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H.e. Ross

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2023

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88 Stories

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Weekly Contest #378

The anchor was down and holding. Casaya Cay islet was completely perfect for anchoring in a place you do not know and just as the day decided upon going to rest it was a good place for me to follow suit before heading out for the Canal in the morning with the tide. I was complementing myself for entering Panama Bay on a perfect tidal current that rushed me toward this little group of islands and cays on the approach to the Canal and Panama. There was plenty of water and no coral reefs and the islands were tropically green. I patted myself ag...

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Who Screamed?

His watch said 0317 and the darkness was everywhere. She was tilting a bit but nothing bad. He pulled back the duvet and put his feet on the cabin sole. It was cold and there was a vacuousness within the cabin that that made his eyes try to bring their lids back down, but his thoughts wondered where Bobbi was, as her watch was over an hour ago. ‘Bobbi’ he called up to the closed hatch cover and boards. ‘Bobbi, what’s up? “ he called again, rising completely now, knowing he was not going back to that warm and comfortable bunk. There had been ...

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Broken Passage

Weekly Contest #375

Broken Passage Here I sit in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico in 1999 in the month called June. I had been sick on the leg from San Diego and I’ve just decided that it was not food poisoning as I had suspected but carbon monoxide poisoning from an exhaust leak and poor ventilation below. Magic had been hauled out here to check her keel bolts, paint some on the hull, the leak overly taped and a newly purchased Aries self-steering vane installed. It had been raining, and Ensenada, when it is wet and cold, is a morbid place with no environmen...

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Arrival

Weekly Contest #372

The Air Jamaica jet bumped its way through the mist nine hours late and most of the lights below never grew brighter. I looked incredulously upon a wonderful scene, my first and I guess most impressive of Port au Prince. There were no tall buildings visible in the darkening landscape. A mountain grew up from the sea. Streams of traffic flowed during the commute hours on several arteries. Trees everywhere softened the outline of the architecture. Small fires trailed smoke toward me. The amber of kerosene lamps in contrast with the brightness ...

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Sirena All Night Long

Weekly Contest #371

You know when you are so tired that you start talking to yourself driving down a dark road out in the middle of the desert? Well, that’s what I am doing right now and that must mean that I am either nuts or just flat out exhausted. I squinted up through the wind shield at a clear black sky with a billion pin points of stars interrupting the darkness and a bright full moon lighting up the road, the sands and the creepy spots and groupings of brush. Way up ahead was the dull glow of something that I was wishing to be a cafe or restaurant or so...

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Wish

Weekly Contest #368

The water was cold. The stones hurt his feet and the water was cold. He stopped walking to look out at the horizon. Grey sky reflecting a grey sea with hardly a line to separate them. The next step was backward and his foot landed on something sharp. He looked at the small blood drip and down at the broken edge of a glass bulb. He picked it up thinking bad thoughts about somebody who would throw a light bulb into the sea. But, it wasn’t a light bulb. It was the small top of a rounded glass container. He dug the sand away and pulled it up. Th...

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Windows

Weekly Contest #367

Windows Ahead was a breakwater. Stone, rock and the occasional name of a cemetery resident made way for a housing project thought up in some other town. It was cold and wet, overcast grey with green rising seas swelling down the tube of the entrance way. Nothing was nice, even the seas broke ragged and without logic. The wind was the only constant, a whining forty plus, a chilling freeze. Double reefed main and a small staysail brought him over forty hours in cold mountains of liquid air. His eyelids rose creaking, nothing would ever be the ...

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The Pepes and the Black Sailor

Weekly Contest #366

It was hot in the palm thatched bar, even with the fan circling and circling. Don Pepe looked across the table at me, “What do you call yourself?’ I smiled and lightly said, ’Actually, I classify myself as free and a sailor.’ ‘Ahh.’ Don Pepe looked to Pepe and raised his eyebrows. ‘Free is a good word but is it a race?’ I poured the beer and when I looked back up the three men were looking at me, awaiting an answer while Antonio was pouring his beer. Antonio raised his beer to me in a salute and I put my glass over to his and we clinked. It ...

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Lightening

Weekly Contest #363

The sliver of a new moon hazed over in a high thickening cloud covering with its light slowly being turned off. Scudding clouds at a much lower level raced above me from port to starboard until they disappeared all together into a nothingness that was my night. Off to the port bow was a barely visible thumping show of dull light flashings. A small ball of a lightning storm on an invisible horizon. I was beam reaching with mounding seas smoothly moving at a steady tilt of deck. There was no spray but I felt a bit chilled. The helm being stead...

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Maybelle's

Weekly Contest #362

Maybelle’s When I first arrived in the San Sebastian Islands I came on a winning prize for an all inclusive three days at the Schooner Resort and Spa on Greater San Sebastian Island. The resort was a few miles outside of the capital town of Victoria on the south side where an extremely long white sand beach offered blending with a chalk coloured turquoise sea. It was beautiful to say the least. The waters were still and protected by a long finger of coral reef whose heads poked up when the water was drawn toward the deep during the changes o...

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Chantal

Weekly Contest #361

This was my first evening going to the Oloffson since I had landed in Port au Prince, and the emphasis was hot. The rattling taxi did nothing to relieve the heat with three of the windows down and one not working. The rectangle of the rear view mirror showed my driver was shining drips of brown framing bright white eyes with long lashes springing drops that he was constantly wiping with a crumbled wet almost white handkerchief. We curved up a driveway and I was finally able to peel myself off the springs that sprung under a thin coating of ...

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Dobby The Sailor Mon

Weekly Contest #360

Dobby stood in front of me, a bushy-headed, freaky sort of person. A powerful tall frame with a coffee au lait complexion and hazel eyes. He smoked a thick spliff of Jamaican ganja and smiled a lot. I was interviewing him, with a couple of rums, on his first time out on a schooner. ‘I was about fourteen, I think, and you worked in those days from a mere tite… I was fourteen and tough; could run faster than anyone on the Island, West Shore, at least and we was the fastest on the Island. ‘Well, anyway, we set off just before the break of day o...

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Monkey Tale

Weekly Contest #356

Heppy lived in a small apartment right in the centre of the ‘Mo, short of Fillmore District in San Francisco. The neighbourhood used to be rough with fights, very loud music and the occasional shots. I loved it as a kid growing up sort of like in the wild west. When he passed there were a lot of people at the funeral. Heppy was well liked by most of the people acquainted with him in the ‘Mo. Even after we moved to the Haight Ashbury he used to go back to the ‘Mo to come home smelling of Kansas City brick roasted barbecue ribs. He would take ...

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Revolution

Weekly Contest #354

Pops could be heard before I could define my city’s shape…cracks and pops, quiet, then more of either. At first I assumed the noises a celebration of some type but easily they grew into being guns firing in the joy and anger of revolution. Within the haze of the port city spiralled funnels of smoke were reaching toward the mountain peaks that joined the clouds. Grey strips in the tree green of life. But the city sparkled as it always did around this time of day with a sun just leaving morning knowing it will continue to make us a day. I look...

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Timing

Weekly Contest #352

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 slum...

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