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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

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150 Stories

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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 fi...

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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 smiled and...

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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 Se...

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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 fa...

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Developing Story

The Longest DeadlineA Seabrook Viking StoryMonday, 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.Jo...

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Swim Meet

COUNTDOWNTen.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, shampoo, athletic tape, and th...

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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 sure how he...

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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 pro...

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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 sam...

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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 eastern...

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Kira Dawnseeker & The Bridge of Ten Thousand Steps

The first thing Kira Dawnseeker heard was the bells.Not the bells of the monastery.Not the bronze bells of the city gates.These were deeper.Slower.Wrong.Dong.The sound rolled through the mountains, shook loose pebbles from the cliffs, and vanished into the blackness behind her.Kira ran.Her boots struck stone. Her breath came in ragged bursts. The silver clasp at her throat had gone cold enough to burn her skin.Behind her, somewhere beyond the veil of pine and mist, came the scrape of thousands of feet.The Revenants were coming.They did not r...

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Bite, Type, Swallow, Repeat

At 11:43 in the morning, the Viking newsroom entered a state of emergency.No alarms sounded.No one shouted.Nobody ran through the halls carrying a stack of papers while screaming, “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”There was simply a moment—a precise, almost imperceptible moment—when everyone at the Seabrook Viking realized that the deadline was no longer something in the future.It was here.The clock on the wall said 11:43.The front-page deadline was 2:00 p.m.The second edition had to be uploaded by 3:00.And the printer deadline was 3:30.Thr...

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Speak To Me, Friend

“I tell you they gather where the fog is thickest.”The old man lifted a trembling finger toward the harbor window.“Not rats. Not gulls. Not smugglers.”He smiled with the broken dignity of a man who had once expected respect.“The children with glass eyes.”The sailors laughed.The Chinese proprietor merely sighed and continued tending the brazier.Outside, London's East End vanished beneath a yellow fog that swallowed ships, warehouses, and men alike.Inside the opium den, no one believed Mr. Edwin Ashcombe.No one, perhaps, except me.I first met ...

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This Calls For Wisdom

The morning the world changed, Daniel Mercer did not fall to his knees.Everyone around him did.His apartment building echoed with screams. A mother pounded on the door across the hall, crying for a daughter who had simply...vanished. Cars crashed into storefronts. A city bus rolled through an intersection before colliding with a fountain because its driver was gone.Daniel watched everything unfold from the window of his tenth-floor apartment with his coffee still in his hand."No," he muttered. "No, there has to be an explanation."There alway...

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The Way of the Centurion

The hammering had never bothered Octavius Antonius Sulla before.Iron striking iron.Nails biting wood.The dull, wet sound when flesh surrendered.He had been a soldier of Rome for nearly twenty years. Germania. Judea. Syria. Egypt.Death was simply another order.Carry it out.Do not think.Do not remember.Yet now, years later, he still heard one hammer.Not all the others.Only one.He had stood on Golgotha beneath a blackened sky.Three condemned men.One Galilean.The Galilean had not cursed.That alone had unnerved him.Most men screamed.Some spat.Som...

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