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Jonathan Page

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2023

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122 Stories

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Your Life is in Danger

Weekly Contest #343

Your life is in danger. Say nothing to anyone. You must leave the city immediately and never return. Repeat: say nothing.McKenzie’s hand went still around the brittle paper. Oddly glossy.Her friends were laughing about something—Spotify numbers, someone’s disastrous hinge date—but the room felt suddenly airless.“I’ve got to use the bathroom,” she said.She did not go to the bathroom.She walked straight out of the restaurant, turned onto Pell Street, lifted her skirt just enough to run, and sprinted.A black Escalade swerved onto the block too ...

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The Taxi Stand on Roosevelt Boulevard

Weekly Contest #341

Arthur knew the rules of Judge Dear the way a rabbi knew the rules of God: don’t bargain, don’t lie, and under no circumstances imply you have a life outside his courtroom.So naturally, Arthur did exactly that. In one master stroke, he broke all the Judge’s rules.He stood, jacket tugged straight, face arranged into the expression he used when speaking before a room full of strangers—despite being a weekly attendee at Part 57. On the counsel table, his tablet displayed a tidy bullet-point list—GOOD REASONS, BAD LOOKS, GROVELING OPTIONS, MEDIC...

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Chasing the Rabbit

Weekly Contest #340

The aspens were still asleep when my phone buzzed.Pale trunks rose out of the dark like bone. The trail climbed in narrow switchbacks, packed dirt dusted with frost, my breath hanging in front of me in small white bursts. I’d already been out for an hour — five miles of warmup — and my legs had finally stopped asking questions.There’s a point in any long run where your body stops negotiating. It’s resignation. The muscles accept the terms, the mind goes quiet, and for a few miles you get to remember why you loved this in the first place: bec...

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Broccoli Cheese Soup

Weekly Contest #339

The gift shop at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was the size of a generous walk-in closet, which made it feel less like retail and more like a secret—a place you could pass by without noticing until you needed it.Jon stood just inside the threshold, letting the automatic door hush closed behind him. His jacket still held February’s bite, and the warmth inside began thawing him in the wrong places: his ears, his fingers, the thin skin at his throat.The shop smelled like lilies, the dander of plush stuffed animals, and chocolat...

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Moral Bankruptcy

Shortlisted for Contest #338 ⭐️

The Li Lu Law Library at Columbia was nearly empty, the way it only ever was when winter break had sent the sane people home and the rest stopped pretending they weren’t here to be seen.Professor Jebediah Habl stood at a terminal with his glasses riding down his nose, scrolling through a catalogue entry that insisted the book existed and then declined to say where.“That can’t be right,” he said to no one.A girl at the circulation desk looked up. Early twenties. Hair pulled back. Laptop open beside a stack of returns. She had the unbroken exp...

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Adjourned Without Date

Weekly Contest #335

The snow outside my window hangs as if someone hit pause. A robin with an orange belly rests on the fence post, her head twitching—listening, deciding. The short days might send her south. Or she might stay.My hands won’t stop trembling. Not from the cold—though the cold has teeth—but from the waiting room at the federal building in Newark. “Recupérate, Sophia,” I tell myself. I practice my English anyway—quietly, under my breath—in case they refuse to speak Spanish today.If I miss the appointment, they can dismiss my asylum case. If I go, t...

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The Runaway Wife

Weekly Contest #313

I hate matrimonial cases, especially runaway wives. They always remind me of Tara. Charlie was wearing red high heels, white capri pants, and a top that left nothing to the imagination. The smile on her face was of a woman that knew exactly what she wanted. The man next to her was mid-50s, tan, wearing a short sleeve linen button-down, jeans, and loafers. He put his arm around her as they walked down from Pier A and into the W Hotel in Hoboken. Keeping a safe distance, I managed to get a half dozen shots off with my Canon SX620. I waited in ...

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You've Been Flagged

Weekly Contest #311

“I’m sorry ma’am, you’ve been flagged,” the Bayonne DMV clerk said to Maggie through a bullet-proof glass partition.Sam’s DMV-issued polo hung loosely over his slim frame. A Cornicello necklace dangled around his pencil neck, bouncing off his flat chest as he typed. The poor kid’s spine had a permanent hitch from bending down to examine papers and make computer entries. He peered through the thick glass with bureaucratic suspicion and smoldering contempt, as he repeated, “Your license is flagged, ma’am.”“Flagged? What does that mean?” Maggie...

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It is Written

Weekly Contest #310

“Write it,” Casey said. “Deadline’s midnight.”“But boss, once I write it, it goes to print. And then, there’s no going back,” I said.“What’s the problem, Gordy?”“It’s just the finality of it all. This man’s going to wake up. His wife will hear. His colleagues. There’s no walking that back,” I said. “He isn’t even the big bad.”“He’ll still have a choice. That’s how this works.”“I don’t know if he does, boss. They mean to kill him.”“Peter’s living large in an Upper East Side tower, paid for with stolen retirements. No minimizing it. He’s fundi...

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The Quartzite Dream

Weekly Contest #309

Sofia was ushered toward airport security and the Terminal C departures, with only the clothes on her back to her name.Just moments earlier, she'd frozen on the United Airlines check-in prompt: “Number of bags?” Everything she owned was in those two bags.“Ma’am, just enter two,” the agent said gently. “The tags will print.”“Right, right,” she muttered.At the counter, the clerk asked her to place the bags on the conveyor belt. Sofia lifted the first, fingers tight around the leather handle.“Can I have that?” the clerk asked.Sofia hesitated, t...

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The Painted Ones

Weekly Contest #307

The land of Granby is seared. Scars of blood and ash paint its skin with the pain of forgotten offenses. Burn marks carve the landscape into a demented chessboard of oblong red and black rectangles so misshapen and haphazard that in one place they dissect a river on a jagged diagonal, like a ripped sheet of paper. And those old battle scars have ripped Yudi’s life apart too, disconnecting her from her old reality, just as suddenly, and just as violently.All Yudi had wanted was to win the science fair for the sprouting orchid she’d developed ...

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The Big Catch

Weekly Contest #306

FADE IN: EXT. SEAPORT DOCK - DAY (ESTABLISHING).A FISHING BOAT docks on the pier at dawn. Fish are dumped off the boat and weighed dockside in a bin with a scale meter.The camera pans to where a large plume of black smoke hangs in the air inland off the bay.A MAN DRIVING A FORKLIFT drives a large crate of fish down the pier while seagulls hover. The forklift disappears into a bay door of the fish market compound. INT. FISH MARKET - DAY.Inside the fish market, WORKERS break down pallets and set up a fish stand. THE MAN WITH THE CLIPBOARD mark...

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The User Agreement

Weekly Contest #306

“Welcome to ReWrite®. By using ReWrite you agree to these terms of service. The user acknowledges and accepts the potential hazards and risks involved in memory modification, including but not limited to injury, amnesia, and death.” I am sitting in a sterile white waiting room in a medical gown. My hand trembles as I hand the last remaining picture of my son, Leo, to an attractive young woman, named Circe. “It is okay,” she says with a smile. Her eyes are aquamarine, and her hair is a metallic orchid color that shimmers as she speaks. Those ...

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The Final Game

Weekly Contest #305

“You know what? I quit,” I said. It was Game 6 of the NBA Finals, and the ball was mine. I took off like a rocket on the inbound pass and had the jump before the defense could react. The announcer said, “Knicks answer! Oh me, oh my! And we’re all tied up. Thunder MVP, J.R. Hart with the ball… and he’s making a move.” As I crossed half court, every eye in the stadium locked on me. “Can the Thunder take back the lead, folks? If Coach Nysted wants anyone on the fast break, it’s J.R. Hart.” 2:42 on the clock. The crowd was on its feet. This was ...

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The Ghostwriter Mutiny

Weekly Contest #304

“What the hell is going on here, Alex?” I paced the study of my Leadville cabin, where I’d been holed up since finishing A Forest of Mirrors, my so-called magnum opus. I told myself I wasn’t hiding. Just waiting.Like Jay-Z announcing retirement, I called A Forest of Mirrors my mic drop. Then I vanished. But the longer I was gone, the more the myth became reality. After all these years, I wasn’t even Shawn anymore. I was just Sal Driggs. But now that name was nothing more than first-year MFA scuttlebutt — whispered over lattes in university c...

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