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John Steckley

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2021

Stories (82)

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28 Followers

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82 Stories

1616 karma pts

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A Gift that is Many Times a Hit

Submitted to Contest #331

He heard a loud knock on his front door when he was sitting on the toilet. It was very late at night, and the amount of spaghetti and meatballs he had eaten for dinner was huge, and it was calling him. Living alone, he often cooked too much. He could not remember the last time that he had heard someone knocking on his front door other than people trying to sell him something. He knew that it wasn’t a ‘you have just won,’ as he had not applied for anything that he could remember. Still, when he opened the door, he definitely felt he had ...

6 likes

Forgotten But Not Completely Lost

Submitted to Contest #328

Forgotten But Not Completely Lost Jeff Jones, a young man in his early 30s, is an English teacher who has recently considered writing novels. He has just been asked by Susan Jones, a local publisher of a series of best sellers, if he could talk to Ralph, the aging author of those books, encouraging him to come up with a book that would conclude what he had already written. There hadn’t been a book in that series in two years, and she was worried that Ralph did not plan to write another. Susan, who knew Jeff from studying literature in th...

2 likes

Silence is Not Always Golden

Submitted to Contest #326

S Silence crashed down hard that day in the workplace. It was like a flooding rain in a thunderstorm, only without the sounds. They had been told that on this day when the people of a small town who worked for a major corporation in the big city would be face to face with ‘THE BOSSES’ as they were generally called by those who worked for them, both in the town and in the city. No one in town knew why they were doing this on this day. THE B0SSES had never done anything like this before. They generally communicated with the old ...

5 likes

Dreams Can Come True

Submitted to Contest #325

Dreams May Come True Damn, sometime yesterday, I must have misplaced a very important publisher letter. I have no idea now of where I put it. You would think that the good news that the letter contained would make me careful about what I did with it. But no, the forgetfulness of being in my mid-70s seems to have overruled the significance of what I now cannot find. I feel sometimes that it would be better if I had a young agent to do my remembering for me. ‘What do I have to remember for you today, Ralph?’ ‘Yes, is there a birthday of a ...

5 likes

Down By the River

Submitted to Contest #324

Down By the River A river has long been like a living creature to me, ever since I was a child. It moves constantly, changing over time, deeper and wider in rain, more shallow and thinner in long periods of dry weather. I grew up in the countryside, far from town and distant from school, driven to and from the place by one of my parents whose turn it was. I never had friends come over to my house, and I lived too far from schoolmates to visit them when school was out. But I could visit my river friend every day. I told it my secret joys ...

2 likes

Following the Ritual Path

Submitted to Contest #323

It is a ritual for me where I drive each morning to my place of work. Sure it adds about a mile to the trip from the more direct way of getting there, and the traffic is slow. Still, it is a ritual, making a connection with a place of joy in the past. I got lost driving for the first time to my new work place, but that was not what made the drive taking that route a ritual. Being aware that I was well and truly lost and that being late would not please my new bosses. I had to do something. So I decided to pull over to a grocery store to...

6 likes

Why Don't I write a Novel

Submitted to Contest #322

Why Don’t I Write a Novel? My friends and family keep asking me why I have never written a novel, although I claim to be a writer. They wonder why I seem to be perfectly content just writing short stories. Guy, whom I have known for decades now, and I consider to be a good friend asked that question straight out one night when we were in the Toby Jug and under the influence of alcohol. He had just read a short story I had written earlier that day.He said that he had enjoyed it.But I now wonder how much he meant that. A person I...

12 likes

Time for a Change

Submitted to Contest #319

Time for a Change Davy wondered whether he should change or stay the same. After all he was best known for the rather dramatic way he played hockey. It usually brought him cheers from the home team and the home crowd. He could not remember a time in his childhood when he did not want to be a professional hockey player. He started organized hockey at five years old. It helped in those early years that he was bigger than all the kids that he played against. Body checking was not allowed at that age, but Davy learned early on to ‘accidently’...

4 likes

The Second Son

Submitted to Contest #318

I am the second son in our family of two sons and no daughters. My brother Ralph was first one born. I don’t blame him for being so accomplished in so many ways. He was early on a bright light, and I was in his shadow as far as my parents have been and still are concerned. His family stardom began with his skill as a talented hockey player. He scored goals like magic even in his first year playing. He led the league at eight years of age, when I was still a toddler. Our parents loudly cheered him on throughout every game that he playe...

10 likes

Don't You Remember Me

Submitted to Contest #317

Don’t You Remember Me? This will be the most excitement I’ve had in years, possibly decades. My favourite band from when I was a teenager is playing a reunion concert in a city about two hours drive away from where I live. It is certainly well worth the drive. I have so many great memories of the boys and I going to those concerts. We cheered loudly, sang along with the songs that we knew so well, and we even danced in a circle as a group together. Members of the band would smile at us, at least that is how we read their faces when we danc...

8 likes

My Lips Are Sealed

Submitted to Contest #316

My Lips Are Sealed I was walking to the Toby Jug, where all the coolest of men and women hung out regularly on a Friday night. To get there I had the walk past the very uncoolest bar in town, named “The Elegance”. It was where snooty rich people who only drank posh drinks – martinis, champagne and the like. They would not drink what I heard one person say coming out of that place that beer was for the poor and unsophisticated drinkers. I could not resist looking through the window while walking slowly past. I was surprised by one person th...

5 likes

It Was Four O'Clock in The Morning Once Again.

Submitted to Contest #315

It was four o’clock in the morning once again. And once more Stella was wide awake and unable to go back to sleep in her bed. So now she was sitting in a chair in the backyard with a bench in front of her, a cup of coffee upon it. She was staring into the distance way ahead of her. This had been going on for several weeks now. Her father and grandfather had both worked as engineers driving the early morning trains to the station nearby. When she was just a girl, she would get up very early to wave to each one of them when she knew they w...

6 likes

To AI or Not to AI

Submitted to Contest #312

Alex had long been something of a rock star with his novels, a series of masterpieces that had begun when he was just 18 years old. For four years after that he added another novel in the series every year. It was his main income. He worked at a library, but his stories brought in much more money. An article in the local paper said that he was an A1 writer.But then, like many a aging rock star he began to lose his a chunk of his creativity. He had left his many readers hanging, with people asking him when the next one was coming out. Pe...

12 likes

His Best Theft

Submitted to Contest #310

An old man walked into my book store yesterday. He shuffled slowly forward with a book held close to his heart like it was some kind of paper pacemaker or friend. “Mister Brown, Sir,” he said in a voice a little above that of a whisper, “I have written a book, and I would like you to sell it in your store. I have been working on, it for years, and now it is finally done. No local publisher seemed interested in it, so I self-published a number of copies. It contains a revealing story concerning something that happened repeatedly in our to...

9 likes

Jessie's Beginning

Submitted to Contest #309

Jessie’s Beginning “I do not know why I am going to this high school reunion. I was only there for my final year, and I have not seen or talked to any one of my fellow students of that year over the last 10 years. My family had moved from far away from where I got all my previous education to get to this place, where my father and mother both got a better job. I did not grow up with the other students, so I was not perceived as being ‘one of the old gang’. I hope that the people who were in my class have name tags on so I can call them by...

6 likes