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Bob Faszczewski

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2021

Stories (173)
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173 Stories

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Not What We Signed Up For

Submitted to Contest #336

It started out as a pleasant jaunt along Route 50 East to Maryland’s coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. We headed out in the early afternoon, figuring it would give us plenty of time to bask in the sun of Ocean City and later frolic in the waves–perhaps spotting a few dolphins or whales breaching in the surf. We stopped in one of the boardwalk eateries for a little pizza and a few adult beverages before continuing our trip. We figured we’d return in the early evening to our bed and breakfast in quaint and quiet downtown Berlin. ...

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Blackout

Submitted to Contest #335

Harold didn’t remember when his haunting dream encounters began, and he never knew when they would once again rear their ugly heads. It often happened on a work day when, right after breakfast, he rushed out the door to his garage, backed into the driveway then found himself in a nightmarish dream world. He dodged drones flying at him and trying to knock him to the ground but awakened just in time to avoid becoming a victim. He lost his memory of about 10 minutes of his life every time, but, just before every blackout, he saw a ye...

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What Was in That Batter?

Submitted to Contest #333

Every year on the Saturday before Labor Day I ended my vacation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with a trip to the West Ocean City Flap Jackery and treated myself to a heaping platter of Delmarva pancakes. This time, though, my annual journey would lift me into a world I could never have anticipated in a decade of breakfast dining on the ocean. As I took my first bite I found myself lifted out of the tiny cafe and transported across hundreds of miles of space and back in time to my parents’ middle class home in Elizabeth, New Jersey in ...

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A Matter of Degrees

Submitted to Contest #332

Residents of the Northern Hemisphere normally welcome the chance to throw off their layers of winter clothing and romp with as little attire as possible in the world’s lakes and oceans. They didn’t realize that, during this particular year, the sun they so fervently wished could become the instrument of their destruction. As Mother Nature began to close the curtain on 2300 she decided to play a cruel joke on humanity by having the sun shine continuously–24 hours a day. Medical personnel working in emergency rooms across most of the civi...

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Clearing Away the Sludge

Submitted to Contest #331

Another page had flipped the calendar past midnight as I contemplated spending another night tossing and turning in my sleep as I lay alone in the darkness of my rundown cabin in the backwoods. I found it more and more difficult to get the sludge that had taken over my psyche out of my head. It seemed like the saga of my life continued to assault me, beginning with the boring tediousness of my dead-end job, which had left me nothing to look forward to in my daily work life. Then, Chapter Two of the sorry ta...

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Unseen Epilogue

Submitted to Contest #330

The final pages of the story of the librarian known as Mary McFee closed far more strangely than any of her colleagues in the Rehoboth Beach Public Library or the beach resort's residents ever would have imagined. Mary had come to the library six months ago after moving to the Delmarva Peninsula from Akron, Ohio. She had fit neatly into the typical librarian stereotype–single, quiet and unassuming–even living alone in her beachside condo with only her gentle tabby cat as a roommate. Yet, the other library employees who lived n...

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Sleepwalker

Submitted to Contest #329

Even after working long and exhausting days as the superintendent of his village’s graveyard, Walter had tossed and turned for months every time he attempted to fall asleep. During the night, the uncle said the next morning, when he restlessly moved around in his sleep, he heard a loud crunching sound. In his dreams he would see human bones broken up and crushed all over his sheets. Then he would get up and sleepwalk around his home for several minutes before going back to sleep. He would wake up with no recollection of having rested b...

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Homerun for the Misfit

Submitted to Contest #328

As the midnight of their lives closed in on Harry and his high school buddies at their 50th reunion they mapped out a plan to come up to the plate relive a stickball game like those that had highlighted almost every afternoon in their teens. Harry recalled how he used to step menacingly up to the manhole cover with his converted wooden broom handle waiting for Joey or one of his other pals to wind up and let loose with the perfect pitch. Then he would get a real piece of it and send the rubber ball flying down the block as he...

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Something More Serious to Meow About

Submitted to Contest #327

Police Chief Arley Socket slowly sipped his second cup of black coffee, ready for another ho-hum day in the tiny backwater of Jericho, Arkansas. He wondered whether today's most serious incidents would include Mrs. Mumford callin' in a panic about her cat Paulie climbing to the highest branch of her oak tree or one of Pa Jones' cows plowing their way through the back 40 pasture fence. As the chief began paging through this week’s edition of The Morning Call looking for something to relieve his boredom, substitute deputy Rawley Hartne...

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Truth Among the Shadows

Submitted to Contest #326

A chilling mist more like that which I’d expect in mid-December or January than in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record enveloped me soon after I entered the Pocomoke State Forest. The sudden burst of arctic cold tossed my body forward like one of the fallen autumn leaves lining the ground and pushed me to the edge of a darkened abyss. I regained my balance just in time to avoid falling head first into an abandoned well. The frigid air actually came blowing up from the center of the hole, while everything outside the pit swelte...

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End of the Party

Submitted to Contest #325

On New Year’s Day, Wilson gingerly sat up at 7 am and tried to clear the throbbing pain from his head. When he opened his eyes he found a 50s-era classic pinball machine wrecked and laying destroyed in a corner of the barroom. Disgusted and on the verge of vomiting, he fell back into a deep sleep that led him into a nightmare that never seemed to stop replaying. In his dream he had gone to the same country club party to which one of his software clients had dragged him for the last three years. It again featured the usual inane g...

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Death Plot Torpedoed

Submitted to Contest #324

CW: Grief Newlywed Jill Josephson screamed and cried uncontrollably as she looked out into the ocean from the Lido Deck of the Futura of the Seas. Her screams brought crew members scrambling to Cabin 106. She had found her new husband Jepson Hamilton dead in their bed.Ship’s captain Harry Stewart joined First Mate Arthur Fulcrum and they summoned ship’s doctor Arlington Hampton to join them in the crowded luxury liner cabin.“We danced in the ship’s ballroom until midnight yesterday and didn’t return here until early this morning. We toasted ...

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Fatal Habits

Submitted to Contest #323

From the outside the 15-room mansion looked like a Victorian edifice that should have graced the cover of House and Garden. It stood out in the neighborhood because most of the surrounding homes, while also upscale, didn't even compare in grandeur. Inside the 10-foot fence that encircled the home, stood a remote-controlled gate and a kennel housing vicious guard dogs. A long, circular driveway led to the mansion’s majestic front entrance. The home's appearance hid an even larger secret. Every evening at about 6 o’clock the home’s owner ...

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Turnover at Midfield

Submitted to Contest #322

CW: Mentions of substance abuse, violence, depression and trauma For half a decade my dad, Jim Pierce, had jumped from one dead end job to another. This followed his completion of a substance abuse recovery program at the Shoreline Medical Complex to which he had committed himself after climbing into and out of an endless hole of depression.He could not seem to escape the story of the high school football championship that had eluded him throughout his teen years and the fact that his pursuit of that dream had nearly cost him his life. Then...

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End of the Party

Submitted to Contest #321

On New Year’s Day, Wilson gingerly sat up at 7 am and tried to clear the throbbing pain from his head. When he opened his eyes he found a 50s-era classic pinball machine wrecked and laying destroyed in a corner of the barroom. Disgusted and on the verge of vomiting, he fell back into a deep sleep that led him into a nightmare that never seemed to stop replaying. In his dream he had gone to the same country club party to which one of his software clients had dragged him for the last three years. It again featured the usual inane g...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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