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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

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150 Stories

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The Reckoning of Lt. Carter Hayes

1. The Decision Lieutenant Carter Hayes crouched low in the dirt, his rifle pressed close to his chest. His eyes scanned the mud-walled compound at the base of the ridge, its silhouette etched against the Afghan dusk. Intelligence had said it was a Taliban stronghold. Drones had picked up chatter confirming three American contractors were being held inside.The order from command was clear: Hold position. Reinforcements ETA thirty minutes.But thirty minutes was too long.Carter’s pulse thudded in his ears as he whispered into his headset, “...

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The Very Thing She Hated

Part I: Legacy of AshesVivian Larios was sixteen when she first smelled the smoke of her father’s pyre. It carried with it cedar, sage, and iron, the old hunter’s way of ensuring the body could never be raised, never be defiled, never walk among the cursed he had hunted. The fire burned her eyes and lungs, but nothing seared her as much as the sight of him—strong hands folded over a chest scarred from years of war against the undead, now still, silenced, gone.They told her he died a hero. They told her his last act was driving a stake throug...

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The Moon Over Room 203

Oscar Reynolds was the kind of teacher the kids remembered long after they left third grade. He wore mismatched ties with cartoon numbers, told math jokes that landed only half the time, and had a habit of drawing little wolves in the margins of their worksheets as if the animals themselves were cheering the students on. The kids loved him. The parents tolerated his quirks. The principal admired his results—his students performed better than most, not because he drilled them endlessly, but because he had a way of making math feel alive.But w...

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The Lay of the Land

A Story from the Journals of Astoria Yee, Vice Principal of Bear Mountain High School I. MorningI loathe mornings.The sun should be my undoing. Should blister my flesh, curl my bones, reduce me to ash on the wind. That’s the natural order for my Kind. But Bear Mountain is no ordinary place. It sits on a web of ley lines—ancient, humming rivers of earth-magic that bend the rules of nature. Here, my people walk beneath daylight without smoke or scream, provided we stay inside the lattice of power. Step beyond the invisible threshold, and the s...

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Bloodbath In The Mayor’s Mansion

BLOODBATH IN THE MAYOR’S MANSIONBy Sam Ihle, Crime Correspondent, and Jodie Williams, Political ReporterSeabrook Viking News — August 27, 2025 A City Awakes to HorrorSeabrook awoke yesterday to the kind of news no community should ever have to confront: the violent, ritualistic-style murder of its sitting mayor, Elroy Oakes, and his family.Mayor Oakes, 58, was discovered in the basement of the Mayor’s Mansion along with two wives — his first and second — and their blended children, both step- and biological. Sources familiar with the scene d...

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The Longest Watch

The clock on the wall read 11:42 p.m.Most people Noah Klein knew were either asleep or winding down with a book or Netflix. His apartment lights blazed like a ship lit for battle.On the kitchen table:A sprawling hex-map of the world’s oceans in 1799, printed in high-res and laminated like a museum artifact.Laptops open to spreadsheets with labels like Quarterly Trade Revenues – East Indies.Graph paper crammed with doodles of cannons, flags, and figureheads.Dice—lots of dice—ranging from tiny four-siders to golf-ball-sized twenty-siders.And a...

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O Canada

1 — The FallDr. Emily Hayes had been in the cardiac wing for nearly twelve hours when it happened.A code blue on a patient she knew by name, by history, by every lab result for the past six months. She was at his bedside in seconds, barking orders, running compressions, calling for epi. She thought she’d brought him back—until the monitors told her otherwise.The autopsy called it a pulmonary embolism. The family called it negligence. The hospital called it a “failure of protocol.” The press dubbed it The Hayes Disaster and ran her photo—hair...

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Sun & Moon

It had been a thousand years since they’d spoken.Not since Delphi had fallen into ruin. Not since temples had become tourist traps and worshippers became scholars. Not since the twilight years of gods who no longer walked on marble but cement, whose names were now brand labels, tattoos, or hashtags.And not since Orion died.Artemis watched her twin through the scope of a high-powered telescope stationed on the edge of a Vermont forest. She didn’t need it. Her divine eyes could pick him out even in the shimmering crowd of Tokyo, if she wished....

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It Was The Hottest Day of the Year

It was the hottest day of the year...A day so hot that everyone wanted to be inside—inside a freezer, ideally. The kind of heat that made air conditioners groan like wounded beasts and dogs stretch themselves flat on cool tiles, tongues lolling. The kind of day when your sweat evaporated before it could finish falling off your body, like the sun was too impatient to wait for gravity to do its thing.It was so hot that you could cook breakfast on the hood of your car and make lunch on the sidewalk. Eggs, bacon, maybe some blistered tomatoes. T...

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Horacescopes: The Sniff of Destiny

Let me tell you something about dogs. People think we’re all tennis balls and tail wags, but there’s more. Some of us are watchers. Some are guardians. And me? I’m a reader. A seer. A sniffer of secrets.Name’s Horace. I’m a Husky. Yes, I’m blind. No, it’s not sad. It’s liberating. You try living without distractions like squirrels or whatever passes by the window. I see in scents, emotions, memories baked into the cracks of the sidewalk. I know when rain is coming by the way the wind tastes. And I know when something bigger is shifting in th...

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Summer Stars Over Donegal

The scent of turf smoke clung to the air like a lullaby, drifting in through the half-open window of the small room in Nana Sorcha’s house. The countryside outside was draped in a thick, pearly fog, the kind that seemed to hum with ancient lullabies, but inside the cramped bedroom, three boys shared a room far too small for so many limbs, dreams, and late-night whispers.One of them, the youngest by a few months, tossed and turned in his cot, the sheets twisted at his ankles.“I can’t sleep,” Sam Ihle muttered into the darkness.A soft grunt ca...

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Hot Off The Press

It was the kind of heat that melted time.Not the romantic kind of summer warmth that encouraged rooftop sunsets and lemon sorbet, but a suffocating, unforgiving blaze that turned Seabrook’s pavement into stovetops and crosswalks into griddles. The Viking News office—an aging three-story building that hadn’t seen a proper HVAC update since Clinton was president—felt like the inside of a dying toaster.At 9:04 AM, the staff of the Viking News was already sweating. Even the walls looked tired.The air vents groaned, coughed like a dying smoker, a...

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The Feather & the Heart

Hour 12: The Final Day BeginsThe room smelled faintly of lavender and old books. Outside, the sun crept across the windowsill of the hospice, illuminating the faint motes of dust like drifting stars. Marwa Abbas Sinclair, eighty years old to the day, lay curled like a comma beneath a crocheted quilt. She’d always hated that quilt—it was itchy and mismatched—but now it was the last gift her granddaughter had made her, so she bore it.The nurse had told her gently the night before: “A few more hours, Miss Marwa. The body's slowing down. If ther...

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The Uber Driver

The old man sat alone on the green slatted bench just outside Roosevelt Park, the rustle of summer leaves whispering overhead like the last murmurs of forgotten conversations. A pigeon eyed him curiously from a trash bin while a toddler shrieked gleefully in the distance, chasing bubbles blown by a weary mother with earbuds in.He checked his phone again. 6:42 PM. The app said the driver’s name was “Heron.” Five stars. A silver Toyota Camry. He looked up as a breeze teased the hem of his cardigan, the one Margaret had bought him for Christmas...

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The Long Way Down

It was nearly closing time at the airport. The terminals buzzed with the dull hum of fluorescent lights, the occasional rolling suitcase, and the gentle snore of a weary traveler curled across vinyl seats. At Gate 13B, the Cinnabon stand was still open, miraculously, and a man in a slate-gray hoodie leaned casually against the counter, his golden sunglasses pushed up onto his head like a halo made of Ray-Bans.“Extra frosting,” he said, flashing the cashier a grin. “My companion takes his pastries very seriously.”The cashier blinked at the ma...

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