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Joe Smallwood

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023

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72 Followers

25 Following

110 Stories

2398 karma pts

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Getting a Fix

Weekly Contest #347

I was tabbing around, getting a fix. And you know what? She empties her profile on me! Me of all people! I’m hardly fit for purpose, as they say. More like how I say when I have a say, that is. But I see that I am not a plain speaker. More like those morons who try to act tough. So rough and tumble like their heroes. The anointed ones. Oh, how I wanted to be like them! You just know I could try harder. Or so she said as she expired. Her profile was not up to snuff. It’s a wonder we get through these dress rehearsals. So much into life they a...

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Smith and Wesson

Weekly Contest #347

That scorching sun wasn’t lying. It made every blistering moment of my torment feel intentional. I looked up at it, squinting like always. That made me frown and wonder if that day would be my last. Finally. I felt for my 38, clipped in the holster at my side. Five rounds only with a covered flap. Sometimes I would pull it out in the sweltering car and marvel at the scratched bullets. Like someone took the time to handle each one, squeezing the lead tip as if they could make a better bullet. But what could be better? You’d ...

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A Glimmer of Hope?

Weekly Contest #346

Possibly disturbing ideas about the "afterlife" if one exists.Here I am on vacation somewhere I had never been before, and I’m already in more trouble than ever.That last one was a doozy. The car’s leap from the bridge. The god-awful plunge into the icy water. How quickly the cabin filled, already soaking the shin-high leather boots I just bought. The ones that were so expensive.And then I’m thinking, I’m really going through this. Frantically, I try to remember that YouTube video about what to do in these situations as I call 911 on my phon...

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Eh? Just Living

Weekly Contest #346

It was the day before, that momentous day, when my future would be decided. I likened it to being in a stickup. So I bought a chocolate bar, but I didn't eat it. Then I took a bus just to see the scenery. Went there and came back. So slack we were, just two lumps on a seat, neither here nor there.But I couldn't help but argue with my companion. About everything. At least at first. though she had this effect on me. She'd be offended, then turn it into a joke.She'd say, "There's nothing to be afraid of. Try, try again. never give up!"And it ce...

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The Sample Wrench

Weekly Contest #345

It was all too real, this life: the doughnut in my mouth, the slow, overly sweet, too crisp sensation of it all. My tongue felt a foreign bit caught between my teeth. Gotta dig it out.But this diner wasn't the place for personal stuff, and I wasn't motivated enough to go to the bathroom. Everyone else there had their things figured out. The Everyman with his loving wife. The spoiled kid they called their child, yelling about this thing, and “I want that.” In their booth, the stroller leaned toward me, as if it trusted the wrong person.The ma...

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Jassopy

Weekly Contest #343

That perfect knowledge arrived quietly. No ceremony, no paperwork worth remembering. One day, I simply began noticing things earlier than other people did — outcomes lining up before decisions were finished, conversations ending before anyone realized they had started going wrong.I assumed everyone experienced this and merely chose not to mention it.At the time, I was working on electrical contracts at a data center expansion outside the city. University degree or not, work is work when there isn’t enough of it. The union handled the rest — ...

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Smooth Run™

Weekly Contest #342

She wasn’t where he said she would be. Not that I cared. His insistence on her being present was quite unnecessary.Smooth Run™ technology wasn’t up to snuff. And I swear I toggled the “advanced” download option. Beta releases. So unstable.Like how she says, I am. When she has a moment. Or two.But I’m beyond that now. So beyond it. That last fight just about did it. What was it about?Oh yes. Not being present. Or in the present moment. Whatever that means. She continually lives presently. Never planning ahead. Or is that my problem? I’ll be d...

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Blame the Rectangles

Weekly Contest #340

There she goes. Living.She is so unknown to me. Stepping out of her house, going to her car, getting the things she always gets, then returning.I think I know her name. Well, maybe I don’t. She said it, one time only, like we’re supposed to be machines. With instant knowledge and recording ability served with a heaping helping of flawless data retrieval.Yet also it's like we are on a diet. Only so many words can be exchanged, or the word calorie police might have to get involved.But I get it. You never know how explosive anything can be thes...

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I’ll Super Hero Another Day

Weekly Contest #340

I had seen so many things before, like how Word always defaults to 12-point font. No matter how many times I set it to 14, there it goes again: Aptos instead of Times New Roman, with its teeny-tiny 12-point.And that laptop. So fresh and new five years ago. Now it wheezes, heating everything in sight.And once slush gets in your boots, the heck with keeping warm. Try as you might, cold always finds a way. Relentless, like I should be.So I would super hero my life. Not soldier through like the unwashed masses, but blast the hell through everyth...

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Dizzy my Thin Lizzy

Weekly Contest #340

Out in the murk, the grey windrows divided the street from the sidewalk; its dirty snow was so unappealing. But that was not the worst of it.Some character, his voice fading in and out like an apparition, kept saying to me, “You’re not real!” One moment he was near, the next, absent to me.Looking back on it, it wasn’t just that I didn’t know him. It was that he knew everything about me. He even looked like Charlie, my partner.“Stop following me! Haven’t you something better to do?” The finality of my disdain for him would be my rescue. That ...

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The Not-Monster

Weekly Contest #338

It wasn’t just how quiet it was. No, it was never that. It wasn’t even what was said. We’re the bait to the monster that waits. Secret like.And we knew all along what our purpose was. To draw it out. Make it scream and shout. Though I never knew what I was supposed to expect. Everyone was on a need-to-know basis, including me. And probably it. Run away. Run away. Run away, my mind hummed even though I had been invited to this secret little group she was a part of. Edna might have agreed that I didn't belong, though it was hard to tell. She’d...

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Aunt Bea

Weekly Contest #331

“I suppose that in all the world there could never be another Aunt Bea.”New to Halifax and half-lonesome, waiting to ship out for the latest fight, that being World War II, I’d begun visiting hospitals and prisons, telling myself I was bringing cheer when really I was looking for some myself. And what do I see?Frost bloomed across the hospital windowpane in fern-like patterns, thick and white, hiding the city outside. A battered radiator hissed in the corner, fighting a losing battle against the Halifax winter. Yet here, in this cold, was a ...

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Mrs. Phoenix

Weekly Contest #330

This fine winter was so much like how I’m feeling—cold and dark. I’m grasping at a life that once seemed so serene and pure, so within my reach. I can still imagine how things were, even as I’m on my way to present myself for M.A.I.D.So I caught the number five bus. It should be electric, but it meanders through these black streets, belching diesel fumes into the night. It is so cold. I look out the frosty bus window and shiver to the sound of grinding snow. Snow that made the bus’s tires squeal in protest.Yes, I made up my mind. These damn ...

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The Swimmer

I hadn’t even begun to take it all in—the beach, the sunshine. A gull screams overhead like a broken siren. Somewhere, a transistor spits static, and a kid’s plastic shovel scrapes rhythmically, a tiny excavator digging toward China. Diesel fumes drift in from the boardwalk, mixing with coconut oil and hot dog water.But here I am circling my life like a half-interested shark—just curious, no poking or sampling the wares.The swimmer in me is, of course, relieved. I had seen the photos. The gnawed bum, the lacerated abdomen. Eighty-nine stitch...

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The Falls

Weekly Contest #326

As I remember, it wasn’t the cell phones not working that scared us the most. It was something else.The cell phone outage occurred before we arrived at Niagara Falls. Even hours into the blackout, Lilly couldn’t understand it. She’d shake her cell, muttering curses under her breath. I think she believed that the more attention she paid to it, the more likely it was to work. This happened every time she took it out of her pocket, more times than I could count.Lilly’s actions reminded me of a psychology lecture on “magical thinking.” It was Ma...

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