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H.e. Ross

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2023

Stories

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32 Followers

7 Following

76 Stories

1312 karma pts

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Big Pete

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #219

Big Pete thought. It occurred to him that he was thinking. I think somebody is listening to me think.‘Ah, the patient awakes, Monty.’ The voice echoed through a pale darkness. ‘Untie his eye blinders, Monty. Okay, the blindfold, idiot. Let him see the light.’Pete thought he heard a chuckle as he saw his eyelashes raising and brightness penetrating his head in spear points and lightening strokes. He thought it unusual to be thinking so eloquently and thought it strange to use these descriptive phrases. He wondered, as the pain resumed its way...

15 likes

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Merger

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #216

 Tomas was pissed. From my Merger rental he marched along the highway stumbling in ruts and over branches making him more and more angry. He delighted in kicking coconut sheathings out of his way. It was black dark. Trees all lining the highway road. No lights. He knew there was a mountain climbing straight up on one side of the roadway. He knew there was still sea a short distance through the brush on the other. There was no moon. There were lots of mosquitoes, no wind, humid. Tomas was pissed. He tore his wet shirt off, got attac...

14 likes

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Through the Valley of Volcanoes to the lake of shimmering light

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #215

The train pulled to a stop with a lot of shuddering at the mainland seaport of San Carlos near the top of the Sea of Cortez. They got off. The journey from the border was too much. The train felt as though it had no springs and every little bump registered on their backsides. They were told that the connecting train to Mexico City was more comfortable and had sleeping compartments. If it were true then that would be great. For the moment they wanted a bed in a non-moving hotel and they found one, called the Mar Vista that had not only a view...

8 likes

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Passage

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #214

It was on the third day out that they both wanted to call somebody to pick them up. I was bringing dinner up one plate at a time. Damian took his plate and made the announcement. I smiled. ‘Damian,’ I had to look up at the sky and not at him. Little puffs of cloud on a stark and clear deep blue. ‘where do you think you are? You aren’t really asking to be picked up by somebody, are you?’ He nodded and Mark, behind him, was nodding too. I came up out of the cabin and looked around at the rise of an oncoming swell framed by an empty horizon ...

9 likes

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Fido

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #213

 I got Fido at the local pound, or animal rescue service, by mistake or accident. I went to get a terrier and found one but in the next cage was a almost long haired puppy cowering in the shadows of a corner. The terrier knew he had me and was jumping up and down with expectations flowing from his half mouthed tongue, so I got the puppy. Fido was beautifully thankful and I felt like a true parent maybe because of his fix on me as his leader and teacher. Our relationship was never owner/master and dog. From the first moment out of t...

7 likes

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Monkey Tale

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #212

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. I liked him but of course he was my father. Heppy lived for the American Legion. He was a veteran of the First World War and had lied about his age to...

9 likes

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The Bar

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #211

 The Bar It was the kind of rain that people ran through to avoid. Hard drops of cold wet that went through street clothes and what is called rainwear. The worst thing about the cold breezy rain was the darkness of night. There is nothing worse, in the normal course of life, that nature gives us then a cold, windy rainy nightÖ unless you were in front of a fireplace looking over at a window at what you do not have to be inÖ then, there are fewer pleasures greater. The sailor sat at a fireplace on a wooden backed bench with his legs st...

6 likes

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Marina

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #210

Marina’s world was a play world. She and her friends loved to go into the wild and create worlds of  kind rulers and just systems for all. Of course Marina only knew the ‘all’ of the wealthy since the perimeter of her ‘wild’ was fenced in and guarded. Marina was a princess and her father and mother ruled their lands. Marina’s ‘friends’ were enslaved children from lands that her parents had conquered. Marina’s father was over protective of his daughter who he considered the most beautiful girl ever imagined. In his thinking if he al...

5 likes

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Tijuana at Five

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #209

Words woke me and I looked up through the smell of car mustiness and petrol to a smiling moustache on a strange face. I was still curled in the darkness of the backseat and didn’t know if it had been on a long drive or if we had arrived in Mexico. I didn’t know if I was awake but I did know that we were sitting still now with the engine still vibrating. The moustache man wore dark glasses under a slouchy light brown military kind of hat with a shiny bill. I saw brown skin and a smile but he was just a blur with a background of glaring lights...

6 likes

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Happy Day In Her Cove

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #208

I don’t know where to start. I guess the boat would should be the way to start the story, sir. See, my boat was my life and well, let me begin. The day could have been better but with hopes for a breeze we set out under power. The water was grey, the sky was that kind of somber grey that sort of blended with the bay waters and it just didn’t look good for a sail, but I wanted to impress her, so off we went chugging along. Not even a swell, so the boat moved steadily without any yawing or anything like that. It was like we were driving a ca...

4 likes

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BLINK

H.e. Ross

I woke knowing that I shouldn’t have been asleep. I felt guilty and wet and not sure why. There was something poking my side and I opened my eyes. I was sitting in my half full of water cockpit with a sea above me of green with irregular little web patterns of white foam rising upward. No, I was going down. A rushing sound turned my head upward to thick grey cloud. It was time to force tiredness away. I cupped my hands full of water and splashed my face, noticing that I had wedged the tiller to the lee side of the boat. My legs told me ...

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Boone

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #204

Sound, in the true desert, is a force that catches you unawares always. In the bleakness of sand and scrub a shack adjoins a small house with two horses tied to a hitching post leaning their heads down standing aside the wall trying to stay in the shade and out of the hot mid afternoon sun. Inside, through a still, blanketed doorway and thick adobe walls is a dark room, cool by desert standards. There is a bar of thick oak planks atop a row of barrels. In front of the bar are two white cowboys in leather chaps and worn suit coats. ...

9 likes

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Tijuana at Five

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #203

Words woke me and I looked up through the smell of must and gas to a smiling moustache on a strange face. I was still curled in the car’s darkness. I didn’t know if it had been on a long drive or if we had arrived in Mexico. I didn’t even know if I was awake but I did know that we were sitting still now with the engine still vibrating. The moustache man wore dark glasses under a slouchy light brown military kind of hat with a shiny bill. I saw brown skin and a smile but he was just a blur with a background of glaring lights against a pale wa...

6 likes

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WINDOWS

H.e. Ross

WINDOWS  I. ARRIVAL 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...

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Am I Here?

H.e. Ross

Weekly Contest #199

Am I Here? H.E. Ross My city is seven miles by seven miles, maybe a little more or less on either side but essentially is a round-edged square. San Francisco is the kind of place you come to or leave. All of my life’s memories of that beautiful place are captured in rum and ice movements with only one big and important memory-box showing me sitting still and that was the day I started sailing. I sat on a rock beneath a small port entry light at the Marina Green and saw for the first time slanted sails driving spear blade hulls through foa...

8 likes

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