something moans, and this night never ends, so the moaning never stops. I was too tired the first night to notice, but by the third I was pretty fed up with it. At the top of every hour (I think, but don’t really know for sure anymore) the moaning is drowned out just a little by some poor woman screaming and being torn apart. She’s invisible, but I know she’s somewhere. There are chains too, which rattle in the basement. But...

10 likes

Sunset

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #204

Dusty Sangria went down on one knee by the first corpse. Leaning over it, Dusty motioned to remove his hat, but stopped before touching it. Something in the corpse’s face made reverence and respect seem unnecessary—gnarled and swirled up into a smile the facial muscles shouldn’t have made possible. Dusty could feel the corpse staring down into his soul, even though it had no eyes. “Howsit then?” “Eh.” “Dead?” “Yeeuuup.” “How it goes. All of em?” “Yes” “Hm?” “Christ, Marlo. Yes.&n...

6 likes

The Book-Spirit of Tirma'Lauda

Sam Jacobsen

Submitted to Contest #202

The wind made a call like a siren as it tore across the peaks. Mysterious, inviting, deadly. The peaks wove on for miles--white-black stone interspersed by tumbling green and flowing blue. Tirma'Lauda the people had named it in those distant, distant days when the cosmos had held a different shape. Most folk who passed through it now simply called it 'cold'. It was strange--the skies knew no clouds, and the sun seemed to always hang right up in the center of the sky, but warmth felt distant. When Salvus Korr came marching up from t...

11 likes

To Bake Under the Sun

Sam Jacobsen

Shortlisted for Contest #196 ⭐️

Earth is now a whisper--sad, desolate. For many miles, crags drone on in a ceaseless field of black. The rocks left behind are sharp and cracking, their shale falling down into pits of tar and sludge. At the peak of the highest crag is a glowing portal--our slip. It is a gate to another time; another place. We funnel through the slip like lemmings to the cliff, our eyes glazed and desperate. We being the last of us, that is. We come, warped and damaged by radiation, drought, famine, to escape. The seas and forests are gone, our beloved anima...

23 likes