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Greg Lang

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2026

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33 Followers
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11 Stories

261 karma pts

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The Boy He Couldn't Find

Weekly Contest #363

(Author note: This story references J.D. Salinger's unpublished short story "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" which was leaked in 2013 even though his estate did not want the story to see the light of day until at least 2060. The story is a prequel to "The Catcher in the Rye" and details the backstory of the character who would become Allie in the novel.) The dead boy was easy.That frightened him.Jerry could place him anywhere: by the sea, in a summer room, near the terrible ordinary brightness of a family that had not yet learned what had h...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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It'd Be Rude Not To

Weekly Contest #362

Everyone is perfect in this town, at least outwardly so. It can be occasionally liberating but more often tends to be unsettling in a way that is difficult to vocalize. Like a chill up the spine or an unyielding stare from a neighborhood alley cat. Still, I do my best to fit in, donning the suburban camouflage that identifies me as a member of the pack when out on the town or, in this case, walking to the neighbors’ house.Khakis, polo shirt, and stylish but sensible loafers.The loafers are torture on my large feet, and I find the ornamentati...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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Late Sun

Weekly Contest #360

Late Sun The late sun entered the blue room at 5:42 every evening and removed what it could.At first, Nora thought it was doing them a kindness. It came through the west window in a clean gold pane, touching the rug, the side table, Simon’s left hand where it rested beside the newspaper. By morning he had forgotten the sentence he’d planned to say after dinner, the one about how the house had been her idea and therefore the damp smell was her responsibility.Instead, he made coffee. He opened the kitchen window to let out the night air. He s...

17 likes 2 comments 2
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The Four-Minute House

Weekly Contest #359

The Four-Minute HouseThe house appeared for four minutes every evening in the field off Route 6, beginning in late September, when the sun lowered itself to the height of a reasonable accusation.The rest of the day there was only grass. Stiff yellow grass, a collapsed fence, a roadside sign advertising cranberries ten miles back. He had driven that way for eleven years because it saved six minutes and spared him the ocean, which he found too large and too insistent after work. His life had not gone badly enough to explain the feeling. This i...

22 likes 6 comments 6
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The Windmill Still Turns

Weekly Contest #358

The Windmill Still Turns On the last night of Adventure Falls Mini Golf, the waterfall smelled like pennies and the pirate on Hole Seven had finally lost his remaining hand.This was not ideal. The pirate had already lost an eye, two fingers, a shoulder parrot, and most of his authority. For twenty-three years he had stood beside the fake lagoon with a fiberglass sneer and a cutlass raised toward passing traffic, promising adventure to minivans, field trips, first dates, divorced dads, birthday parties, and teenagers who wanted somewhere to b...

6 likes 2 comments 2
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All Sales Final

Weekly Contest #354

The first gift shop on the Moon was also the last thing to close.Martin had been given two days to inventory the remaining merchandise before the shuttle took him home: thirty-seven snow globes containing no snow, ninety-two shirts that said I NEED MY SPACE, a crate of freeze-dried ice cream that had expired on Earth before ever leaving it, and one thousand six hundred miniature blue planets suspended from silver keychains.The keychains were the worst. They hung beside the register in neat rotating columns, tiny Earths lacquered to a shine, ...

8 likes 4 comments 4
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The Glacier's Errand

Weekly Contest #353

The glacier began returning things in the wrong order.At first, June called this impossible, then imprecise, then statistically interesting, which was the word people used when impossible had filled out the proper paperwork.The first object was a leather boot, found by a trail maintenance crew near the lower moraine, half-submerged in gray meltwater. It was stiff as a hoof and small enough to suggest either a child or a century with different expectations for feet. June logged it as Object 24-061: boot, leather, approximate date unknown, pla...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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Where Butter Was

Weekly Contest #352

Carol had been tasting yellow since she was four years old. Cold butter — specifically the kind left out overnight — soft enough to spread but still carrying the chill of the refrigerator. She had never found this remarkable. Everyone experienced something, she assumed, until she was nine and mentioned it to her mother and learned that no, in fact, they did not. She had not mentioned it to anyone since. The condition, as she thought of it — never a gift, never a curse, just a condition, like her mild asthma or her tendency to underestimate d...

13 likes 4 comments 4
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Still Open

Weekly Contest #351

I have been many things. I was, first, a dream — a set of blueprints spread across a folding table in 1979, held down at the corners by a coffee thermos and two ashtrays. The architect who drew me had a mustache and a conviction, shared widely in those days, that the future would smell like Orange Julius, and Hot Dog on a Stick, and climate-controlled air. He was not wrong. He was just early. Then I was construction — the shriek of steel, the pour of concrete, the slow rise of my three stories above a cornfield that had not yet forgiven the ...

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Unrestrained Joy - Please Use Sparingly

Weekly Contest #350

The first notice was a warning.Not a fine, not yet. Just a gently worded letter from the Homeowners Association informing me that I had been observed “experiencing my property in a manner inconsistent with community standards,” which I had not previously realized was something a person could do wrong.I read it twice.Then a third time, slower.Caroline was in the kitchen, rinsing something that didn’t need rinsing.“What does it say?” she asked.“They think I’m not enjoying myself correctly,” I said.She dried her hands and took the letter from m...

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A Simple Life

Weekly Contest #349

Today is April 31st. I have decided to accept it as real. It feels like the kind of day that should not exist, and yet does—just long enough to say goodbye to something you were not prepared to lose. Caroline is a study in contradictions. Sweet but subversive. Athletic and clumsy. Intelligent yet absent-minded. She looks and struts like a lady but is prone to talking like a sailor just in from eight months at sea. The resulting juxtaposition is nothing short of transcendent. Her long natural blonde hair is implausibly curly—so much so that s...

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