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Joseph G. Arena

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2026

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4 Stories

54 karma pts

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The Night We Remember

The first thing Daniel noticed when he returned to his childhood home was that the barn door was open. He remembered his father keeping it locked. His younger brother, Michael, stood beside a rusted pickup truck in the driveway, smoking a cigarette. “You’re late,” Michael said. “Traffic.” “Funny. That’s what Dad always said.” Daniel ignored him. Their father had died eleven days earlier, leaving them the house, forty acres of neglected farmland, and a lifetime of questions neither brother wanted to answer. Especially one. What happened to th...

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THE THINGS I NEVER SAW, The story of Tommy Lindman

Weekly Contest #377

CW: Coercive control Nobody tells you what dying feels like. For me, it started with a sharp pain in my chest, followed by a strange numbness that traveled down my left arm. I remember dropping my coffee cup. I remember Amy screaming my name. And I remember falling onto the kitchen floor, staring at the ceiling while my wife desperately tried to save my life. "Tommy! Please, baby! Stay with me!" Then suddenly, the pain stopped. I stood up. Or at least I thought I did. Because when I looked down, there I was, lying motionless on the flo...

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The Warning that went Unheard

Weekly Contest #373

The cold gnawed at my bones that night, a sharp and brittle chill Florida was never meant to know. I stood outside the plant, watching my breath fog in the air, thinking of the shuttle resting on the pad at Cape Canaveral—the Challenger, a symbol of ambition and human reach. Yet all I could see was the frost forming on the O‑rings, a quiet warning nature had carved in ice. I had spent my life chasing precision—numbers, tolerances, equations that told the truth even when people preferred not to hear it. But that night, the truth felt heavier ...

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Parable of Deceit

Weekly Contest #372

John realized it was three in the morning again as he checked the clock on his bedside table. For weeks, sleep had become an unwelcome visitor, abandoning him night after night. He woke drenched in sweat, his thoughts racing long before dawn. Time seemed to be slipping through his fingers, and with each passing day, the pressure mounted. If he failed, it wouldn't just cost him everything. It would cost Joanie, too. As if on cue, his cell phone began to ring. John stared at the screen. Three-thirty a.m., exactly. The same time. The same call....

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