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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

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30 Followers
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150 Stories

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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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Seeds And Sunbeams

The brass bell over the door tinkled softly as Eli turned the sign to Closed. It had been a slow Thursday at Petals on the Wind, but that was fine with him—he preferred quiet nights. He locked the door, flipped off the display lights, and inhaled the sweet, damp smell of soil, blossoms, and seed packets.Even though his dad owned the shop, Eli always felt it was partly his. He’d grown up here among the bags of compost, hyacinth bulbs, and terra cotta pots, memorizing the Latin names of flowers before he could spell his own.Diospyros lotus, he...

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Talos 5000

The workshop smelled of ozone and oil. Sparks leapt like tiny meteors from the welders, and soft, deliberate whirs filled the air, punctuated by hammer strikes as technicians adjusted limbs and plates.At the center of it all stood Talos 5000.He — if “he” could be used — was the latest model out of HephaestusTech’s Olympian Line. Taller than a man, forged of burnished bronze alloy with inlaid circuits that glowed faintly under the surface, Talos 5000 was an artificial sentinel designed for security, rescue, construction, and (if the brochure ...

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The Lamb’s Lost Angel

I. The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly Reilly Chong was the kind of boy whose teachers used words like tenderhearted and gentle soul. His mother would catch him setting out little bowls of sugar water for bees on the back porch, or scooping worms off hot sidewalks after a rainstorm. At fifteen, his biggest concerns were passing algebra and saving up for a secondhand guitar.Then the Lambs of Jesus came to town.They called themselves a ministry. They wore white robes with a lamb stitched over the heart and wandered through neighborhoods handing...

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Step Nine: The Bridge

Brandon Cole stared at the name on the folded piece of paper in his hand as though it might catch fire if he opened it again.Dad.Two weeks ago his sponsor, Jorge, had said: “You’re ready. You’ve done the writing, you’ve done the praying. Now go make it right. Not perfect. Not pretty. Just right.”Brandon didn’t feel ready. His palms still sweat through his sleeves at meetings. He still dreamed about bourbon at least twice a week, sometimes waking with the taste of it in his throat like a ghost. But he was on Step Nine now, and if he kept putt...

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I Regret…

The café smelled like roasted almonds and honey, and the late afternoon sun cut through its broad windows like a golden blade. In the back corner, away from mortal ears and eyes, sat two women who didn’t quite belong in any age but had learned to wear whatever century they walked through like a silk scarf.Aphrodite stirred her cappuccino with a lazy finger, watching the foam swirl, her long lashes lowered. Across from her, Athena sat upright, all crisp lines and calm precision, wearing a dove-grey pantsuit, a small notebook resting beside he...

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Children of Olympus

Elliot had always felt the pull of the ocean, though he lived a hundred miles inland. The way waves crashed inside his chest whenever he got near water… it was strange. But nothing was stranger than the note he found waiting on his apartment door one Monday afternoon:“To Elliot, Son of Poseidon.Your presence is required at the top of the Chrysler Building at sundown.Do not be late.”He’d thought it was a prank. Until he met the others in the elevator lobby.They were an odd bunch: a dark-haired boy standing stiffly in a leather jacket, arms fo...

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Son of the Sun

It was a Tuesday afternoon when Jamie Marquez’s life cracked open like an egg.He was standing in the back garden of his mother’s house, glaring down at the shriveled tomato plant he had accidentally killed the week before. The summer sun blazed overhead, but the plant’s leaves were brown and crisp, curling like tiny fists, as if they were angry at him.Jamie sighed and rubbed his face.“I swear I didn’t mean to forget to water you,” he muttered to the plant, feeling foolish.His mom always said he had “too much of a heart for a boy,” and she wa...

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The Angel of Sunset Boulevard

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"— Matthew 16:26 Los Angeles in 1925 was no place for the faint of heart. It was a city of mirages, painted desert backdrops, and endless opportunity—provided you were willing to play by rules no one ever wrote down and to pay prices no one ever mentioned.Celia Hart had been in the city for eighteen months, and she still hadn’t made it past playing “third flapper from the left” or “girl in the crowd.” H...

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