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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

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30 Followers
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150 Stories

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As You Wish

The first time the plow struck metal, Elias thought he had broken something important.The sound rang wrong against the steady rhythm of soil and iron—a sharp, hollow note that did not belong to earth. He halted the mule, wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, and crouched down into the furrow. His fingers brushed aside clumps of dark soil until something dull and yellowed emerged, half-buried like a relic that had grown tired of hiding.It was a lamp.Not the kind his wife kept on the table for evenings—no, this was older, curved in an el...

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Rule #3

The rules were never written down.They didn’t need to be.Everyone who survived long enough learned them the same way you learned fire burned or that broken glass cut—through pain, through loss, through the quiet, irreversible arithmetic of cause and effect.Rule #1: No loud noises. It attracts the Sleepers.Rule #2: Always go for the head or neck.Rule #3: Someone gets bit, they get the hit.Boom. One shot. Mercy, if you could call it that.Eli Carter had never broken a rule.Not once.Not in the five years since the Outbreak turned the world into ...

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Welcome Home, Elena

The listing had been sitting for months, the way certain houses sit in photographs—caught between memory and neglect, waiting for someone to decide what they are worth.“Seven acres,” Elena said, scrolling slowly, reverently, like she was reading Scripture. “Original farmhouse, late 1800s. Restored greenhouse. Barn, stables, paddock. And look at that silo—oh my goodness, Daniel, that silo is gorgeous.”Daniel leaned over her shoulder, not really looking at the silo.He was looking at the shadows behind it.“Mm,” he said, noncommittal. “Yeah. Gor...

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Suspicious Minds

The newsroom of the Seabrook Viking News was never truly quiet.Even at nine in the evening, when the sun had long since dipped behind the low skyline and the fluorescent lights hummed overhead, there was always something—keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the distant whir of the printing press below like a heartbeat beneath the building.Sam Ihle sat hunched at his desk, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, glasses sliding down his nose as he stared at a blinking cursor.He had been staring at it for a while.“Writer’s block?” a voice called.Sam f...

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The Story Michael Had Been Telling Himself

TRIGGER WARNING: Deals with the subject of racism and racial biases. Michael Brown had always believed he knew the truth.Not the kind of truth you argue about on talk shows or in comment sections. Not the kind you hedge with “on the one hand” and “on the other.” His truth was simple, solid, inherited—like a family heirloom passed down without question.Family is everything. Community is everything. And the world outside of it? Dangerous. Oppressive. Not to be trusted.That was the lesson.It had been told to him in stories at the dinner tab...

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Starry, Starry Night

The first time it happened, Daniel Mercer thought he was dying.There was no flash of light, no dramatic tearing of reality—just a sudden, violent absence. One moment he stood in his cramped apartment kitchen, staring at a sink full of dishes and a life that felt like it had quietly gone wrong somewhere along the way. The next—He was somewhere else.The air smelled different. Thicker. Earthier. There was the faint scent of oil paint and tobacco smoke. And silence—not the hum of refrigerators or distant traffic, but a rural quiet that pressed g...

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I Have So Many Miles To Go

The old gray Volkswagen Beetle rattled softly like a patient old horse that had long ago accepted its job.Father Lance Lake rested his elbow on the open window and let the cool Maine air roll through the car. Pine trees stretched along the road in tall ranks, like silent monks keeping vigil over the highway. The parish rectory had disappeared behind him an hour ago, but he still felt it in the rearview mirror.Ten years.Ten years at St. Brendan’s Parish in Bar Harbor. Ten years of baptisms and funerals, parish festivals and late-night confess...

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Eden

The taxi stopped before a tall brick wall veiled in ivy.Jennifer McQueen sat in the back seat for a moment longer than necessary, fingers resting on the leather strap of her suitcase. Beyond the wall rose the quiet silhouette of the convent of the Poor Clares—not imposing exactly, but firm, like a place that had no need to shout to be heard.The driver glanced back.“You sure this is it?”Jennifer looked out the window again.The iron gate stood half open. Beyond it lay a gravel path, a garden, and a low chapel crowned with a cross that caught t...

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Seabrook Watergate

Subject Line: Something Doesn’t Add UpFrom: Jodie Williams, Political Reporter – Seabrook Viking NewsTo: Pat McKean, Editor-in-ChiefTime: 6:11 AMPat,I’ve been staring at precinct returns since four in the morning.Either the universe broke the laws of probability or someone in Seabrook cheated.Julie Hayes didn’t lose that election.Call me.—Jodie Phone Call Transcript6:14 AMPat McKean: Jodie… it’s barely dawn.Jodie Williams: I know what time it is.Pat: Please tell me you’re not about to accuse the city government of—Jodie: Fraud.Pat: You said ...

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Virginia

Virginia.Caleb Turner said the name under his breath as if it were a prayer, a plea, and a farewell all at once.The morning fog lay low across the fields beyond the road, soft and pale like the breath of ghosts rising from the earth. The war had ended three years ago, yet the land still carried its wounds. Fences lay broken. Chimneys stood alone like gravestones where houses had once been. The old Turner farm—what remained of it—sat behind him, its roof half gone, its porch sagging like an old man’s back.He kept walking.Behind him, Virginia ...

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Oahu Sunrise

The sky over Oahu still belonged to the night when the friends arrived.Dark blue lingered over the horizon like a curtain that had not yet been drawn back. The ocean breathed slowly against the sand, each wave gliding in with a hush that felt almost reverent. Palm fronds swayed in the early trade winds. The air held that faint, sweet coolness that exists only in the last quiet moments before dawn.Seven friends stepped down onto the beach, their footprints the only marks in the untouched sand.They carried simple things.Paper bags warm with su...

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Seven Friends, Three Things Wrong, and 2,983 Miles to Aurora

Jack Marino’s plan was perfect.That was the first problem.The van was the centerpiece of the plan: a faded sunflower-yellow Volkswagen bus from the late seventies that Jack had borrowed from his uncle Sal, who had once lived in it for an entire summer while following a band around the country.“Authenticity,” Jack had said when the others asked why he didn’t just rent a car.The van sat outside the dorms at New York University, looking like it had rolled straight out of a vintage postcard. The paint was chipped. Peace signs decorated the doors...

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Eight Spirits

A Story Inspired by Matthew 12:43–45 and Luke 11:24–26 The first time Father Tristan Greene came to the Mendes house, it had been raining.A thin, steady rain that turned the streetlights into blurry halos and left the sidewalks slick and glistening. Tristan remembered it clearly because rain always made him think of baptism—water washing away what should not remain.That night, they had faced one.One voice that was not the girl’s.One presence twisting through the house like smoke.One long night of prayer, scripture, and the stubborn endura...

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The Traveling Man

The suitcase lay open on the bed in the cheap motel room, its faded blue lining looking far too small for a man’s whole life.Jesse Carpenter stood over it with his hands on his hips.He had faced a lot of things in his thirty years—winter winds on construction sites, twelve-hour shifts framing houses, angry subcontractors, broken guitars, long nights on lonely highways—but nothing quite like this.How did you fit your whole life in one suitcase?He scratched the stubble on his chin and looked around the room.The neon sign outside flickered red...

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Road Trip Playlist

The car hummed along the highway like a low, patient animal.Six hours and twenty-one minutes.Sam Ihle had checked the route twice before they left Seabrook at dawn. Interstate, state highway, interstate again, then the long approach north toward the gray waters of the bay and the prison perched like a fortress over them.San Quentin.He didn’t say the name out loud.The sun had just cleared the low fog when the first song began on Sam’s carefully assembled playlist. Johnny Cash’s voice—live, raw, echoing with prison acoustics—rolled out of the ...

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