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Joe Smallwood

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Apr, 2023

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71 Followers
25 Following

105 Stories

2337 karma pts

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Zippo

“I can see my whole life, start to finish.”“There shouldn’t be a finish. You’re seeing it wrong.”That trip. Together. Shouldn’t be something you could even talk about. He wanted to go one way, and I wanted to go one way. One and one makes two trips, but it's one.Say again?Second try. We were very different. But we are the same. Except he sees an endpoint, and I don’t. What are we talking about?Third try. He thinks I can’t make sense of this. But he is wrong. The fact that there is an end to his life, his trip, is the key. That shouldn’t be.#...

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Burning Down the House

Weekly Contest #209

Discussions of family breakdown and abuse.As the upper floor of the old farmhouse yielded its secrets, I was near to overflowing with excitement. I turned to my brother, who, lacking experience in adventuring, was wont to throw caution to the wind in his explorations, although I observed that he arranged matters to the best of his ability, given his tender years. Of such was our journey to the ends of mortal longing. Alas! It was not to be!“Will both of you get down here?” yelled a familiar voice. “You know you’re not allowed up there! What ...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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All That Fitz

Weekly Contest #208

“You are supposed to believe certain things, don’t you know?”“What? Am I supposed to be some bible thumper now?”“Why would you assume that?According to Michael, I was the one with a problem. Our friendship depended on me making the right choices. He always took the lead to sort things out for us. Then it got so weird. He chose a set of beliefs all right. Things that made no sense to me.He was right and everyone else was wrong. His beliefs were fashionable too. Everyone agreed with him. I mean everyone. No one else dared to disagree. Except f...

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The Final Visit

Weekly Contest #204

I would rather not go see her.I would have ignored her pleading phone call, so low-tech and useless. I imagined her fumbling with her cell phone and being so ridiculous. She couldn't make a cell phone work if her life depended on it! No wonder I never answer her calls.I called her back but it was a wasted effort. I tried to get her to use her Instagram account. She didn't know how to sign in or use a password! She would apologize and say "Emma! I'm so sorry to be wasting your time like this." What? Did my time really count for anything?So he...

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That Was Easy!

Weekly Contest #202

“You know that red button you can buy? The one for five bucks? When you press it, it says “That was easy!”“Yeah, uh I think so,” I replied.“Well, I got one marked down! Only two fifty!”“Sweet, I think.”“I’m going to get another one.”“So, things will be twice as easy?”There he went, back in line at Staples. Couldn’t resist a deal. Then he was pressing those buttons all the way home until I was sick of it.“What are you doing now?”“Every time something is easy at work, I’ll use it there too.”“You can’t be serious!”“Way serious dude!”“But you’re...

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Through The Eyes of a Child

Weekly Contest #202

Discussions of Hell. “Hell doesn’t exist, right?” “Why do you ask?” “I need to know.” With that my idyllic afternoon was shot, done for. Kaput. Young Francis, my nephew was in a state. Or more correctly we were now in a state. Of something. It isn’t normal for people to ask questions that just hang there, like an unanswered cell phone or the insistent ringing of a microwave. I’m done or I’m beginning, do something, these things say to us. Worse than Amazon Alexa talking for no reason, was how this question sounded. I stopped on the path we...

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Flowers of Destiny

Weekly Contest #202

That delightful spring moment upended Ethan with its delicious smell of peonies. Flowers of all sorts wafted their allure, now one meadow assortment, blue with golden pollen, followed by ravishing red clusters sprinkled with sparkling dew. Ethan had so many to choose from so early in the morning. A smile bloomed on his misshapen face as he staggered forlornly for one spray of lilies, only to be entranced by purple larkspur, starry arms to steady his gaze so that even the air itself was untroubled by any bustle of importance.All thought was b...

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My Dumb Phone

Weekly Contest #201

“You know, I was at church the other day and something weird happened.”“What?”“No one’s phone went off.”“Who is No-one?” my friend asked.“Nobody’s phone went off! There was no disturbance!”And that was the start of it. The new me. The next day my smartphone fell down my apartment garbage chute. Ker-plunk! Accidentally or was it on purpose? Only my subconscious knows! It didn’t cost much anyway. Super small squinty-eyed-cracked-dim-screen, and five years old. Android had already given up on it. No more updates. So, no big loss. I sauntered in...

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Almost Famous

Weekly Contest #201

It was probably going to be my last day working for Green Associates. The employees in the union who worked directly for the stadium had nothing to worry about. They worked for the stadium in jobs that some of them had been doing for decades. I wasn’t one of those lucky individuals.You could tell who worked for the Mean Green and who didn’t. It was in how they moved. Garbage glided down garbage chutes for union employees with smooth enveloping strokes, a side comment or sly observation often accompanying their light loads.Mean Green dirtbags...

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What Can't Be Seen

Weekly Contest #201

Discussion of hardship and death.It wasn’t my life that was being reviewed. It was their idea of me. I never had a say in it. Like a book that you open at a random page, their ideas of me were always lacking a context.What context could there be to make sense of everything? See that is the problem. I could be anything or anyone and without knowing anything about me, you can’t make sense of my life at all. Like a bare light shining into an empty dark room, the glare is all you see.Like that time when my sister didn’t share with me those miser...

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Progie Paradise

Weekly Contest #200

I wasn’t just an only child; I was supposed to be progenated. Pasteurized, homogenized, progenated. New word for a new time. Humanity can be perfected. We came out of the slime and if we don’t plan to stay friends with what made us forever, then progenation is needed.Now don’t start saying that I’m in league with the antiprogs, just because I didn’t complete the treatment! I have a perfectly good reason for that. It’s true an antiprog came to me and got me to quit. She was my own mother! What would you do? Besides progenation wasn’t mandator...

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The Equity Issue

Weekly Contest #200

“That house looks so perfect when he’s not home!” says every neighbor whether they know it or not. Through my smiling teeth, I could say this too, cleaning miscreant leaves that blow west to east, from Todd’s front lawn right to my front door. We stop to take a rest, Sam, and I, before cleaning this leafy mess. Then we get into a discussion about who’s leaving. Uh going away.“Todd lived here twenty years and the police only had to come twice.” Harumphs Sam, pointing to the house in the middle of our respective, um respectable homes...

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What Will Be

Weekly Contest #200

She knows how to find these little shops where the aroma of coffee bends the mind from larger issues. Soft paper, moist with liquid that perspires through fingers that grasp the latest flavors, my Affogato with premium vanilla ice cream and a shot of freshly brewed espresso, her flat white double espresso, steamed milk with just a hint of vanilla syrup. All would be well, as vendors hawk their wares down cobblestone streets and the unheard gentle murmurs of the delighted customers who nod and fondle their steaming cups.I can let this all swi...

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Survey Says!

Weekly Contest #200

Discussion of a war.“Hello? Is this the party to whom I should be speaking?”“It must be for you,” says my mom. On a landline? I’m thinking. Mom is baking chocolate chip cookies and I’m getting ready to go. To get a cookie and still get out the door is the objective. An unexpected phone call isn't going to be helpful.I fumble with the phone while slipping my jacket on, shoes sidling away from my feet, need my hands for those! No speakerphone, ancient contraption this thing, hideous yellow with festooned buttons. At least there was a long cord...

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Not Knowing

Weekly Contest #199

It wasn’t like I knew any better. How could I? From the time I first knew anything about how the world really worked, it seemed normal, to walk into a roomful of people my age and have three or four girls staring. They were so careful about it. But it got so, I would surprise them with a look of my own when they least expected it. Then the floor was their friend, or the person they were talking to got so much more interesting.But the stranger they were to me, the stranger I was with myself. It was like a knife that cut both ways. I want...

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