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Jonathan Page

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2023

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143 Stories

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Grifters Inc.

Weekly Contest #369

--Hineni he’ani mima’as. Here I am, impoverished in deeds and merit. But nevertheless, I have come. I’m no good. I’ve done wicked, wretched shit. I know what I have done. But it is easy to forget. On Rosh Hashanah I was at the mall and Rabbi Eli was with some schoolboys, teaching them the practice of Tashlikh. They were throwing coins in a fountain. Imagine that. Joyfully throwing money. The lot of them should have been locked up. But it was symbolic of throwing away sins. It got me thinking. That Yom Kippur, I decided to tally all my sins....

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How to Kill a Dragon

Weekly Contest #368

I have been called haughty, depraved, and reclusive, generally by people who have never met me. But it is not wrong to judge yourself superior if you are, nor to do terrible deeds when they are warranted. As for the third accusation, solitude is not always a choice. A reputation hardens with time. People learn to keep their distance until isolation settles into the bones.Kora was a little thing, with bared arms and a bone necklace. Her black hair had been shaved close on either side, leaving a narrow crest from brow to neck. In her fist she ...

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De Esta Salimos

Weekly Contest #367

“¿Vamos a salir de esta?” Camila asked.It didn’t feel like it, but Dayana nodded and touched her shoulder.“De esta salimos.”She turned before Camila could see that she did not believe it and followed the boots ahead of her.La Loma de la Muerte lay less than a day’s journey ahead. Dayana could not see it through the canopy, but every warning she had heard ended the same way: once the climb began, there was no turning back.Thirty people moved in single file through the rain. Mateo led them with a machete in one hand, cutting through vines and ...

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Truth or Nothing

Weekly Contest #367

I packed my things into a banker’s box. My framed law school diploma. My trial advocacy prize from graduation, with my name – David Hogan – emblazoned on the black acrylic. My Title 2C Criminal Code. The New Jersey Court Rules with “ROCCO” printed in indelible marker on the spine. The tools of the trade.Rocco came around and stood with arms folded behind me.“Jesus, kid. You’re going down hard,” he said. “It’s admirable of you to take a fall like this.”I just looked over at him, saying nothing.“Got everything?” he asked.“I think so,” I said.“...

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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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