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Joseph Keener

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2024

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23 Stories

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Diorama

Weekly Contest #364

(Author warning: minor body horror, sexual lingo) "I'm sorry, you have to take her."The disbelief alone on Mark's face would have shattered glass. Jenna, a mother in her 30’s with frizzy hair and calloused hands held their infant son close, his sleepy coos calm and ignorant to the fact that she wanted him far away from this comfort. Mark shook his head, removing the baseball cap she'd bought him two years ago, holding his forehead as a dizziness took hold."Just for the week, I swear. I promise that-"In his attempt to steady himself, he took ...

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Going Everywhere

Weekly Contest #360

It had taken thousands of years, but for the first time since the birth of human civilization: silence had fallen over the Earth. Anticipation filled the atmosphere, more potent in its effect than oxygen as they waited on the enemy. It misted the skin like a waterfall crashing down, the inevitability of its gravity pulling each man into its orbit. Leo sat out by the ship's hanger bays, watching the slow trickle of people’s last-minute decisions fill the stomach of the Lucky Rabbit like a litter of kits. He sighed, searching the crowd of grum...

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Cosmic Breakdown

Weekly Contest #359

In the irradiated vacuum of space, five people in bulky multicolored suits worked to dismantle massive steel plating, hauling them away dutifully like leaf-cutter ants. Around them was a vanishing landscape of a colony ship, the exterior flying away into the endless void through which they traveled. Pulling out to a telescopic view, one could mistake the vessel for a child’s toy blown to a massive scale: a titanic ring magnetically free-floating about a skyscrapering needle, the engine burning like a stick of warding incense. There, engraved...

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Empty Insides

Weekly Contest #354

On the fifth of march, as the late snow was crying from the sky into the suburbs of Tulip's Hollow, Michael Phillips woke up to discover that his liver had been stolen. His memory was a haze, a gap of black time where the organ had been harvested, subcutaneous skin unlocked with scalpel. He had risen, felt the freshly stapled scar over his frontal abdomen, and called the police. He was at the hospital shortly afterwards, where the doctors, police, and Michael worried over the nature of the crime. It was only when scans had finished and tools...

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Book of the Silver Warrior

Weekly Contest #338

Samuel discovered the book from a corpse, adrift in a boat on the placid ocean of Hope’s Depression. Their scout had seen the dingy drifting, and flagged it down for retrieval, as it was the maritime law to rescue the stranded. The man who was aboard was long dead, dried out to a papery quality in the long seasonal sun. His hollow gaze, while morbid, exuded a peace that Samuel had never seen before.Samuel had lost his parents young, and with little prospects on his home shores, he had accepted his lot as a sailor readily. The pay was alright...

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The Seekers of the Golden Books

Weekly Contest #338

The rumbling fortress shone in the desert like the heat itself. It was a rippling, fluid thing, an impossible mass of shining stone and magma-like gold, constantly moving forward at a snailish pace. Behind it, a thin layer of glass formed in its passing, shattering at the mile mark back into the soft, burning wastes it called home. From a distance, one could only assume such a thing as a mirage, and closer still, the glassy remains of its passing signified danger; but to the scholars of the Golden Diagram, the great impossible mass was a sig...

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The Pilgrims

Weekly Contest #336

Trigger warning: (Death, slavery, murder) Once upon a time, there were two little pilgrims. They were born on opposite ends of the world, to opposite families, yet with identical bodies and minds. The little pilgrim of the East was born alone and into absurd poverty. For much of his life's beginning, he did not live, but merely survive. The kingdom of his birth was ruled by blasphemers, the greedy, and the conquering, the suffering of its people legendary to all across the world. It was so far from the light of the gods that it basked in et...

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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

Weekly 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...

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Slowdown

Weekly 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'...

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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...

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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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