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John Ripma

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2024

Stories (8)

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23 Followers

29 Following

8 Stories

194 karma pts

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The Hours Before Midnight

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #330

Nikolai Polivanov leaned against the cold stone wall of the bridge, scratching his beard, pulling his hat down tight, staring at the restless water below. The Thames wasn’t shimmering like in the postcards. This evening it was the colour of hammered iron, swollen by the rain, restless, attacking its banks like a prisoner rattling his bars.He’d felt like that once—powerful, driven, dangerous. It was after the books, after the fame, but before he’d traded it all to chase a second dream. A dream that began to rot the moment it became real. Tols...

3 likes

The Quiet Man by the Window

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #329

Mary’s chair was empty.Lloyd noticed it the moment he stepped into the dining room. His eyes locked on the small table in the corner where she always sat, and for a moment, the world dissolved. Gone was the clinking of cutlery, the low murmur of conversation, the warm smells drifting from the kitchen.Mary always sat in the same place, the far corner beside the ficus plant. She even kept a pink cushion tied to the seat, its edges slightly frayed. She said it made the chair “softer on the bones.” That cushion had become part of Lloyd’s morning...

7 likes

The Last Honest Breath

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #328

They shaved a small square above his ear where the hood would crease.The scissors, ticking like a June bug behind a screen door, cut close to his skin. The barber brushed the loose hair from Eddie’s neck. A gust picked up a few small curls and carried them across the courthouse yard toward the barn on the west edge of the square.The scaffold stood in the open sun. Four uprights, four crossbeams, a trap door framed loosely into the platform. The wood was pale, freshly cut, the edges showing saw marks in places. The rope hanging from the high ...

7 likes

Sometimes Mercy is Sharp

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #327

Have you ever eaten ants?They taste like truth...sharp, acidic, metallic against the tongue. They wake some wild corner of our primal minds, something older than mirrors and well-worn spellwork. Witches cross oceans for rare resins and silver salts, forgetting our earthly home keeps bitter compounds right underfoot. Ants sting as they go down, but they sharpen too. They remind us that we were born feral before we learned to be good boys or girls.Iris had not eaten ants since she was a child in the woods, daring herself to be unshaped, un-hum...

15 likes

Hi, I'm Bloom

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #326

Contains mildly coarse language.“Please lock up your cheese graters and broom handles,” she said. “I need you alive till I get paid.”Laughter filled the room.She wanted them laughing before she jumped in their shit.Dr. Iris Bloom leaned back and smiled; nervous chuckles floated through her office like cheap perfume. The couple was about to reveal the rot in their marriage; she needed them to be loose.Humor was her drug of choice.She knew that better than anyone.Her mother was a ghost with a job - always away, always busy, always forgetting t...

17 likes

Service Begins at Four

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #325

Feeling dazed and out of focus, she hung up the phone. The man’s voice, smooth, measured, and faintly German, swirled in her mind like a waterspout off the coast of Miami Beach, her hometown. Her mother once ran a tiny Cuban café on Collins Avenue. Elena had learned to set tables before she could write her name. Every afternoon at the same time, her mother clapped her hands and called out, “Service begins at four!” The words meant love, order, and the smell of roasted pork in the air, and that she’d better not be late.Forty years later, Chef...

11 likes

The Seventy Mile Per Hour Blur is the Big Event

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #301

I drank a vanilla milkshake at the Dairy Queen, walked down the sidewalk to the liquor store, bought a fifth of Cutty Sark scotch, went back to my motel room, stripped off my clothes, and lay naked on the bed. I hadn’t touched a drop the whole way out here, but now I needed a shot or two to fall asleep.For the past two days, all I wanted was to see was the world streaming past me from the cab of my pickup, the steady growl of the engine purring in my ears like a big cat. I watched the tree-covered mountains of northern Georgia flatten into t...

9 likes

(Contains Sensitive Racial Content) A Witness to Hatred

John Ripma

Submitted to Contest #296

Saturday, October 12, 1958 - 4:39 a.m.Rabbi Jacob Emden’s phone rang. It was bright green, a fancy new color Southern Bell had just introduced to the Atlanta market. The rabbi’s congregation presented it to him on his fifty-first birthday. He took one look at the colorful gift and, showing off his legendary Talmudic humor, said, "A green phone. Oy vey! Now when I call God, I'll be sure I'm using the ‘kosher’ line!"The blessed thing rang…and rang…and rang mercilessly in the dark, shattering the silent stillness of his bedroom. Rabbi jerked in...

8 likes