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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

Stories
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33 Followers
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150 Stories

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The Butterfly Collector

The road to San Quentin narrows the way all roads to prisons do, as if the state itself is trying to funnel you away from the choice. Sam Ihle watched the bay flatten into gray glass beyond the concertina and felt twenty-three again, which was not a feeling he enjoyed. Jeannie Wright had called him into her office that morning. The Seabrook Viking News had new carpet since Patrick McKean left and the smell still clung to everything, chemical and optimistic. Jeannie was thirty-four, editor-in-chief, McKean's handpicked successor, and she wor...

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The Order of the Golden Cat

Mara Ellison had not come to Alden University to find a secret society. She had come for the archives, for Professor Haldane's legendary seminar on funerary ritual, and for the quiet thrill of handling ostraca older than nations. Her roommate, Priya, joked that Mara could date a potsherd. Jonah Reyes, her best friend from undergrad and fellow history graduate student, had come for similar reasons, though his obsession was not pots but cats. Specifically, Bastet. It started on a Tuesday in October, in the basement of Whitmore Hall. The hist...

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Bravo 6, Going Dark

The inflatable Combat Rubber Raiding Craft cut black water off Coronado at 0300 and Maxwell "Max" Steele was trying not to puke. He was twenty-four, a farm kid from Nebraska who had joined the Navy because corn made him claustrophobic, and now he was Bravo 4 in SEAL Team Three's newest element. The surf was high, the January cold was a knife in his wetsuit, and the instructor screaming from the chase boat had told them this would be a simple insertion. Nothing about becoming a SEAL was simple. Next to him, trying to keep the boat from flip...

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The Men Behind The Shadows

At 2:13 in the morning, Daniel Voss discovered that the man in the gray suit had been following him for six blocks. He knew this because the man had passed the same newspaper box three times. Daniel stopped beneath a streetlamp. The man stopped, too. Daniel looked behind himself. Empty sidewalk. Then he looked forward again. The man was gone. Daniel's heart began beating faster. "See?" he whispered. The streetlamp hummed overhead. "See what?" asked a voice beside him. Daniel jumped. A woman stood in the doorway of a closed bakery, smoking a ...

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Cheater, Cheater

The apartment smelled like old pizza boxes and fresh coffee, which was Sam Ihle's natural state of being. The Viking News crime reporter had spent three years being called Clark Kent by everyone in the newsroom because he wore the same cheap blue blazer to press conferences, kept his hair parted too neatly, wore the same glasses, and had a habit of disappearing right when a story broke and reappearing with a notebook full of details no one else had. Tonight, there was no blazer. There was a faded Yale sweatshirt with a hole in the left cuff...

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Headless Henry

The first time Milo Alvarez saw Headless Henry, it was during third period algebra. West Side High smelled like old wax and cheap disinfectant, the kind of smell that never really left the linoleum no matter how many times they mopped it. Room 204 had that afternoon light that made dust visible, slanting in from the tall windows that faced the football field. Mrs. Chen was writing quadratic equations on the board, her marker squeaking. Milo was not good at math. He was good at noticing things. Henry was standing in the back corner, by the...

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Moon River, Wider Than A Mile

Sam had lied about eating the last chocolate chip cookie. He had lied about being almost home when he was still twenty minutes away. Once, during a particularly desperate game of hide-and-seek with their nieces, he had claimed to be in the garage while actually crouching behind a stack of winter coats. Tonight, however, was different. Tonight, he was lying for romance. “Where are we going?” Jodie asked from the passenger seat. “Somewhere.” “That is not an answer.” “It is technically an answer.” “It is technically an evasive maneuver.” Sam sm...

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The Hotel That Kept The Missing

Sam Ihle had learned that every good crime story began with something that did not fit. The reports coming out of Redwater, Texas, did not fit. Redwater was a small ranching town three hours west of Houston, depending on which road a person took and how many times he stopped for coffee. For most of the year, it was quiet enough that the local police blotter could be printed on a postcard. Then, over the previous six months, burglaries, assaults, frauds, arsons, and increasingly bizarre cases had multiplied. Sam was the crime reporter for the...

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The People on the List

August 31, 2026 — 11:47 P.M. The first rule of time travel, Mara discovered, was that nobody ever told you what the rules were. There was no handbook. No orientation. No kindly old professor standing beside a humming machine saying, Now, Mara, whatever you do, don't step on a butterfly. There was only the watch. Mara had found it in a box that had belonged to her grandfather. It was an ugly thing: brass, heavy, scratched across the lid, with a tiny glass window set into the back. It had no hands. Instead, it had six names engraved around its...

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Developing Story

The Longest Deadline A Seabrook Viking Story Monday, March 3 — 7:14 A.M. The first thing Sam Ihle noticed was that nobody in the newsroom was talking. That was unusual. The Seabrook Viking newsroom was almost never quiet. There were ringing phones, clattering keyboards, reporters shouting questions across the room, the occasional printer jam, and Pat McKean’s booming voice reminding somebody that a deadline was not, in fact, a suggestion. But that morning, the newsroom had fallen into an uneasy silence. Sam stopped just inside the door. Jodi...

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Swim Meet

COUNTDOWN Ten. The alarm rang. Maya Chen slapped blindly at the alarm clock on her nightstand. Nine. She missed. The alarm continued screaming. Eight. “Come on…” She found the button. Seven. Silence. Maya lay there, staring at the ceiling. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. She sat upright. Today was the day. The Pinewood Pirates were going to the semifinals. And they were swimming against the Timberwolves. By six-thirty that morning, Pinewood High School's natatorium was already vibrating. The Pirates' locker room smelled of chlorine, shampo...

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The General’s Bunker

When Daniel Mercer inherited the bunker, he expected nothing at all. The will was read on a gray Thursday morning in the conference room of a law office downtown. Daniel sat alone at the long walnut table, his hands folded, listening to an attorney named Miriam Cole explain the arrangements. “Your grandfather left the majority of his estate to you.” Daniel blinked. “Gramps?” “Yes.” “He had two sons.” “Your grandfather was quite explicit.” Daniel looked down at the papers. General Mercer had been dead for eleven days. Daniel wasn't entirely s...

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Bob Tickletorch

My name is Bob. Bob Tickletorch. Yes, that is my name. No, I did not choose it. And yes, I have heard every joke. “Bob Tickletorch? What kind of name is that?” “Are you a dragon or a children's toy?” “Does your torch tickle?” “No, thank you, I already have a dragon.” That last one doesn't even make sense. Humans are strange. I should know. I have spent most of my life among them. I am a luck dragon. Not a dragon who breathes fire, sleeps on mountains of gold, and kidnaps princesses. That is a completely different department. My kind deals in...

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The Lion’s Shield

The last thing Lance Shields did as a New York City police officer was close a door. Not a metaphorical door. Not yet. A real one. It was the heavy glass-and-metal door of the precinct's locker room, the kind that never quite shut without a shove. Lance put his palm against it, gave it the customary push, and listened as the latch caught with a hollow metallic click. Behind that door were two empty lockers. One had belonged to him. The other had belonged to Trystan Lyons. For twenty-three years, Lance Shields and Trystan Lyons had worn the s...

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The Maharaja's Crates

The first crate arrived shortly after midnight. It came beneath a canvas sheet, lashed to the bed of an ox cart that looked as though it had been hauling grain since the days of the Maharaja's grandfather. The oxen snorted clouds into the cool night air. Somewhere beyond the palace walls, a temple bell sounded the hour. No one watching from the palace balcony would have suspected that beneath the sacks of rice and burlap were rifles. Maharaja Arvind Singh knew otherwise. He stood in the darkness beneath the carved sandstone arches of his eas...

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