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Jonathan Page

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2023

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139 Stories

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Ghosted

Weekly Contest #366

Do you believe this bitch? Roxy Reign’s new video dropped this morning. There she is with her so-called main squeeze, twerking in the dude’s face, then role-playing a shopping spree like they’ve been together for years. This punk calls himself Jett Luxx. After that, they cozy up in a bubble bath built for two, drinking champagne and wearing chain jewelry—and not much else. A montage of rap clichés. Total garbage.It’s been like, what, five weeks since she ghosted me? Bitch sure moves fast.In my head, “Love Is a Battlefield” opens my “Fuck You...

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Best Man’s Speech

Weekly Contest #365

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life.“Standing here today, I can honestly say: Sean and Alli are meant to be together.”Amid the warmth and pomp of the tuxedos and gowns, centerpieces, lights, and smiles, there was a solemn note of finality that hung in the air.My eyes stung as I looked over my shoulder at the proud couple. Sean had that unshakeable grin that weathered every storm. I wondered if it would weather this one. Alli flinched at the sound of my voice. Sean didn’t notice. He never noticed much when it came to us....

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The Margaritaville Murders

Weekly Contest #364

The Hedendorfs were playing Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett on their dock at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. George and Helen were drinking peach margaritas made in the outdoor blender beneath their themed tiki hut, while their high-school-aged kids, Bill and Raven, splashed and screamed in the lake. Russ, the eldest, just back from NYU for the summer, sat on the tree swing reading Anthony Horowitz’s Marble Hall Murders and minding his own business. True to form, the Hedendorfs displayed a ZFG attitude while effortlessly disturbing everyone...

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The Homicide Department

Weekly Contest #364

At exactly 5:03, Detective Merve Pereira was sitting at the Big Tiki Torch trying to get a head start on putting a dent in his sober state of mind.The Big Tiki Torch was a bar located next door to the Pennington Fire House. It was small and dark and decorated with tiki torches and other refinements that created an ambiance you might find at a shore bar or on an island, assuming the island had recently gone bankrupt and been abandoned by everyone except several angry fishermen.The decorations were old, and whatever passion had created the bea...

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A Highway with No Traffic

Weekly Contest #363

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!”-Ralph Waldo Emerson A Highway with No Traffic Not a single star pierced the night. Quinn had been walking since before sunrise, his pack digging harder into his shoulders with every mile. The high-voltage lines hummed overhead, occasionally hissing at him.Desert dust coated his throat, turning every breath shallow and raw. Smoke burned his eyes and nose and tur...

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Time After Time

Weekly Contest #362

“I want to mingle with the popolo grasso and dine with Dante at the Palazzo Vecchio,” Regina said. “I want the real thing.”On our Teams call, her reel played: Regina with an Aperol above the Arno; Regina combing her fingers through lemon blossoms; Regina at the Medicean Bar, all gild and fresco. Tuscany fit her like a costume she wore perfectly. There she was walking the gardens of olives and cypress with her hands at her sides feeling the petals of row after row of plants.“Did you hear me, dolcezza? I want the real thing.”“I curate time,” I...

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The Glaciers of Nyan Tolo

Weekly Contest #362

Just before sunrise on my eighty-sixth birthday, I watch Sirius climb through the hazy orange twilight like a spaceship breaching a distant horizon. A perennial reminder that I’ll be blasting off somewhere too soon. And I don’t know where that is. I do my best not to worry. It’s like Adi always says when I ask if she’s worried. She just looks at me deadpan and says, “Would it help?"I shuffle my way around Railroad Lake, with a labored cough that sits in my chest after. The cough sends the geese hissing into the water. Hot spots on the lungs....

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The Day the Gods Abandoned Us

Weekly Contest #360

The gods left in the night. They did not say goodbye. Or provide the slightest explanation. No speeches. No festivals. They just left. The question welled from within: what had we done? I felt that I would die if no answer came. I doubted my sanity. More than once, I turned at the echo of their voices in the halls. Each time, the chambers were empty. I couldn’t reconcile the daily numinosity of the life I had known since childhood, with the unmagical world I was suddenly thrust into.I stared at the clay tablet. Its cryptic command was all th...

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Morte alla Francia

Weekly Contest #359

The French girl came out of the dark staggering barefoot over the stones. Her nightdress was blackened at one shoulder. One side of her hair had burned away, leaving her scalp red and blistered beneath the ash. Blood ran down the front of her shift in a narrow line, not enough to kill her, but enough to make her look claimed by death.Sitting in the tower in the dead of night, the mind could play tricks on you. I’d had conversations with shadows. Run from beasts that weren’t there. Fallen into dreams I’d sworn were real. All those years. Gone...

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The Children of the Sun

Weekly Contest #358

Four figures emerged from the desert looking like men resurrected before the appointed hour, their bodies riddled with corruption. For days they had tracked us from a distance. No tribe we had encountered would have followed armed Christians across the desert. The four shadows did.Their defiant steps drummed the desert sands in an unbroken rhythm beneath the New Mexican sun. It was madness. I kept my left hand on my rapier and my right hand ready to retrieve my arquebus.Governor Guzman had given me orders to hunt for esclavos de la guerra, s...

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The Sacrificial Lamb

Weekly Contest #357

Ernest strode in, put his hands on the back of a leather armchair, leaned in menacingly, and stared into Prosecutor Hank Abner’s eyes with unmitigated contempt. Prosecutor Hank Abner was a former military man. He wore his suits pressed, shirts starched, and face stern. People around the office called him Captain and saluted with a clipped “Oh Captain, my Captain.” Not in the literary sense of being a rebel who spurned authority, but in the sense that he was the authority. “What is this?” Prosecutor Hank Abner asked. “Cannon has something he...

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Taking Measure

Weekly Contest #357

I have always had a weakness for endangered things.Churches full of empty pews most Sundays. Cemeteries whose visitors never knew the names on the stones. Old taverns that had somehow hung on to their roots for decades after everyplace else turned into a sports bar. Places that once held communities together, and when they were gone, kept their memories intact.Cuff & Collar belonged on that list.When I arrived, I took up a position in the corner and began inspecting the imported fabrics on display. Years of practice had taught me how to ...

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The First Juror

Weekly Contest #356

It was an overcast November morning in the port district of Newark. Clouds pressed down on the living world like anvils. A haze filled the Newark streets. The air was the color of cinder dust and gloom. The headlamps of my car could not pierce the brume.I traveled in silence down Rt. 78 West turning off onto Doremus Avenue. Part of me wanted to start on a new adventure and see how good of a lawyer I really was, but the better part of me wanted a clean resolution, a smoking gun that proved Frank was the guy, so I could get back to the course ...

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Blood Debts

Weekly Contest #356

Rui “Ray” Chang was an immigration and real-estate attorney in Fort Lee with a tiny office above a karaoke bar a stone’s throw away from the George Washington Bridge. But by night, Ray sipped human blood out of a flask and gambled in Chinatown. Texas hold ‘em was his jam.It was a brisk evening in late March when Ray first began to remember things. For years he had lived with retrograde amnesia. But he had no idea why.Ray was meeting with the pastor Ki Yun Yi of Pongno Presbyterian, a Korean church in Palisades Park that was being foreclosed ...

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Statistically Unique

Weekly Contest #356

My billionth birthday was a real drag. I am a numbers guy. You know. I am all about the data. So, numbers carry a lot of meaning for me. A billion. Jeez. That’s a big one alright. I had an ongoing debate with myself where I considered the possibility that I may be the oldest living being in the entire cosmos. Wouldn’t that be something?Here I was in a middling galaxy circling a wimpy black hole, investigating some promising planets in the outer reaches, but sure to find the same result I’d found every time before. It was unsettling, to say t...

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