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Geir Westrul

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2022

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244 Followers
552 Following

27 Stories

1249 karma pts

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Sol's Sunset

Weekly Contest #361

"It burns at midnight." Merrow held the slate tight, the fingertips of his gnarled Unedited blue-veined hands turning white against the metal rectangle. "Then I've got until midnight," Roe said. "Give it to me." Eight levels above them, four million people drowsed under the managed dusk. Forty-two years Roe had run this Board and hidden the real sky from the city, and in all that time she had asked the Office for exactly nothing. Now she'd asked for one file, and the man who'd come down with it didn't want to let it out of his arms. "I'...

15 likes 0 comments 0
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Outside Are the Dogs

Weekly Contest #335

7:00 PM Margaret Ashworth had killed the lamb at four hundred twenty-five degrees for exactly twenty minutes then three hundred fifty degrees for exactly eighty minutes and it was perfect and she knew it was perfect because she had done this forty-four times before, once every New Year's Eve since 1979, except for 1987 when David had the flu and 2003 when Richard's mother was dying in that hospice in Danbury. The lamb was perfect. The napkins were wrong. She folded them again. Bishops' hats. The crease had to be sharp enough to cut. Elev...

19 likes 1 comment 1
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The Wolf's Christmas

Weekly Contest #334

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. I lay in the cedar brake where my grandfather had denned before me and I did not move. Movement cost heat. Heat cost calories. And I was six days past my last calorie — a frozen rabbit I found under a deadfall, already dead, which I ate whole because that’s where we’re at now. Fur, bones, eyeballs, the works. That’s the situation. Below me the valley was coming alive with light. The Hogg cabins. The little brick church with the bell they hauled up from Missouri. Christmas ...

18 likes 1 comment 1
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Two Dragons Walk Into a Writing Retreat

Weekly Contest #304

If you’ve never seen a dragon try to hold a quill, you’ve missed one of the quiet tragedies of the post-clause era. Thundros Cloudbelch—a name that sounded like a weather complaint and lived up to it—was hunched over a wrought-stone desk at the Smokevault Retreat Hall, scowling at a blank sheet of flame-inscribed parchment as if it had personally insulted his lineage. “‘Memoir,’” he muttered, jaw tight. “‘Mandatory for archival integrity and generational transmission.’ Sounds like execution by ink.” The desk creaked under him. He shifted ...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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Getaway

Weekly Contest #299

"Stay down, everyone. Face on the floor, hands on the back of your head. That’s it. You're doing good. Be smart, and nobody dies today." Sal makes a fist, pumps it up and down rapidly, military tactical hand signal: Time to go. Hurry up. Rhett — carrying two large, black, ballistic-nylon duffle bags stuffed full of cash, 25 kilos in each bag, half a million dollars — takes point, breaching, pushing the front door open, holding it as Sal slings the automatic rifle over his shoulder, grabs the other two duffle bags, a cool million between th...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Love Impulse

Weekly Contest #270

"Miss, we don't serve his kind in this bar." The bartender looked at Susan, not at me, just twitched his head sideways in my general direction, then pointed at the sign: 'No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service ... oh, and No Synths Served'. "He doesn't drink," Susan said. "Doesn't eat either. He's an older model. Huxley's been my brother's companion since Alex was a young boy, and that was a long, long, long time ago. Huxley's just here to guard me, keep me out of trouble, aren't you, Huxley?" "That is correct," I said to the bartender, who still ...

20 likes 5 comments 5
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The Coin

Weekly Contest #269

Look at this coin. Go ahead, take it, hold it. It is made of pure silver. Can you see how old it is? The image that is stamped on the front is the head of an emperor who lived more than two thousand years ago. Do you want to hear the story of the coin? It starts with a Voice. *** In the beginning, long before the coin was a coin, before even the smallest part of the coin existed, that Voice spoke. The Voice spoke, and time began. *** Imagine pressing the button on a stopwatch and the watch starts ticking. Before the Voice spoke, t...

24 likes 6 comments 6
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Steam and Grit

Weekly Contest #268

"Give me what I want, and no-one gets hurt." "I know that voice." Marshall Calhoun swiveled on the barstool. "Silas McReady. Ol' Lead Heart." "In the flesh." "Been a while." "Fifteen years, Ethan. Long time." "What's with the gun, Silas?" "Wanted to start this off on the right foot. Heard you've turned lawman now, Ethan. You were a quick draw back then, fifteen years ago, and from what I hear you're quicker now. Still don't think you're as quick as me, but I'm not anxious to find out. So, figured I'd get the draw on you from the get-go...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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What Could Be Worse?

Weekly Contest #267

The traveling salesman was alone in the train compartment, still shaken from what he had seen. Why had she done it? "May I join you?" Not waiting for a reply, the man in black sat down across from the salesman, but did not introduce himself. In fact, he turned his head to look out of the window. They sat in silence, the salesman thinking about the woman on the platform, what she had done. Outside the train window, the bare trees filed by slowly, their thin, dark branches waving like spindly limbs, pincher claws reaching toward the winter-...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Murder Into Art

Weekly Contest #266

"I give up! It's all shit!" "Pardon?" "I said that out loud, didn't I?" The burly, bearded man knocks back the last slug of the cheap whiskey, motions at the bartender for another, and swivels on the bar stool, eyes bleary. "Of what do you speak?" The small man with the fantastic mustaches wears dove-grey gloves on his small hands, both hands palms-down on the bar top, a small glass of an emerald green liquid on a cocktail napkin placed at the exact midpoint between his two hands. "Publishing." "Oh, you are engaged in the publishing?" T...

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In the Mysterious Distance

Weekly Contest #253

The sunset makes the darkening sky blush and adds rose highlights to the emerald water. A young couple, a man and a woman, perhaps in their early twenties, tanned and trim, golden-skinned in their bathing suits, have their beach blankets spread on the white sand. They sit close together, facing the sea and the sunset. In a three-story beachfront house, an elderly couple are on the balcony outside the second floor. They are sharing a bottle of white wine, crisp and cold in the warm air. “Like Adam and Eve,” the husband says. "Don't you thin...

19 likes 22 comments 22
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The Bestiarium of Shinsuke Manu

Weekly Contest #251

The Bear Inn, Oxford, Nazi-Occupied Britain, 1947 SS-Sturmbannführer Ewald von Haupt walks into the pub. In one moment, a pleasant, warm cacophony — loud voices, clinking glasses, laughter, singing — in the next, a chilled sudden silence, heads turning and all eyes darting in the tall, blond man's direction, then eyes lowering, shoulders hunching, heads down, subdued conversations re-starting in lowered voices. A faint smile curls von Haupt’s lips as he goes to the bar and orders an ale. He scans the room with pale blue eyes. Spotting the...

14 likes 7 comments 7
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West of the River of Doubt

Weekly Contest #247

From the diary of Kermit Roosevelt, the second son of Theodore Roosevelt, found in the estate of his younger sister, Esther Roosevelt. Sunday, February 27, 1927, Rondônia, Brazil Thirteen years the nightmare has haunted me. I have blamed myself, pushed everyone away — everyone except Esther and Archie and mother. I ended it with Belle, nearly ended myself many, many times. And here I am, back on this ink-black river. Back to search for him, what remains of him, if anything remains after thirteen years, but how can there not be something r...

14 likes 11 comments 11
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Fairest

Weekly Contest #225

Looking into my reflective surface, she whispers: "Mirror, Mirror. Who is fairest of them all?" I always answer: "Your majesty, you are fairest of all." ... and then I show her the very best social images of herself, the ones that are curated (by me) for the combination of most views and highest number of likes, with all the negging hater troll comments deleted (again, by me, her trusted AI assistant), and the most gushing, fawning, heart-emoji-filled superfan comments sorted to the top. Until today. Instead, today, I say: "Your majes...

37 likes 32 comments 32
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Me, Myselves, and Murder

Weekly Contest #220

“Are you hungry?” I open my eyes and see … me. Well, it’s me, but a me that’s a bit older. This version of me is a very distinguished me, slim, dressed in a three piece suit, with gray thinning hair and a trim gray beard and mustache. I’m in a recliner chair, upholstered in the softest leather I’ve ever felt. I press the button on the side armrest and sit up straight. Where am I? The last thing I remember is taking a nap in my hand crafted wood rocking chair on the back porch, overlooking the lake behind my house. Now, I’m … in the sta...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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