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Steven Lowe

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2025

Stories (11)

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7 Followers

2 Following

11 Stories

104 karma pts

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THE SUBSTITUTE VIRGIN

Steven Lowe

Arglemos, the youngest ever High Priest of the Dread hippopotamus god Minaster, held his wickedly curved, razor sharp knife high above the young woman in the long white diaphanous robe chained to the altar and said in a voice of thunder ‘WHY DO I HAVE TO MAKE ALL THE SACRIFICES?’ And old joke, but a good one.He looked around. Nobody laughed. No response, nothing. Well, he hadn’t expected the heavily armed guards who lined the walls of the temple to get the joke. Solid oak from ear to ear. And Bospho his deputy priest was even stupider, if th...

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THE WRONG TURN

Steven Lowe

Marcus Johnson was driving home after another boring, frustrating day, resentful of the way he was treated by his boss, of his position in the world, of the way his life had turned out. When he was young, the world had seemed full of opportunities, the future had seemed so bright. What had happened to him? Why had everything gone wrong? As he drove, he pondered over the missed opportunities, his regrets for the decisions he’d taken, that had ended up with him being where he was – a lowly architectural draftsman, unqualified, badly paid, doin...

1 like

PRIDE AND PUBLICATION

Steven Lowe

Submitted to Contest #304

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in the process of writing a historical novel, must be in want of a Retreat. Which is how I found my niche. I provide a service clamoured after by historical novelists. It must be successful – the waiting list is so long that the bookings stretch out for a year in advance, despite their being a week long and at two-week intervals.Problems? Certainly. Fitting together the wants and needs of the multiplicity of types of historical novelist would be a huge issue if I hadn’t managed to categor...

12 likes

THE MUSE

Steven Lowe

‘Here I am,’ thought Brian Mastersen. ‘At yet another Writers’ Retreat. I don’t know why I bother. I haven’t succeeded in overcoming my writer’s block at any of the others. Why do I keep on hoping? But hope rises eternally in the human breast, or whatever. Maybe this time I’ll get lucky, but If I hear yet another platitude about keeping on going, about getting anything down so long as it’s on the page, about how your first draft is always crap, I think I’ll end up punching someone out.’He looked around. The venue, at least, was pleasant. A l...

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I CAN EXPLAIN . . .

Steven Lowe

Look, it really isn’t my fault. I think my side of the story deserves to be heard as well. If it hadn’t been for that big over-muscled lantern-jawed Hero-type causing trouble, everything would have been fine. I was just minding my own business, trying to get on in life, you know?Just to let you know, I run a small operation – let’s call it import-export. I import stuff – Denebian sqryll eggs, dried bwirth leaves from Markab, szxler wood from Alpha Centauri. Sure, I know they’re endangered – well, ok, almost extinct. But hey, some people are ...

2 likes

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...

9 likes

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...

4 likes

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...

1 like

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...

8 likes

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...

4 likes