Scott Doran

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2020

Stories (5)

5 Stories

113 karma pts

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“Otlichnyy Mayak (The Great Beacon)” by Scott Doran

Submitted to Contest #53

All great houses rise through the greatness of a single generation and fall through the folly of another. Families of ancient and noble title may endure endless cycles of sovereigns and lieges, revolutions and uprisings, conquests and crusades, famines and pestilences, only to descend into ruin by the taking of title of an unready, foolish, cruel or simply unlucky successor. For Otlichnyy Mayak, a landhold of six thousand acres seated a dozen miles to the east of Orenburg, that successor was to be a young man b...

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“Best Interest of the Child” by Scott Doran

Submitted to Contest #52

“JAMES THALL!”A question barked in the form of a demand. The first sound I had heard in hours. The violent removal of the sack from my head revealed the enraged visage of a gigantic ogre of a man leaning over the table securing my handcuffs. The fuming mien of this furious behemoth was the only thing I had seen other than burlap since this morning. All else was unadulterated pitch darkness, concealed by the piercing light emanating from a desk lamp targeted straight at me, creating an inferno in my...

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“The Center” by Scott Doran

Submitted to Contest #51

“See that!” “That little bit of light from that star was created like billions of years ago and it’s been travelling and travelling through deep space ever since. It’s been bent around stars and galaxies and grazed meteors and comets and been through more space and time than humans could even imagine… I mean like way longer than human existence, like even before the dinosaurs… maybe even like before the first amoebas. That’s how long it’s been on its trip - thousands and thousands times longer than civilization has...

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“The Eastern Knoll” by Scott Doran

Submitted to Contest #50

Everything about me has been defined by two marriage proposals.The latter of the two was to Marjorie Kent, née Waldron with whom I have trudged through fifty-eight years of a shared life of mediocrity, banality, predictability and relentless disappointment. Together, we have raised four tolerable though unexceptional children (Theodore, Thomas, James, and Vanessa) who have in their trifling ways provided minimal gaps in the inexorable trivialities and monotony of our family’s existence together. Some of them have been p...

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“Rules Guy” by Scott Doran

Submitted to Contest #49

“It’s on airplane mode. It’s the same as if I was sitting here using a calculator. A calculator won’t haywire medical electronics.” Even before my snippy little retort had hit the back of my throat, I knew it was hopelessly impotent. The smug amusement exuding from the unctuous smirk of the receptionist told me immediately that my clumsy riposte (and obvious lie) had been lobbed right into the sweet spot of a Rules Guy, a niggling bureaucrat for whom exacting enforcement of meaningless controls is ...

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Author bio

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