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Jonathan Page

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2023

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150 Stories

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The Giant that Rose Again

Weekly Contest #221

Failure haunts me like a generational curse. And it seems that every time I glimpse a retirement from the traveling show, my fortunes go up in flames. Every time I imagine putting away my soap box and signing over my many promotions and wonders into capable hands, the world forces me back into servitude.In the days of my first traveling menagerie, my giants were all phonies, but my little people were legitimate. By the time I returned from Europe to present General Tom Thumb at the American Museum on Broadway and Ann Street, more than ten ye...

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Over My Dead Body

Weekly Contest #221

I sit in the corner of the embalming room watching as the mustached man drains the blood from my corpse. The corpse lies on a metal table, covered in a white tarp. And there is a faint choker of purple bruising and checkered abrasions around my neck. The blood in the tubes is purple-colored, with streaks of black.My irises are cloudy white films, my pupils are fading black lifeless dots. As the mortician hooks me up to the embalming machine with its pump and wires, and the cold fluid enters the veins of my body, I feel nothing. I kind of shi...

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Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass

Weekly Contest #220

Running along the streets of lower Manhattan, crossing over Centre Street, I kept an even tempo. The sky suddenly darkened as heavy clouds covered the blue sky like spilled ink clouding out over parchment paper.I could have turned back and avoided the storm. But I needed to get my miles in. Post the numbers. Do the work. Think of that Starbucks cappuccino and the warmed-up butter croissant that’s waiting for you.I had already gone five miles by that point. But six miles was my daily minimum. And I was hurting. Right calf cramping. Stich in m...

21 likes 9 comments 9
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Hannibal the Animal

Weekly Contest #220

Nana was one of those women who was at home anywhere, but the kitchen at Popop’s house was her place. She animated the space. The pots, pans, ladle, and spatula. They were extensions of her flappy old arms. As she moved over the pans, she smelled of lavender, talcum powder, and fresh bedding—mixed with the aroma of spices, ground pepper, parsley, and red pepper flakes simmering in oil and coating the eggs. Her owl-like eyes brightened and her cheeks flushed as soon as she got busy fixing a meal.I was ready for a good meal. I’d been up all ni...

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The Elephant Graveyard

Weekly Contest #220

“If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” — Camille Paglia* * *It is odd how the ionized air of the cold desert night refracts the moonlight, which crackles with the spirits of sojourners past. They seem to still inhabit these barren dunes, trying to speak—the whispers of their urgent warning to the living just out of reach. And the bold moon itself, a dead and lifeless desert, is pockmarked with the evidence of a violent past.This shouldn’t be here. African bush elephants. Desert-dwelling eleph...

28 likes 4 comments 4
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Oh Happy Fault

Weekly Contest #220

When I wake up, the fresh sea breeze tells me I am near the Ocean. I stretch out my hands and grasp for my gold Spanish pocket watch, but it is not on the nightstand. Seeing the sun peer through a set of heavy drapes, I realize I am no longer at sea but in a hotel suite.“Are you hungry?” she asks, coming into view with a plate of honeydew and canary melons and a lump of cottage cheese. I begin to remember why I am here.The air is thick in the dark suite with the drawn drapes, and she sits naked in her chair, knees up, feet perched, with...

36 likes 16 comments 16
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The Washing Woman of Double Tree

Weekly Contest #219

Down in the security office, the CCTV monitors scan the corridors, stairways, lobbies, and meeting places of the Double Tree Hotel and provides 24/7, 360-degree confirmation that the hotel is an integrated whole, rather than a multitude of separate cages, each filled with its own individualized horrors. I peer out of the catacorner windows of my little night kingdom at the procession of daybreak. All of the unfolding routines bring my thoughts back to my sick wife Beth, really showing now, and the child I hope will be a boy.It is early ...

20 likes 6 comments 6
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On Being a Bad Bitch

Weekly Contest #219

The thing about being a bad bitch, is bad bitches make things happen. Go ahead, root for the good girl, see where that gets you. Blah, blah, blah. They go on with the same predictable, lame-ass shit—doing what they’re told—getting good grades, dating the safe guy, and following all the rules. For God’s sake, they obey curfew. I can’t even! Pitiful. No one wants to read about that shit.  Now, enter the bad bitch. Voila. Drama. Intrigue. Think about it, really think about it. W...

21 likes 9 comments 9
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My Neighbor's Keeper

Weekly Contest #219

Staring out into the vacuum of space, I feel homesick for the Jordan Valley. I wish I'd been given my chosen assignment as a fighter pilot tasked with defending my homeland from the Surge. Instead, I’ve been resigned to the thankless task of hurtling through the void tending to sheep on the Bowdler Express. But I serve the House. We all do. My commander and captain, Aryeh Ross, has promised me a transfer if I complete the twelve-month term of my initial deployment.The Oculus Directive has suffocated and smothered all harmful speech across th...

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The Exodus of the Corporate Zombies

Shortlisted for Contest #219 ⭐️

I harbor a secret fantasy that the lot of us are undead zombies. Shuffling corpses. Slavish, insentient lumps of meat. Navigating the public transportation system by reflex, devoid of any signs of higher-level cognitive function.I am waiting on a train platform to board the Long Island Railroad. The platform of Riverhead Station is indistinguishable from the platforms of any of the multitude of other trains run by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The branching arteries all lead back to the beating heart—New York, New York—the Big App...

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Bare White Knuckles

Weekly Contest #219

Pat’s eyes were draped with purpling black bruises and his knuckles were swollen red. The skin was torn off the peaks of his knuckles, leaving hollow pussy scabs. All throughout that first day, I can remember Pat Gardener laughing in his casual hick way, “Hey-ho.” We all noticed, but no one asked him about how he got those black eyes.That was the day when Pat ran to make the yellow bus at my bus stop for the first time. His ruddy face blotched up from running when he boarded. He laughed and said “Hey-ho” as he scooted past the bus drive...

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The Case Against Michael

Shortlisted for Contest #218 ⭐️

At about midnight, I walk out to the courthouse steps on Schermerhorn to bum a cigarette and swap stories with Michael. Thursdays are always busy, and I’ll be in late at arraignments, and he’ll drop a message with the bridge officer that he’s coming down. I tell the clerk I’m taking a break and head outside. It's odd. Speaking to the clerk, the sound of my own voice is startling. In the buzz and bustle of the courtroom the last half hour, waiting for my case—absolute silence. Locked in the anechoic chamber in the interior of m...

54 likes 42 comments 42
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The Taste of a Cold Winter's Night

Weekly Contest #218

Commons 275Becky’s RoomTrenton State Campus – February, 1999(Best if Read While Listening to "All You Need is Love," "Don't Let me Down," and "Let it Be" by the Beatles—order of play is optional)Morning is inevitable as death is. I can taste the changing weather on my tongue—the onset of deep winter—John Lennon singing those lines, insistent, vulnerable, and pleading, "I'm in love for the first time, don't you know it's gonna last...." And Becky and I are breaking up. We both know it. But it is too cold for me to head back to my ap...

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Running

Weekly Contest #218

I can smell the salt of the sweat on my brow and neck, with hints of bug spray–the bouquet of harsh metal, lime, and kerosene. The hot concrete burns through the soles of my shoes. The residue of the chocolate gel I took fifteen minutes ago still covers my gums and coats my throat, which catches wafts of pollen and car exhaust, temporarily choking me as I gasp for air. The rush of cooling wind on my face and bare chest, the dopplerring woosh of cars passing, the caw of a raven, or the screech of a hawk. The scooting shuffle of startled deer...

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The Bridge to the Grail

Weekly Contest #218

We wandered the wasteland with empty stomachs, shaking and sweating from hunger. Our guts were soured by the unused acids that churned like mortar. We sang as we trotted along to keep our minds off of the stomach grumbling: “Here’s to the grog, boys, the jolly, jolly grog / I’ve a-spent all my tin with the lassies drinking gin / Then come morning I’ll be sleeping like a log / Here’s to the grog, boys, the jolly, jolly grog.” Pinot was an absolute waste of a squire but was a first-rate singer if there ever was one, and I suppose tha...

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