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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

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150 Stories

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Can You Hear Them, The Ghosts of Culloden?

The wind off Drumossie Moor had teeth.Fergus MacDonald felt it even though he no longer should have. It cut through the long wool coat he’d borrowed from another century, threaded its way beneath the collar, whispered against skin that had not warmed itself since April of 1746. The wind carried the smell of peat and damp earth and old sorrow, and it stirred the coarse grass that bent and straightened again like penitents at prayer.Culloden.He had sworn—by God, by the saints, by the blood in his veins that was no longer blood—that he would ne...

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In Conclusion

They had picked the booth because it was still there.That was the first thing Jonah noticed when he walked into Murphy’s Diner—the chipped vinyl seat by the window, the wobble in the table, the faint smell of burnt coffee that never quite left the place. Everything else had been updated in the way old places pretended to be new: sleeker menus, a chalkboard with artisanal nonsense written in looping handwriting, Edison bulbs hanging like they were trying too hard to be nostalgic.But the booth? The booth had survived.“Do you remember…” Jonah s...

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Fancy Meeting You Here

Sam Ihle first saw Melissa Sass reflected in the glass of the coffee shop pastry case.It was the laugh that did it. Not loud—Melissa had never been loud—but pitched just so, airy and confident, like she’d always known she was being listened to. The sound cut through the murmur of Seabrook’s Saturday morning crowd and lodged itself somewhere behind Sam’s ribs, a place he’d boarded up years ago and labeled Do Not Enter.He froze mid-reach for a blueberry scone.For one absurd, treacherous half-second, his heart did what it used to do back in Mic...

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My Tribe

Sam Ihle learned early how to disappear without leaving the room.It started in elementary school, the kind with low ceilings and scuffed linoleum floors that smelled faintly of milk cartons and disinfectant. Sam was the kid with his nose always in a book—thick ones, usually, with dragons or footnotes or both. He wore glasses that slid down his nose no matter how often he pushed them back up, and he spoke with the careful diction of a boy who thought before he talked. That alone would have been enough.But Sam also loved the wrong things.He lo...

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Dearest Francesca

Dearest FrancescaBeing a correspondence preserved between the years 1862–1865Letter ICamp near Manassas Junction, VirginiaMay the 14th, 1862Dearest Francesca,I write to you by the light of a borrowed candle, its flame trembling as if it, too, were uncertain of the night. The men are settling into a restless sleep around me—some snoring, some murmuring prayers, some staring into the dark as though the darkness might answer back. I find that I cannot sleep, not while your face insists on appearing every time I close my eyes.Charleston feels a ...

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The Signal Beneath The Sand

The call came in at 4:17 a.m., the hour when truth is weakest and lies are most convincing.Dr. Mara Kline was awake anyway.She always was.The Nevada desert lay beyond the observation window—flat, moon-bleached, seemingly empty. A lie so old it had grown comfortable. Groom Lake shimmered faintly in the distance, the runway lights of Area 51 muted to pinpricks, as if embarrassed by their own existence.Mara closed the quantum telemetry readout she’d been pretending to analyze and answered the secure line.“Kline,” she said.“They’re here,” said C...

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Aslan

I know the sound of the house before it wakes.That is the first thing I know every morning: the way silence breathes. Walls sigh as the night loosens its grip. Pipes click like old bones. The refrigerator hums low, steady, the way a contented animal hums in its sleep. Even before my eyes open, my ears have already counted the rooms.Upstairs: three heartbeats. Downstairs: one clock, ticking too loudly, and the ghost of yesterday’s coffee.They think I wake when they wake.They are wrong.I wake when the world shifts—when intention stirs.My name ...

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The Perfect Contrapasso

I’m going to tell this straight, like it happened, because dressing it up would be a lie—and lies are what got people killed.The call came in just after dawn, when the city still smelled like wet concrete and old coffee. Red Hook. Warehouse district. Homicide.Detective Lance Shields was driving, one hand on the wheel, the other already fishing for a cigarette he wouldn’t light until we were out of the car. Lance always said he’d quit when the city stopped killing people in inventive ways. He was still smoking.“Red Hook,” he said. “Too early ...

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To Be Continued…

The room had been prepared hours earlier, though nothing about it felt prepared enough.The windows were shut and curtained. The lights were dim but not low—Father Tristan insisted on clarity. Darkness invited imagination; light revealed what was truly there. A small table stood against the far wall, draped in white linen, holding the crucifix, the holy water, the Ritual book, and the oil. The cross on the wall above the bed had been tightened earlier that morning; Father Galen remembered testing it himself, twisting the screw until it would ...

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They Say When It Rains, Angels Weep

Father Wayne McKnight anointed the forehead first.“In the name of the Father,” he said softly, thumb warm with oil, tracing the sign of the cross on skin that had grown thin and nearly translucent. The rain outside tapped at the hospice window in a steady, patient rhythm, as if the sky itself were kneeling.“And of the Son.”The man’s breathing was shallow now, a tide that barely reached the shore before retreating again. His name was Thomas Avery—Tom, everyone had called him once, though there was no one left in the room to say it now. No wed...

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The Quiet Between Battles

The bell over the door of St. Brigid’s Books & Bindery rang with a soft, apologetic chime as Father Lance Lake stepped inside, shaking rain from his umbrella and folding it with military precision before tucking it under his arm.The shop smelled like old paper, beeswax polish, and coffee that had been sitting on a warmer just a bit too long—the holy trinity of bookshops everywhere. Wooden shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, bowed slightly under the weight of theology, history, philosophy, poetry, and more than a few well-loved paper...

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All I Need Is A Little Coffee & A Whole Lot Of Jesus

The rain had finally spent itself.Not in a dramatic tapering-off, not with a last heroic peal of thunder or a cinematic bolt of lightning, but the way exhaustion ends things—quietly, almost sheepishly. When Father Tristan Greene pushed open the door of the house on Willow Row, the hinges no longer screamed in protest. The wind had gone slack. The air smelled rinsed clean, like wet stone and crushed leaves, and the early sun lay across the street in pale gold bands, warming puddles into steam.He stepped out into the morning like a man resurfa...

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Adventure At Waverly Hills Sanatorium

They parked at the bottom of the hill and shut the engine off at the same time, the sudden quiet making the cicadas sound louder than they had any right to be. Waverly Hills Sanatorium loomed above them, its long brick body stretched across the crest like a sleeping animal that might wake if disturbed too loudly.“Still can’t believe this place was a tuberculosis hospital,” Cedric said, craning his neck to look up. “You’d think sunshine and fresh air, not… this.”“That’s why it’s up here,” Kurt replied. He was the oldest, or at least he carrie...

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The White Oak

The box arrived on a Tuesday, which Roseanne Van Helsing would later decide mattered.Tuesdays were supposed to be quiet. Tuesdays were grading days, laundry days, days when the world politely kept its distance and allowed her to exist unnoticed. Nothing ever arrived on Tuesdays except bills and grocery flyers and the occasional catalog she never remembered subscribing to.So when the parcel sat on her doorstep—long, narrow, wrapped in brown paper and tied with actual twine—she stopped short like she’d found a snake sunning itself on the welco...

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Have We Met Before?

They always met the same way.Not with thunder or prophecy or a flash of light—but with a pause. A hesitation. A moment when the world seemed to lean in and hold its breath across vast oceans of time.And one of them would say, softly, uncertainly:“Have we met before?”I. Medieval England — 1191The abbey bells were ringing for terce when Eleanor spilled her basket of apples in the cloister garden.A knight in travel-stained mail bent at once to help her gather them. His hands were battle scarred, his movements careful, reverent—as if each apple ...

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