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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

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150 Stories

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Loving Jennifer

Father Lance Lake had long ago learned that exorcisms were not the hardest part of being a priest.Demons lied.People rarely did.The hardest battles were fought in silence, where no one applauded victory and no one saw the wounds.The chapel of St. Augustine Boarding School was empty except for the red sanctuary lamp burning beside the tabernacle. Evening sunlight spilled through stained glass, washing the marble floor with crimson, sapphire, and gold.Lance knelt in his accustomed place."Lord..."His prayer stopped there.Some days words came ea...

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Bacon Mac n’ Cheese

The first thing Father Tristan Greene did after locking the rectory door was set a pot of water on the stove.Not tea.Not coffee.Tonight called for something heavier.He reached into the refrigerator, retrieved a packet of thick-cut bacon, and laid the strips carefully into a cast-iron skillet. The familiar hiss filled the quiet kitchen almost immediately.Normal.Predictable.Blessedly ordinary.He loosened his Roman collar, rubbed at the red marks it had left on his neck, and watched the bacon slowly surrender its fat.Outside, rain tapped softly...

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Song For The Mira

I still remember that summer like it has its own weather system—its own tide that never fully went out.Back then, everything in Brookside felt too small to contain what we believed the world was. The houses sat neat and obedient on their streets, the school bells rang like commandments, and even the sky seemed folded too tightly over the town, like someone had ironed out the horizon. But we had found a crack in it.Or at least we thought we had.It started with Oak Island.Not the tourist version with ticket booths and polite guided tours, but ...

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A Hundred Fireflies

Principal Joel Gehrig left Brookside High with the kind of quiet that only the last day of school can produce.Not the quiet of discipline or tension. Not the sharp silence of detention halls or assembly pauses.This was a hollow, relieved quiet—the kind that lingered in empty lockers and polished floors, in erased chalkboards and the faint smell of disinfectant trying too hard to cover a year of adolescent chaos.He walked the main corridor slowly, his messenger bag slung across his shoulder. Inside it were three binders he didn’t really need ...

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Return To Neverland

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long shadows across the backyard, Jeremy sat on the porch steps, his fingers idly tracing the wood grain. The air was thick with the scent of freshly cut grass and the distant sound of laughter echoed from the nearby park where children played. It was the last evening of summer, and the weight of nostalgia hung heavy in the air. He glanced at his childhood friends scattered around the yard, each one lost in their own thoughts, yet tethered together by memories of carefree days and endless ad...

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Waiting For Redemption

The bell for Vespers had not yet rung.In the convent of Saint Brigid of the Wounds, late afternoon settled like pale gold dust across old stone walls. Beyond the cloister windows, summer bent toward evening. Lavender bushes stirred in the breeze. Bees drifted lazily among roses. Somewhere in the distance, someone was pruning hedges, the snip of shears echoing faintly against the silence.Young Sister Magdalene Mary stood at her window and looked down the path for the seventh time in ten minutes.Or perhaps the seventieth.She had lost count.Her...

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The Greatest Subversion of Expectations

Father Wayne McKnight’s room at St. Augustine Boarding School for Catholic Youngsters did not look like a priest’s room.That was what everyone said.Students said it.Teachers said it.Visitors said it.Even the bishop had once stood in the doorway, blinked twice, and said, “Wayne… are those… framed concert posters?”“They are reproductions,” Father Wayne had replied proudly. “The originals cost more than a used Honda Civic.”The walls of his quarters were lined not with icons or illuminated manuscripts but shelves of records and CDs.Thousands of ...

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Terran Exhibit

The first thing Daniel noticed when he woke up was sunlight.Golden morning sunlight spilled through the blinds and painted neat stripes across his bedroom wall. It landed on the dresser, the bookshelf, and the framed photograph of a beach he had never visited but always meant to.For a moment, he stayed beneath the blankets and listened.Silence.No traffic.No barking dogs.No neighbors mowing lawns.Just stillness.Perfect stillness.Daniel sighed happily.Saturday.No alarm clocks. No deadlines. No meetings. No obligations.Just an entire day to him...

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Maybe It’s You

“Have we met before?”Tom Whitman looked up from the clipboard he was filling out and found himself staring into a pair of familiar gray-blue eyes.The woman behind the reception desk tilted her head slightly.“I’m sorry,” she said with a small laugh. “That was probably a strange thing to ask. You just look awfully familiar.”Tom opened his mouth.Nothing came out.Because the moment their eyes met, the world lurched.Not physically.Not visibly.But somewhere deep inside him, something ancient cracked open.A church bell rang.A horse whinnied.Gunfire...

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If You Test Me, You Will Fail

I was absolutely certain Samuel Ihle was going to fail.Not struggle.Not stumble.Fail.Completely, spectacularly, publicly fail.Looking back, I realize that certainty was probably the first warning sign.People who are right tend to have evidence.People who are wrong tend to have certainty.My name is David Morse, Associate Professor of Journalism at Yale University.Half English. Half Choctaw.Owner of a ponytail that several generations of students described as "unexpected."For nearly four decades, I taught reporting, feature writing, investigat...

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One Of Us

"Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake."Lisa Friesen tightened the leather strap on her borrowed vambrace and stared at her reflection in the washroom mirror of the university student center.The armor didn't fit particularly well.The breastplate had belonged to someone at least six inches taller. The gauntlets looked like metal oven mitts. The padded gambeson underneath smelled faintly of sweat, old grass, and history.She grinned.It was perfect.The twenty-year-old history major pushed her glasses back up her nose and adjusted t...

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Secret Victories

The bishop would never put it in a newsletter.There would be no article in the diocesan paper.No plaque.No commendation.No standing ovation after Mass.If things went well, no one would ever hear about it at all.And that, Father Tristan Greene reflected, was exactly the point.The rain tapped softly against the rectory windows as he sat at his desk shortly after midnight.The folder before him was thin.Too thin.Cases that ended up on his desk were usually thick with psychiatric evaluations, family testimonies, medical records, and pages of note...

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Pekuach Nefesh

Every Friday afternoon, at precisely 4:37 p.m., the same conversation took place.And every Friday afternoon, Jeremy Piznarski gave the same answer.The offices of Fishman Schneider & Sobel were slowly emptying as attorneys gathered briefcases and laptops. Secretaries shut down computers. Lights clicked off one by one.The scent of challah drifted from somewhere.Jeremy remained hunched over a mountain of files.A mountain that had consumed eight years of his life."Jeremy."He looked up.Senior partner Aaron Fishman stood in the doorway.Gray be...

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Unlikely Truce

Unlikely Truce (Castles of Sand)The first time Charles Whitmore and Vincent Devereux shared a drink, it was because neither of them had anywhere else to go.That statement would have sounded absurd to anyone in New York.Charles Whitmore owned half a dozen steel mills, three newspapers, and a mansion on Fifth Avenue so large that tourists occasionally stopped outside its gates and asked if it was a museum.Vincent Devereux was the railroad king of the Eastern Seaboard. His summer estate on Long Island occupied nearly forty acres and boasted a b...

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Xena

The smell of smoke never frightened me.Not the good kind, anyway.Not the old familiar smell that clung to turnout coats hanging in lockers. Not the scent that lingered on boots after a long call. Not the smell that drifted through Fire Station 87 when the engines rolled home at three in the morning and tired firefighters stumbled through the bay doors looking like they'd wrestled dragons.That smell meant my people were home.My name is Xena.Retired firehouse mascot.Professional nap enthusiast.Part-time squirrel security officer.Full-time love...

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