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Steven Lowe

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2025

Stories (6)

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6 Stories

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OZYMANDIAS

Steven Lowe

It was hot, so hot that the sweat ran down his back, soaking his shirt. It dripped out of his hair into his eyes, making them sting. The sun blazing in the hard blue cloudless sky turned the stretching sands dazzling white. ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair.’Eric had known the poem since he was at school. And here he was in Mesopotamia, working on the very area the poem described. The only surviving remnant of a great and extravagant statue was its feet. And the sands stretched away into infinit...

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THE BAD SAMARITAN

Steven Lowe

Submitted to Contest #302

It can be cold in London; damned cold. On such a night as this, fifty years ago, I was in the Limehouse district, down by the river, heavy fog wreathing everything in vagueness, mingling with the foul smoke of coal fires drifting past to make a choking, almost unbreathable atmosphere. I had my scarf wrapped around my face but it had little effect. I began to cough. I needed to get away from this poverty-stricken area of the City. I tried to find a hansom cab, but none were likely to come into this area. Haggard prostitutes lined the damp str...

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Excerpt from The Galactic Travel Guide: VOMISA

Steven Lowe

Submitted to Contest #299

Excerpt from The Galactic Travel Guide: VOMISABy Jahn W. Compbell.Vomisa is a sun with two habitable planets; Nielnieh and Ekralc, though in the case of Ekralc the word ‘habitable’ needs to be taken with a pinch of nilknoc.Nielnieh orbits Vomisa at a distance of 21 galactic gloms, with a year of seventeen months and a day of sixteen hours (Earth measure). Its gravity is 27 nirpsas and the atmosphere is 17% oxygen, 67% helium (which accounts for the inhabitants sounding very much like gerbils), and 16% carbon dioxide. It is a pleasant ocean w...

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THE PERFECT EXCUSE

Steven Lowe

‘It’s not my fault!’ cried Alphonse for the fortieth time since I’d met him. ‘It just happened! I was just going to work in my car and this great truck swerved in front of me; I had to go off into a side street to avoid hitting him. Then it turned out to be one-way, and I spent half an hour trying to make my way through a whole labyrinth of tiny side-streets, going up dead-ends and having to reverse back out of them, getting lost and losing my sense of direction in a great cavernous set of concrete canyons, before I could finally find my way...

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THE WIZARD AND THE DEMON

Steven Lowe

Submitted to Contest #298

THE WIZARD AND THE DEMON Gabmar the White stood in the low underground room, a heavy book open on a wooden table, a chalk circle drawn on the uneven stone floor. He was old, stooped but somehow vigorous and radiating a power barely hidden. Heavily bearded, dressed in a long white gown which reached to his feet. A grim expression on his face, as if he were about to attempt something which would take all his power, and if not carried out perfectly could risk his death, or worse still, irretrievable madness, leaving him a mindless drooling body...

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TIME STORY

Steven Lowe

Submitted to Contest #297

THE BEGINNING‘So, what is Time, anyway?’ asked Joseph Jespersen. Not that he cared. He was stuck in this dead-end job, so-called science writer for a sensationalist newspaper, the man who interviewed the cranks and the weirdos for a column just before the sports section, that nobody ever bothered to read. It was called Strange Science, and at least the ‘Strange’ part of the title was correct. It was a collection of bizarre theories and obvious nonsense, from people who belonged in tinfoil hats, and occasionally wore them. He hated the job; h...

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