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H.e. Ross

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2023

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71 Stories

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Benjamin Franklin and his runaway slave named King

Weekly Contest #344

I was told this story about Ben Franklin, you know the American guy with the string and kite. This was years ago when I travelled over East to the town of Woodbridge and some Black fella was going on about an old relative of his who lived in Woodbridge. I liked the tale and wrote it down as I could remember. I call it, Ben Franklin and his runaway slave named King. When Benjamin Franklin was a kid he got signed on as an indentured servant to his really brutal older brother who ran a print shop in Boston in the British Colony of Massachuset...

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Bolt

Weekly Contest #343

I could see the village off to starboard just where it should be. It didn’t help to know that people were doing their normal things with enjoyment or anger, or just nothing in their minds with me sitting out here on this mirror of an ocean unseen too far away for me to even be a curiosity. Of course I couldn’t see them either but as always happens when I see a port I get anxious about getting to it. I can see myself tying up to a dock and stepping ashore to go and get a cold beer and listen to whatever people have to say, just to have peopl...

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Go To Her

Weekly Contest #342

Since I didn’t know what to expect at the Hotel Oloffson I dressed respectful of island custom in long pants at night and a better quality cotton shirt. By the time my taxi arrived I had to take the shirt off and walk around the circular driveway garden holding it in front to dry in the humid self created breeze of my own walking. My legs wouldn’t stop draining their juices as I walked, and my pants stuck to me like a scared cat. The shirt did not dry completely but I figured everybody else must be having the same problems, so I ascended th...

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Le Carte Rouge

Weekly Contest #338

CW: Contains mature themes and sexual content Angie saw that I had that stupid smile that says I know what life is all about as I joined her back on the street. I shoulder bumped her to communicate something good has happened. We were on the way to the motel and away from the last book store. Holding a book at chest level I look at Angie.Angie gives in, ‘Okay, what is the book?’I smile broadly holding the book closer to my chest. ‘It is the book.’Angie smirks, ‘What book?’ she asks, looking both ways as we cross the street.I shake my head in...

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Black Man Sailing Q & A

Weekly Contest #335

Black Man Sailing: Q and A Why are you sailing? is a question I get asked with an emphasis on the you as though mostly as a question within a question. Me, particularly me and sailing combined in a question could be what anybody actually gets, but not upon first meeting usually maybe accompanied by a nodding and hearty glad you are here amongst us. I get it when those asking are white, but when those asking are black it takes on whole other dimensions. The white person usually asks why are you sailing out of a curiosity about why I am trying...

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Maybelle’s Cook Room

Weekly Contest #333

CW: Mature themes and mild sexual contentIt was hot in the cab with the plastic covering over the back seat here in the tropics. I guess I can’t really call it the tropics since there were only a few trees around outside of those in the all inclusive holiday hotel I was at, and the only wildlife was a donkey staring at me as we bumped our way past. The taxi driver was a kind man and after receiving my fare, told me softly, ‘Mabelle’s is the best food anybody can get… in the whole world, Mate.’He leaned over and opened my door from the inside...

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Bolt

Weekly Contest #332

Bolt I was alive and looking at my son sleeping peacefully with the innocence of quivering lashes. That ever slight shake of his dream put me back in time to a moment that stretched into timelessness and my sail alone into darkening seas. The first strike was off to port, disappearing before the corner of my eye could catch it, but its presence remained with a vague twisting thunder. The sky was beginning to hide behind a dense and brooding line of cloud. The line of horizon grew invisible somewhere between a dark grey sea and a light grey ...

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Edge of the Bay

Weekly Contest #330

It was a beautiful San Francisco day. Created for boat, sail and sea. The breeze was starting to show a potential for anything. I smiled at pulling the main and mizzen sail covers back and folding them. Three seagulls were cawing in disagreement about something while circling the marina. The cumulous moved slowly above the distant hills across the Bay making an undulating shadow play over brown and green mounds. The Bay was crisp with wavelets and green with invitation to a good sailing party for three: the Bay, Lizard King and me. I looked...

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Sightings

Weekly Contest #329

The sun had gone down and the chill began. Automatically, he pulled the side of his dark blue watch cap down over the windward ear, then zipped up to his chest the faded yellow foul weather jacket. The zip always got stuck there and he always just left it as is. He rubbed his hands together thinking he just shouldn’t have come out here.The man’s sight wandered out to the river and over to the reeds on the other side. The current moved slowly out toward the bend in the river and his gaze went there slowly also. He rubbed his hands together ag...

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The Dawn

Weekly Contest #324

I guess interesting is the word of wonder at why I look at my watch when waiting for the day break? I sit in a damp mood with anxiety looking for relief only gained by that sprig that lightens the darkness to morning. My watch had a hand that slides over a marked number five and another hand that has just passed the same number. It is dark all round me with on the tinted colours in my cockpit and up there in the sails. The mainsail pulls with drips that are invisible, just heard or just known to be there. I sit up recognising that I had slu...

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Calpuleque

As I pulled my dinghy up high onto the beach mosquitoes and large flies attacked me with a fury. The adventure of it, this strange uncharted and yet perfect island. A trail ran beside the marsh. I untied my handkerchief from my neck and retied it to cover my nose and mouth bandit style. The place had the smell of something dead and decaying. Squinting my eyelids against the mosquitoes, stopping my breathing because of the smell, I trotted along the trail until the marsh became a wooded stream and the mosquitoes lessened their intensity. At a...

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The Foolishness of Men

Weekly Contest #322

The Foolishness of Men The Cut The brightness of the Haitian day brought spray sparkles flying outward splattering the aquas of the waters. Peebo picked the conch shell up from the bilge still eyeing the edges of the spray before they land and disappear. He let a sweet and sour tone echo toward the island. It was a homeward bound signal to whoever might hear it. A home signal to all the families waiting for their sloops to arrive back safe. For him it was also a signal that he was a free man who took life as serious, who was alive and coming...

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North Beach Is Gone

Weekly Contest #321

I stopped at a liquor store like I always did on the way to North Beach. The best liquor store was conveniently across the street from Washington Square which was a good entrance to Grant Avenue and the bars and my youth times with its memories of an old North Beach. My favourite bar in the before times was the Anxious Asp. A cigar smoking lesbian midget ran the place. I first entered when I was sixteen looking like I was twenty-five. The Asp is gone now. A blood I had met in Mexico had bought it and moved it to the Haight during those latte...

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Who you Foah?

Weekly Contest #319

One thing that he could not stand is a homeless man who asks you for money. It really got on his nerves to see a grown man getting as low as to ask a stranger for money; to become a beggar. He made it a rule never to give money to them. To make sure they saw that he despised them and wanted them to crawl back in that hole they came out of and seal it up good and tight and starve to death. He sat at his desk thinking about that thing down in the street having the nerve to follow him right up to the office begging for some money for his mothe...

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Hey Rigger!

Weekly Contest #318

CW: References to racism and prejudice, and racially-charged language. I knew it was not going to be easy with seven white guys to teach before heading out the Golden Gate toward Panama but at least we could start at the beginning since none of them knew anything about sailing. The beautiful 125-foot Odyssey was the incentive and getting her safely back to the San Sebastian Islands required my patience and keeping their morale high as well as dropping the me being Black thing…The stays were okay, but like the shrouds were hanging loose. The ...

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