Tom Bentley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2023

Stories (4)

4 Stories

82 karma pts

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“Unjust Desserts” by Tom Bentley

Submitted to Contest #230

Clive delicately set the tea strainer on the saucer. He stared abstractedly at the intricate floral patterns on the cup. It was a piece from the 18th-century Meissen royal porcelain manufacture; it had been in his family for five generations. Its finely wrought fluted sides looked incongruous against the drab, dull wood of the rickety table. Clive held his face in his hands, the cords of his neck taut, his hair unkempt. He hadn't slept for thirty hours. Since he had ta...

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“Commander Twain and Commander Tesla Get Downsized” by Tom Bentley

Submitted to Contest #203

The two Immortals, Commander Twain and Commander Tesla, sat in the hardened control room deep within the mountain. Tesla made a small twist of a glowing silver knob, watching a massive screen that broke the world into a grid pattern. “Ok, I turned up the empathy/hilarity counters on the video of Jimmy Kimmel ice-skating with Cardi B. The subliminal messaging to impel viewers to eat huge amounts of kale-frosted Doritos over the next week will be irresistible,” said Tesla. Twain nodded, the smoke from his corncob pipe curling around his wh...

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“The Roundabout Valentine” by Tom Bentley

Submitted to Contest #188

“Now Herman you just pull into that Stuckey’s and you can find out once and for all just where the road to Roundabout is. And you can pick me up a cherry cola in the bargain. Let’s just stop all this fussing and find out some facts. Land sakes, you’re as stubborn as a pickax stuck in briar wood!” Ruby Droopkins waggled a bony finger at Mr. Droopkins while she spoke, the big white plastic disks on her mail-order “ivory” bracelet clacking. Her wispy bird-like frame, always jittering in one direction or another, was pitching itself about, see...

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“Finding Footing in the Tropics” by Tom Bentley

Submitted to Contest #186

Him The doctors said it could have been the ill-fitting shoes. Years of them. Poor people, poor shoes. And that his feet were unusually large in the first place. When he first saw a doctor, and he removed his shoes, she gasped. His feet had hurt for years, always swollen, each toe carrot-like, but squishy, dense. They say feet bark when they hurt. His feet wailed. The arch of the left was ruined—not a support, but a broken bridge. Even after all the treatments, the three surgeries, the right big toe always throbbed, a deep bass note of pain....

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Author bio

I am a business and travel writer, an essayist and a novelist. I’ve published hundreds of freelance pieces in newspapers, magazines, and online. (Venues include Vox, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, The American Scholar, WIRED, Writer’s Digest, Popular Mechanics, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and many others.) I’m the author of three novels, a book of short stories, a how-to book on finding and cultivating your writing voice and a memoir of my teenage criminality. I’d like you to pour me a Manhattan right at five.