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Bob Faszczewski

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2021

Stories (174)
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174 Stories

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The Day Everything Stopped

Submitted to Contest #234

    Struter Jones dashed to the corner–just in time she figured--to catch the 7:58 Fifth Avenue bus. As usual, she had timed her sprint to the bus stop down to the last second.         Quickly getting fed up with her go-nowhere clerical position, she did only what she had to do when she had to do it.        “Only in a holding pattern with this gig,” she thought to herself as she searched for the miracle job that would take her out of the morass tha...

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Bringing Back the Glow

Submitted to Contest #232

       As residents of the Northern Hemisphere, all summer long my friends and I had romped with as little attire as possible in our local lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.  This year, though, the sun left us midway through the season. We had the haunting feeling the cyclical change was turning into a permanent situation that would forever change our world, but the opinions of a few high school kids mattered little at this point.     With Mother Nature closing the curtain on 2300, news ...

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New Year's Bashed

Submitted to Contest #231

     On New Year’s Day, Wilson awoke at 7 am and tried to clear the throbbing pain from his head.  He sat up in bed to find his old-timey pinball machine wrecked and laying destroyed in a corner of his room.      After running over and over this strange turn of events in his mind 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 s...

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Truth Among the Shadows of My Mind

Submitted to Contest #230

                        Truth Among the Shadows of My Mind  It seemed like some bizarre magical power had broken into my dreams, taken over my mind and led me from my student apartment on the campus of Salisbury University into a fog-covered woody area deep in Pokomoke State Forest.       Unfamiliar music had interrupted my dreams and led me as if in a trance to follow twists and turns a...

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Too Soon to Tilt

Submitted to Contest #229

     New Year’s Eve–another boring party with inane gossip, too-loud music and guests robotically rattling off resolutions they knew they had no intention of keeping. Another year gone by with Wilson looking forward to almost nothing–except:       The software salesman’s annual turning-of-the-calendar-page ritual did have one very bright spot–across the room stood the stunningly beautiful and intelligent blonde lady as she had for the past two years. Aside from her tantalizing appearance ...

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What Was in That Batter?

Submitted to Contest #228

I sat with anticipation in the West Ocean City Breakfast Club, waiting for Sam, my waiter, to make his entrance with a plate of fluffy, steaming goodness topped off by the rich, brown sugary liquid designed to lift me out of my late summer funk. Every year on the Saturday before Labor Day I had made it my tradition to end my vacation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with a trip to the area’s best morning eatery and treat myself to a heaping platter of Delmarva pancakes. This time, though, my annual journey would lift me into a world I could nev...

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Mirror of the Soul

Submitted to Contest #225

     Ralph threw the last carton on the shelf. This finished the final incoming load of the week in the stifling moving company warehouse.          He couldn’t wait to shower, change into street clothes and head for his favorite watering hole down Main Street. After a few cool ones, even the flea-bitten, fly-by-night boring rural outpost of a town where he had wasted much of his life might start to look good.      When he looked in the locker room ...

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Forced to Become a Creature of the Night

Submitted to Contest #224

     Tom Jepson had worked his way up from rookie programer to become the top project manager at Apex Computer Consulting in only five years. His clients relied so strongly on Tom’s expertise that, if he had taken one of the extremely infrequent vacations, they had threatened to pull out of a number of important projects rather than entrust their operations to anyone but Tom while he remained out of the office.       Thus, for half a decade, he had put in extra time late into the night a...

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Secrets of the Forbidden Room

Submitted to Contest #223

                           Secrets of the Forbidden Room        On one quiet Friday evening, Rutgers junior Jan Newsome sat in the still corner of the university library studying for her psychology final.         She found it difficult to concentrate–that mysterious room a few feet away kept attracting her, as it had for each of the la...

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Up From Extinction

Submitted to Contest #220

     The skies over Witchita opened up to dump a torrential downpour just as Sam Johnston finished his shift at the area’s Burger Barn on Thursday night. He had to run for shelter under the bridge and hope he didn’t get struck by one of the lightning bolts that seemed to descend in front of him every few seconds.      Only a high school junior, Sam still hadn’t put away enough spare cash to buy the used Honda Accord he had his eyes on for the last six months.      &nb...

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Yanking Good Out of the Jaws of Bad

Submitted to Contest #219

Plagiarism–a word that should strike fear into the conscience of every aspiring author–no matter how young or lacking in experience. Society has many ways of exacting revenge on those who steal the writings of others by trying to make it their own. These penalties can range from putting a serious dent in the offender’s bank account to locking them behind bars for up to a decade. Not to mention putting an end to any ambitions in the realm of publishing. To a high school student with little exposure to the niceties of the adult leg...

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The Not-So-Happy Romp in the Woods

Submitted to Contest #218

     The acrid odor of burning wood made it impossible for John to inhale the freshly sprouting greenery in the spring pasture.       His dried out taste buds made his tongue stick like glue to the roof of his mouth.       Thus began another chapter in a dreamed-about fairytale that eventually turned into a nightmare.      John and his friends had looked forward to the camping trip at Emerson’s Lake for their entire final semester at...

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Agatha Christie--Not!

Submitted to Contest #217

The decrepit door on the rundown building creaked as he opened it, almost falling off its hinges. The eerie light in the cobweb-covered interior revealed a long, dark corridor illuminated on each side only by a series of book lights, one every few feet. John’s girlfriend Jane had texted him a half hour before and told him to drive to an abandoned mansion on what had deteriorated into the seedier side of their small rural town. She had forwarded directions, one message at a time, separated by agonizing intervals of five minutes. Her voice so...

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Takedown at the Beanery

Submitted to Contest #216

     As the rich, brown liquid flowed into his ceramic receptacle FBI Special Agent John Arrington mentally reviewed his plan to tighten the noose around Columbian drug lord Bochampo.     The special agent’s investigative unit had gathered every shred of evidence it needed over one of its most extensive probes in recent history, lasting more than six months.      Hiring a squad of carefully selected and vetted informants, Arrington’s team had traced Bochampo’s trail of dea...

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Pulling Back the Shroud

Submitted to Contest #215

          A full night’s sleep had become virtually impossible for Jeremy Stuart since he moved into the apartment above the Barcom & Sons Mortuary three months ago.             Of course, one would expect trouble resting in a building housing the remains of the dead, and possibly their spirits.             Jeremy’s sleeplessness, it seemed, stemmed from much more than b...

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