Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog

Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

Stories
Comments
Library
31 Followers
42 Following

150 Stories

345 karma pts

?

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...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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 ...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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 ...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

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 ...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Truth Before Tide

THE SEABROOK VIKING NEWS“Truth Before Tide.”Founded 1898CRIME WAVE OR SUMMER PANIC?Break-Ins, Vandalism, and One Strange Calling Card Leave Seabrook on EdgeBy Staff WritersJune 3SEABROOK — A string of late-night break-ins across downtown Seabrook has left residents rattled and local police searching for answers.Since May 19, twelve businesses along Harbor Street and the surrounding boardwalk have reported forced entry between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Stolen items range from petty cash to electronics, though in several cases, noth...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Butterfly Effect

He had failed once beneath a gray English sky.The first time he had tried to change history, the blade had slipped in his sweating palm as the sword rose over the neck of Anne Boleyn. He had shouted himself hoarse in Tudor French and mangled courtly English, but guards had seized him before he reached the scaffold. He remembered the way she had looked at him—not frightened, not hopeful, merely curious, as if he were a strange footnote interrupting the main text of her life.History had righted itself with brutal efficiency. Steel fell. The cr...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Five On Four

The first thing Darren Charles noticed about Hartford University was the clock tower.It rose from the center of campus like a patient, judging finger, brick and ivy and old ambition. His father had a picture of it framed in his study—twenty years younger, hair thicker, arm slung around a bronze plaque that read THETA MU – EST. 1891. Legacy wasn’t just a word in the Charles household. It was oxygen.Darren stood in the quad with two suitcases and a garment bag, staring at the tower as it chimed noon.Freshman year. Legacy student. Future Theta ...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Yea, Though I Walk

Every night, it begins with the sound.Not the bugles. Not the shouting.The wind.It combs through the elephant grass with a dry, whispering hiss—like breath dragged across old teeth. Then the sun burns through a white-hot sky, and the red dust rises in choking spirals. And Jim Pruitt knows, before he looks down, that his boots are already sinking into the clearing.LZ X-Ray.He wakes every morning tasting cordite.Jim Pruitt is seventy-three years old, with hands that tremble when he lifts his coffee and eyes that never quite rest on the present...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

For Time & All Eternity

Dr. Elias Rowan did not build the machine for glory.He built it because he could still hear her laugh in the kitchen.The house was quiet now—too quiet. The kettle did not whistle because no one remembered to fill it. The wind chimes did not sing because he had taken them down after the funeral. He could not bear music that moved without her.Her name was Mara.He said it aloud sometimes in the lab, just to make sure the air still knew it.The lab itself had once been a municipal planetarium on the outskirts of the city. When funding dried up, t...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Matter of Minutes

The first siren does not sound like a siren.It sounds like a mistake.Eddie Malone pauses mid-step and tilts his head. “You hear that?” he asks.They are five sailors in dress whites, caps squared, shoes shined to a mirror. Sunday morning. The air is soft with early light, the kind that makes even the barracks look forgiving. They are walking the narrow road from base toward the chapel, laughing about nothing important.Tom Malone, Eddie’s cousin—same black Irish hair, same long jaw inherited from brothers who worked shipyards back in Boston—sh...

0 likes 0 comments 0
Read story