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Jonathan Huston

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2026

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5 Stories

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Everything Happens for a Reason

Weekly Contest #374

"Everything happens for a reason." Everything happens for a reason should be the city motto of Cadmea, Joanna thought, as she and the gray-haired, hunched-over, but surprisingly sprightly woman who happened to be standing next to her when the church collapsed ran for shelter behind a school bus that had just pulled over on Lay Street, waiting for the next gaggle of pupils to board. "Everything happens for a reason," the little old lady, now out of breath, reiterated, which seemed a bit premature to Joanna, since in this case, everything was ...

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The Translator

Weekly Contest #373

"He's taken a turn for the worse." Those were the words Betsy never wanted to hear, but she knew she'd be hearing them someday soon. Just not today. She cancelled a meeting with her boss, who asked her to reschedule as soon as possible, arranged for Jacob's father to pick up Jacob at Holy Cross Preschool, the preschool her parents were paying for, even though neither Betsy nor Jacob was Catholic, and she borrowed a car from her coworker Ronald, who'd always had a crush on her, even though he was married, to get to Saint Vibiana's Home for th...

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If it's 3 a.m., I must be an alien

Weekly Contest #372

It's been hot this summer, even at night, so I wake up more than usual. When I can't sleep, I focus on my breathing, as if I were meditating, even though I don't meditate otherwise, or I inhale for a few seconds and hold my breath for a few seconds and exhale for a few seconds, over and over again, or I count back from a hundred until I reach zero, and sometimes I continue on below zero, or I try some fancy new technique like cognitive shuffling, where I think of an emotionally neutral word like PLANET and then come up with as many words tha...

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The Purple Rose of Houston Street

Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #371 ⭐️

I bumped into Woody Allen on Houston late one night, right outside the Angelika. I think it was a coincidence. I don't think he'd gone to see his movie. It was a long time ago, long before Woody Allen became problematic, or before the world at large thought of him as problematic. My girlfriend at the time and I had just gotten out of a revival screening of The Purple Rose of Cairo, the movie Woody Allen directed with Mia Farrow and Jeff Daniels in the leading roles. Mia Farrow, Woody Allen's erstwhile partner and later accuser, is a depresse...

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No Time Like the Present

Weekly Contest #370

You've never been good at dating. Choosing a time and venue is the first challenge. You waffle between alternatives until your potential date has lost interest. It's easier if they suggest the when and where – tomorrow night, 6 o'clock, Cheesecake Factory. You agree immediately, so you don't have to think about it anymore. In the run-up to the date, all you can think about is how you'll dress, what you'll do with your hair, whether to wear sneakers or fancy shoes, and you think about what you'll say, which jokes to tell, which anecdotes from...

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