Sjan Evardsson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2019

Stories (247)

247 Stories

2751 karma pts

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“Little Guy” by Sjan Evardsson

Sara followed the trail. Droplets of what she was certain was blood. Something small, she guessed. If it turned out to be somebody with a little cut or bloody nose walking slow, she’d be embarrassed, but that wasn’t likely. The trail led into an upturned cardboard box at the end of the alley. There was half of a strange footprint, paw-print really, on the flap of the cardboard that lay outside the box. She couldn’t identify it. Not dog or cat or rat or raccoon or opossum. Sara waited for a minute, listening for sounds of life from the box. S...

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“All I Can Do Is Laugh” by Sjan Evardsson

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here. Perhaps, if I was hung over, I’d have a clue, but I feel like I’ve had a good night’s sleep for the first time in recent memory. I try to remember waking up and moving to where I stand, but there’s nothing. If I’d slept on the small sofa or in one of the armchairs that made up the totality of the room’s furnishings, I would be stiff and sore, not the case. The thought tickles something in my mind — the case. What case? I examine the room. Aside from the sparse furnishings, the room has not...

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“Worth It” by Sjan Evardsson

The more technologically advanced a shelter, the more disconnected it was from nature. In the case of Travers Station, that was a necessity. Outside the station, nature was nothing other than lethal to all the inhabitants of the station. The sapient creatures that inhabited the station came from multiple stars. All of them had their own evolutionary history that drove them to innovate. They all had their own social evolution that drove that innovation to push them out among the stars. Still, none of them had evolved in an environment like th...

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“Ritual” by Sjan Evardsson

The ornate porcelain teapot was out of place on the scratched metallic countertop. Strong, scarred hands the color of worn khaki filled the center strainer of the pot with leaves from an airtight metal canister. Those same hands lifted the electric kettle and poured the boiling water over the strainer in the teapot before putting the lid on and setting it on the cheap, plastic table. “There’s something calming in the ritual of it, I find.” “Which ritual? The hunt, the capture or…the kill?” The woman that sat at the table was slight of build,...

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“Let's Get Started” by Sjan Evardsson

Time shuddered to a stop, slipped back a few seconds, then started back up. At first, there was a woman in the center of the room clutching a suitcase against her chest, then two of her, interposed on top of and within each other, then none. She left only a hole in the air behind, that filled with a bang and the rustle of papers swept up by the air that rushed to fill the sudden vacuum. Her arrival was quieter, a soft whoosh as the pressure in the room where she materialized increased a bit. Her heavy, orange, cable-knit sweater and cap, blu...

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“A Promise Kept” by Sjan Evardsson

“I remember….” The grizzled veteran rubbed the white fur along her muzzle, tracing the path of a scar with a clawed hand missing two digits. “I was a young lieutenant then; thought I knew everything.” “Grenan, don’t start getting maudlin now.” Next to the warrior covered in white and grey fur sat another bipedal tetrapod. The similarities ended there, however.  Grenan stood over two meters with clawed hands that better served slashing than grasping, a muzzle that extended the size of both her mouth and nose, large, low-set ears that hun...

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“Reeve's Day” by Sjan Evardsson

The woman who piloted the ship was in her mid-thirties, close to two meters tall, with broad, strong features, jet hair, deep brown eyes, and warm, golden-brown skin. Despite being human, the ship she piloted was of a sort no other human had ever seen. Sleek, with no visible seams or joins, no hint of door or portal, it tore its way across light years through an artificial wormhole. # The woman who watched the customers coming and going from the cafe was fifty-four, 149 centimeters tall, with soft features in a pale, ivory face. Salt and pep...

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“Tale of the Bonny Marie” by Sjan Evardsson

In the time before the devouring horde, humanity, thinking themselves alone, stretched out among the stars. They made barren worlds habitable, and in generations turned them into paradises. There was no part of the galaxy they considered off-limits. When the first unmistakable, non-human, artificial signal caught their attention, humanity celebrated. They were no longer alone. While humans were still trying to work out how to respond, They showed up. Hundreds of thousands of ships, joined together into a traveling city the size of a moon, ma...

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“Tapestry of a Life Well-Lived” by Sjan Evardsson

A great deal can be learned about a person by who they surround themselves with. The crowds at their parties show what kind of person they aspire to be. Their funeral crowd shows what kind of person they were. When a gathering of the latter sort turns into the former, well, that’s just good wake planning. Of course, it helped that the deceased was well-loved by the sort of people who could subsume their grief long enough to celebrate the life they’d shared. The intoxicants probably helped, too. Probably more than anything else, if judged sol...

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“Ambassador in a Pear Tree” by Sjan Evardsson

“They sent a juvie. A freshly molted breeder.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m sure. He even introduced himself as a male.” “Hmm. He might be a breeder, but maybe they have male drones. Have you thought of that?” “Well, no. I guess they could. But still….” “What?” “I mean, well, he’s all squishy. His carapace hasn’t hardened, and he molts it and grows a new one every day, sometimes twice or three times in a day.” “Clothes. You’re talking about clothes. Did you even read the information packet?” “I read it! I mean, sort of. … I skimmed through it ...

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“He Doesn't Bite” by Sjan Evardsson

The katakat law officer, like others of her kind, stood just over four feet tall, fine-boned and slender. Covered as they were in green and yellow feathers with a red beak and large eyes set to either side of their head, humans tended to call them ‘parakeets’, ‘keets’ for short. Unlike their nickname sakes, however, katakats had arms ending in hands with disturbingly long fingers. The officer’s fingers at that moment twirled a set of dull grey cuffs. While she puffed up her chest to appear in control of the situation, those fingers trembled ...

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“When All You Have Is a Hammer…” by Sjan Evardsson

“Allow me to make the facts of the case clear.” The newly elected prosecutor, Hiratha of clan Ororos, stood at her designated spot, addressing the panel of judges. Like her, they were covered in a fine layer of fur, wearing stylish sashes. Hiratha extended one of her six upper tentacles, spreading the six small, grasper tentacles at the end, pointing in the manner of her people at the dock. Maxwell sat in a cage in the dock. He was meant to be standing, but it wasn’t built for someone as tall as him. He was the only human in the chamber, sur...

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“Trust” by Sjan Evardsson

Saying that the war was going poorly would be a massive understatement. If one were to say that the war was a horrifying shit-show, they would be closer to the mark, but still underselling it. We were losing, simple as that. My entire shake, except me, were killed as soon as our dropship made landfall and opened to deploy. Three branches of eighteen warriors each gone in an instant. I was still in shock, covered in the purple slick of my fellows’ blood and bits of destroyed armor when they came into the dropship and captured me. They were ef...

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“Wander” by Sjan Evardsson

Not all who wander are lost, but I am. The thought echoed through my mind like a mantra, telling myself over and over again how completely fucked I was. Lost in every sense of the word. I didn’t know where I was on the planet geographically, which planet I was on or even if I was still in the Milky Way galaxy. My emotions were a jumbled, indecipherable mess made all the worse by the realization that I was likely stuck here for a long time. I’d lost my cell phone and purse, meaning I was flat broke, as if this planet would even accept Visa or...

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“Afterlife” by Sjan Evardsson

It was there again, at the edge of my senses, always just out of sight. My brother, mister smarty-pants, said that it was nothing more than stress and apophenia with a dash of pareidolia thrown in for good measure. I had to look it up after he’d left — I couldn’t let him think his big sister wasn’t good with words. Why couldn’t he just say I was seeing patterns that didn’t exist and assigning meaning to them? That’s what an English degree and a job as an assistant librarian gets you, I guess. It’s not that I’m stupid, I just went a different...

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Author bio

Writer with an alter-ego as a software engineer. My degree is in Information Security but my heart belongs to my spouse, my children, and science fiction. My first published short story is available > https://books2read.com/DSPSpirit My second published short story is available > https://books2read.com/SpaceBound

Winning 1 story 🏆

Contest #156
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