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Jonathan Page

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2023

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150 Stories

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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 ...

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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 spr...

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. Without a bad bitch in the story, there isn’t a story. Nothing happe...

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 ...

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The Exodus of the Corporate Zombies

Shortlisted for Weekly 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 Apple....

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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 driver a...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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The Case Against Michael

Shortlisted for Weekly 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 my own mind. T...

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The Taste of a Cold Winter's Night

Weekly Contest #218

Commons 275 Becky’s Room Trenton 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 apartme...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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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 that’s only...

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The Newly Dead

Weekly Contest #218

It’s 1:13 a.m. on a Monday night when Bob sends me a pro bono assignment, and I am too dead inside to spare an ounce of compassion. I am being appointed counsel to Arles Ortega and Christina Lima Ortega and their daughter Anabel who are seeking asylum from Ecuador. Another thankless task—Ecuadorians are almost always denied asylum—all they can ever prove is vague government persecution, but it’s impossible to put meat on the bones and show personal stakes. I’m still in my office on the 32nd floor of Lexington Avenue. For the past five hours...

37 likes 17 comments 17
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Rescuing Holly

Weekly Contest #217

From the age of twelve, Holly had been confined to the three-story Tower House of her mother’s Southampton Estate on Olde Towne Lane—a veritable prison lined in gold, restricting her every move. Her mother Rose was in San Diego selling a historic Southern California mansion—the “Coronado Castle” on Coronado Island, the Old Hollywood haunt where Marilyn Monroe filmed Some Like it Hot—and she wouldn’t return until after Labor Day. This was Holly’s chance to escape and see the world. Although Holly, at the age of 22, was already finishing up h...

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Jimmy the Giant

Weekly Contest #217

I am godless, but I still pray just in case. Every time I walk into a courtroom, I am afraid I’ll be found out to be the fraud I really am. But I am the genuine article baby. The second I appear on the record, the man I am fades into the background and a much better man shows up. I don’t know much about him. But he is a force of nature. And he is the only reliable thing in my life. So, when John McArthur asked me to show him how it was done, I honestly didn’t have anything for him. I just said, “You want to know how it’s done, kid. You wan...

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The Case of the Devil’s Helmet

Weekly Contest #217

I was working on a sim corpse when I was called to Professor Sheehan’s office on urgent business. Never in a million years did I think I’d find him dead when I got there. As a criminology student and graduate lecturer at Limeridge University with an internship with major crimes at Limeridge PD, the last thing you expect to be doing is investigating a crime scene in which your own mentor is the victim. When I arrived, Christina Papadakis, the Professor’s TA, was already on site. She wore a sharp pantsuit over a thin, wiry frame. She had an i...

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Waking up Poor

Weekly Contest #217

All the treasures this land offers lie below the burning sands, hoarded by yellow dragons. In Sakasanda, it is the enormity of the bareness that is awesome—that poverty can be so abundant. It is not even sunup and Scor comes running into my room. “Momma, momma, are you going to market?” Scor asks. “What do you want?” I say, turning back over and pulling the sheets over my head. “Fig jam, dragon’s blood pudding, and sweet sausage. And funnel cakes,” she says, pulling up a corner and whispering her list under the top sheet. Her red hair an...

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