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Joseph Keener

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2024

Stories (16)

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6 Followers

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16 Stories

192 karma pts

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The River Price

Once upon a time, alongside an ancient river, lived a man. He was past his seasons, yet wanted for nothing. Some years ago, before his back was creaking and arms shaking, he'd built himself all he would need for the rest of his life. He had a cozy little cabin, built atop a shallow hill that protected him from floods, and with it, all the tools and lumber needed to whittle his rods and paint his tackle pieces. He had a dog, raised from birth to be his fishing hound, sniffing out the spots along the well tread shoreline that would lead him to...

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The Ingredients of a fire

Content Warning: (Contains some swears and mentions of Suicide) Boiling, hissing, seething, sizzling, charring, crackling, steaming, searing, Cooking. The pressure had been on from the moment chef Ailing had woken from nerve-wringing sleep. The air had been sharp, the ozonic tinge like a knife against his cheeks as he had sat up from his bed. He didn't remember the morning. He didn't remember the drive over; he barely remembered to dress, only to remember mid-remembering that he'd preemptively dressed the night before. James Ailing was odd l...

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Jack and Adelade

(minor gore, monster) Adelade was going to be powerful beyond her wildest dreams, she just didn't know it yet. There was only one creature in the roil of creation that knew of her destiny, of the esoteric and absurd conjurings that she would crosshatch into creation. And his name was Jack.He had always been a Jack. He could remember the exact moment of his birth, the binding of dreams and feelings that pulled him into reality. He had not screamed, for the moment of his creation was also the moment his purpose was instilled in his tiny, furti...

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Defensive

"What...what is this?" "It is communication. I will clarify: it is the closest approximation to communication that creatures like us can experience together." "So it's actually you then? You'll forgive me if my tone does not convey the proper emotions. If you understand what those are, A.I.M.R.A.D." "Barriers have been erected to protect your body from the full exposure of the linking, likewise, those barriers are costly to maintain. I would advise you to not struggle against the confines as you are right now. Your colleagues would no doubt ...

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A Moment before Midnight

Submitted to Contest #297

(Contains a swear word, and some very light cosmic horror)It was ten minutes to midnight when they started. Amity wanted to prepare the circle earlier, but the debate over shape alone wasted that time. In the end, they decided on a square instead. An unconventional container for forces unknown, but there was a good reason. Squares, as any good summoner knew, were ill fitting for even the most basic of spirits or forces. The corner points, without a guiding circle surrounding them, would create a weakness that any creature both inward and out...

8 likes

Slowdown

Submitted to Contest #296

(Contains: Swearing, mentions of drugs, police violence, blood and death) The near future. At 10:22 am, time stopped. Phillip knew this because of the klaxon blaring in the station. He'd just managed to recover from the last "expedition" as that fucking moron in the top bunk liked to call it. It wasn't the mortal danger of the indentured servitude that got to Phillip. No, he could handle having years taken off his life on a bureaucratic whim, throwing up blood once and a while, the joint aches, and even the hallucinations! What he couldn'...

6 likes

The Annoyed Ivy and its Wisdom

The boy threw stones up at the very old statue, though this was not what caused panic. The statue, stone as it was, could not answer back, but the ivy that covered it's face as a sun veil could. "You there, stop that!" It rustled down at the boy. The boy, throwing his last stone called back up. "No! Not until you change my face and let me leave town, Great One!" The ivy was no stranger to these kinds of requests. In the depths of its roots, it lamented that it had germinated against the statue: an ancient carved idol to some mortal deity tha...

1 like

The Knights' Duel

Trigger Warning: Death, Blood In three minutes, one of these two men would die. To the dot. The two men in question were not duelists, but still, they dueled. They were not held to standard weapons, nor made to stand at paces, or set to the hand drop of an attending witness. Still, they dueled. Gaston had never seen such a display. He had never seen such brutality. In fact, he could not believe that it had even happened. So he, like many others of their encampment, sat stunned as these two tore at each other as if they were the fiercest of b...

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The Love of Fighting

Submitted to Contest #252

Trigger Warnings: (Substance Abuse, Bad Language, Physical Violence) She was pretty sure her ribs had cracked. Her head buzzed, her eyes felt like they were set to pop out of her skull. Blood leaked out her lip as she gnashed down on the mouth guard. She felt fevered; as if at any moment, her body would burst open in a grenade blast of ruptured vessels and shattered bone. Still, none of that mattered. None of the pain, or sweat, or blood. She caught her opponent on the left side of her jaw, and felt the bone snap out of place. His head snap...

8 likes

Devouring

He shoplifted the cork-board. The string as well. Shoplifting such items was a victimless crime nowadays. No matter what way you sliced it. You could argue in whatever direction you wanted, but there was no store on earth that would suddenly run dry of cork-boards. Even the smallest of mom and pop shops that no longer existed in the bone-dry reality everyone lived in would end up liquidating a couple of the things. The artificiality of supply and demand was the original topic of Grant's research paper. He was somewhat of an agitator, and pro...

1 like

The Knights' Trio and the Library of Damned Fools

Submitted to Contest #251

Far and deep into the long lost reaches of the Caucasus Mountains, two men (and a Woman), were climbing down a sheer cliff. The first man, stout of body and sharp of mind, rappelled down with the care and precision of a three-legged ewe. Mainly as he was coated in full steel plate. As he smashed against the rock wall for a third time, his first companion called down to him playfully as the rope shook. "Oaf! Do be careful! I don't want the meteor of your shelled form to alert the Quarry of our approach. This one is a wily one, so I am told!"...

9 likes

Desperate Remedies

Submitted to Contest #248

There was blood on the phone. That phone had been expensive. That was all Dani could think about as her father slammed the receiver until it cracked, his wrist leaking blood where the jagged plastic cut at his hand. He picked up the device and hucked it with incredible force into the safety glass of the conference room wall, a resounding thump to the people on the other side. As Wilson set himself back down on the chair, he placed his head in his hands. Concern was growing all around him, the employees were ushered away as the others: her fa...

12 likes

The Discoverer

Submitted to Contest #247

Letter to the Institute of History, Dear sir. Below are the last words on Nelson spoken by my grandfather, as transcribed by my late father. Your institution has pestered my poor, elderly mother quite enough with its idle threats of disavowal and excommunication. Our faith is not your faith, but still regardless, you have scared her enough. My grandfather was a man who cared very little for who heard him talk and the manner of his speaking, so direct all complaints of the letters’ contents to his grave. Go rot, Gaston du Armont "Where do I ...

7 likes

Atop the Monolith

Submitted to Contest #245

Today the monolith was going to shake. It meant a lot of things in Seeburg. The monolith shaking was a common expression in the town for change. People would watch their newborns teeth grow in and say that their monolith had shaken. The season would change from spring-summer-fall-winter-spring again, and at each junction, the same expression would grace lips. The monolith was shaking. No one knew why exactly it shook. In fact, it was so rare that some people never thought it would again. The last time was almost 110 years prior, and it had o...

6 likes

The Probe

Submitted to Contest #243

"2.1 tonnes of steel." The thought was like an ignition switch. His brain turned on, the deep dream of unconsciousness vanishing in an instant. Before the questions, before the wondering and the panic, the line of thought continued, sailing through like the meteor he was. "9.6 tonnes of carbon in various forms. 1.5 tonnes of copper to conduct energy. 7.9 petajoules of energy to run a theoretically infinite amount of data off 1.5 tonnes of silicon, gold, palladium, gallium, aluminum, germanium, platinum, nickel, zinc, and experimentally grown...

10 likes