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Ian Craine

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2024

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32 Stories

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Post-Op and Cobalt Blue

Weekly Contest #351

POST-OP AND COBALT BLUE The night ward was a tent, and he was in the jungle; noise and chatter clattered through his dreams. His mind was light and frayed and full of chimeras. Every time he closed his eyes some weird, disjointed imagery took him gradually away from logical thought. Little by little the anaesthetic loosed its grip. He begged to go. His doctor concurred though nurses demurred. They let him go, discharging him too soon, freeing him of their support. Motivation is the key to life; there must be will. He wanted only to ...

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THE LION OF HAGGARD MIEN: A X-Special Exercise in Inclusivity

Weekly Contest #350

THE LION OF HAGGARD MIEN- A X-Special Exercise in Inclusivity Once upon a time there was an old lion who lived in a small village somewhere in the South of England called Haggard Mien. It lay snuggled in the Dent Valley between the almost equally small villages of Upper Denture and Lower Denture. There wasn’t much to do in Haggard Mien so the lion spent most of his time either lying under the big oak on the village green or sitting at the bar of the only pub, the Fox and Fabulist, run by the agreeable landlord David Palin-Dromish. Most of t...

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A Clash of Civilisations, A Song of Redemption

Weekly Contest #348

A CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS, A SONG OF REDEMPTION Part I: From Westport to the Nueces RiverThey came for him as the night set on a dark and bloody ground. They came with saws, and boards and sodden rags that they pushed between his teeth. He fought them with a ferocity that had lurked unseen deep inside of him. Yes, even he who would see three civil wars with all their hatred and hurt. He lay on the soaked ground breathing heavily. He was alone. Had he woken from a final delayed dream of battle or was he already in some other land? Painfully h...

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Moving On

Weekly Contest #343

CW: Grief MOVING ONRidley sat in his chair and his breath was audible. The conversation had flagged. It was a long time since his son and his daughter had visited together. Well not really together- they had come from opposite ends of the country. Jasper was a go-getter or thought he was. He was a solicitor, but he was clearly more interested in his Bristol property empire. Ridley suspected he was over-exposed; there had been hints of borrowing money which Ridley had pretended not to pick up on. He knew the boy was too proud to ask directly....

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Reedsying and Writing, but no 'Rithmatic: Meditations on Perspective

Weekly Contest #340

REEDYSING AND WRITING BUT NO ’RITHMETIC Meditations on Perspective It was Monday evening. She must have come across the fields. There she was sitting across the bench from me. It was a late spring evening and it already seemed warm enough to sit outside the pub. The sun was low in the sky and its light was flashing through the trees on the edge of the fields. It was right behind Ruby.“Tell the story through Quentin”, she said.It seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should say that. I’d been wrestling with my Fau...

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Loup de Mer and Nothing Soup

Weekly Contest #333

LOUP DE MER AND NOTHING SOUPNOTE there is nothing sensitive here (bar a couple of mentions of cancer, the before to this story's after). Indeed there is little conflict and no drama. Sorry to anybody who thinks that's boring. But this is about good food and good friends. And I wish everybody here a Happy Christmas. His friends came over on the Balthazar and arrived on the beach just as Johnny was sweeping down the stone forecourt. It was the first time they had seen him in quite a while, Brian and Liz and Karen. They all wore shorts and t-sh...

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A Tale of Two Storms

Weekly Contest #332

A TALE OF TWO STORMSLuke Cottrell leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped round the back of his neck. He was a big man but the man who had just come in off the street was bigger. A cold presence met an even colder one.“Can I help you?”“Heard you were looking for bounty hunters.”“Big demand now the War’s over”“Mopping up time”Cottrell looked at the fellow and gave him a slow nod.“Yeah. You got a name”“You can call me Hendriksen”“All I need it for. You a Dutchie”.“No I kill Dutchies before breakfast.”Cottrell did not respond.“Came from Den...

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In Bed as Winter Takes Hold

Weekly Contest #331

IN BED AS WINTER TAKES HOLDHe slept on the left hand side of the bed as he had done with all his girlfriends. He was restless; he could not throw off the memory of the performance they had attended. It wasn’t the music as much as the story. He couldn’t leave it be, and the more he realised that the more concerned and restless he became. Pauline was sleeping. She too seemed a little uneasy. She was snoring more loudly than usual and it was less regular, almost musical in its cadences. He felt trapped though he didn’t know why. There was nothi...

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In Khorezm

Weekly Contest #328

The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some more real substance in the invisible fabric. Sir Thomas Browne IN KHOREZM From the journals of al-Biruni (973-1050) Ghazni 418AH And did I dream you also, Roxalana? The seventh child of a seventh child. Seven sisters all called Roxalana and no...

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St Paul's Cathedral (a fragment; a shaggy cat story)

Weekly Contest #327

ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL (a fragment; a shaggy cat story)In his youth Chris fronted a bar blues band. He was tall and blond and charismatic. Phil was the lead guitarist, more intense, kept his head down as he played. Mike, Chris’s brother, played bass and like the rest of the band favoured black and brown pullovers. Mike hated summer when you were supposed to wear bright colours. Russ was the drummer, and kept himself a little apart from the others. Of course there was another bar blues band starting up in those days. In fact they were myriad but...

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Histories of the Sea

Weekly Contest #324

HISTORIES OF THE SEA Part 1- In Times Immemorial Cuckoo wrasse change gender. Male sea horses give birth, their young emitted like spurts of semen. Portuguese man o’war create houses of multiple occupation. And all the strange creatures too that forsook the sea that was once their common home. At first they lived ambivalently before declaring that terra firma was their permanent and only home. Some took to the skies, others found new eggless ways to procreate. Fierce beasts roamed the earth so the more timid and vulnerable made trees their ...

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A Young Woman's Guide to Ambition

Weekly Contest #322

A YOUNG WOMAN’S GUIDE TO AMBITIONThey used to say (maybe some still do) that ambition is what gets you out of bed of a morning. Though it does depend on the ambition. If you want to write a novel why bother? Write the novel by all means. But do you need to get out of bed? Is ambition a good thing? The obvious answer is, depends on the ambition. Yeees. But it’s a little more complicated isn’t it. Why do people have ambitions? Maybe they want to be famous. Maybe they want to be rich. Maybe they want to be fulfilled. In this day and age we migh...

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Orlando Juvenescens- A Reverse History of the Knight

Weekly Contest #317

ORLANDO JUVENESCENS- A Reverse History of the Knight In Memoriam Lodovico Ariosto 1474-1533 The stirrup made the knight. A man and a horse are separate creatures and the man chooses the trappings he puts on the horse. A man can ride a horse without bridle or harness or saddle or shoe. He can certainly ride without stirrups. But a knight cannot. A knight is a composite of man and horse. When the man dismounts at the end of the day he may still be addressed as “Good Sir Knight of…” but he knows he is really only a knight when he sits astride...

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Closing In

Weekly Contest #316

CLOSING IN“Look at those trees”, she said.She had already been gazing at them for some while, How their long thin leafy tops reacted to the autumn wind. How the centre held but the outer layers with nowhere to blow except outwards all went their separate ways before returning to the others. This Rosy carefully explained to Derek as they sat on the park bench.“You know I think on the return they hug each other tighter than ever”Derek was not over-imaginative as far as tree behaviour was concerned but he felt Rosy was saying something about th...

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TALES OF RAGGED ALBION

Weekly Contest #313

TALES OF RAGGED ALBIONAnd this was Albion, the White Land. A ragged place, a ragged remnant of old Rome left to its own succour. There is darkness everywhere, The darkness of the Irish and Scots pirates to the west, the wild Picts of the north, and the grim Saxons and Frisians in the East. Lost legionaries whose shouts still echo. Empires of marble, we hear your peoples scream. They flee into forests and crawl through briar, their lips crimson with the juice of berries. Terror has made a palimpsest of their minds. Lesions and boils spread on...

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