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Katharine Johns

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

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89 Followers
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34 Stories

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Black Cat Inc.

Weekly Contest #169

I sat perched on a garbage bin at dawn, minding my own business, when the garbage truck rolled up the street. “Ay, cat! Shoo!” a deep, male New Yorker accent boomed while kicking the bin, trying to upset my seat. I obliged. He needed to empty this receptacle and I had other places to be, anyways. Busy with his work, he gave me no other thought as I passed by him while crossing the street. He’d get food poisoning later. You would think more humans would express more gratitude towards us. Things were just fine until we started gettin...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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Like the Movies

Weekly Contest #167

Potentially sensitive content: brief allusions to drinking, intoxication, language, and sexual activity Jenna woke up at 6am like it was the perfect day. She cleaned herself in a dingy dorm shower, listening to bubbly pop music. Her adult braces showed as she smiled in the mirror, donning a pair of straight-cut blue jeans and a colorful t-shirt, both generic brands. She brushed out her long, straight hair and added a thin layer of makeup to her face. Looking at herself, she saw Andie Anderson, Carrie Bradshaw, or Holly Golightly. She ev...

4 likes 0 comments 0
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Deathly Sweet

Weekly Contest #133

The peal of the bell tower signaled morning in the city of Direford, the capital of the thriving nation of Jestines, a morning that started the week of the annual Valentine’s Festival. Subjects and peasants everywhere were about to spend the period embracing romance; couples will court, marry, declare love, or initiate relationships as their situations saw fit. Cooks and bakers, providing the food of love, prepared their finest dishes and treats. Gifts, gestures, poems, and songs would be exchanged. Passions would be fueled. Flowers, hearts,...

17 likes 7 comments 7
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Winter Dreams” (A 'Christmas Dreams' sequel)

Weekly Contest #129

Jessie crashed into a metal post trail-marker while skiing.This predicament all started in her first days of high school. Fifteen-year-old Jessie, lover of Christmas, found a new infatuation: fellow classmate, Greg Hammond. She first saw him about eight lockers down from hers in the first days of school. He wasn’t anyone she went to school with before. He walked right by her one day as he focused on his class schedule and school map, trying to figure out where to go. She should’ve said something but forgot her manners in her wonder over him....

13 likes 1 comment 1
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Christmas Dreams

Weekly Contest #115

Fourteen-year-old Jessie loved Christmas. With the thoughts of presents, sweets, and no school, what young person didn’t? While Jessie loved those things as much as the next person, Christmas also meant travelling to a place of Christmas dreams, somewhere she has been able to go since she was a little girl.For a while, Jessie went to this place by way of her grandparents’ house, who lived thirty miles away on a hilltop acre with spotty cell phone service and basic cable. She would politely greet her family when arriving before finding her wa...

19 likes 0 comments 0
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Westdonian Bridge is Down

Weekly Contest #106

Stephen was just your ordinary thirty-two-year-old bachelor living in the modern Republic of Gadstonia. He woke up most mornings in his townhouse situated in the capital city, had himself coffee and cooked his breakfast, went to work as an operations assistant at a local baseball field, engaged in several sports and social hobbies in his spare time, and was friends with the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex… Attended both of their weddings, in fact. Just your ordinary guy. Stephen’s life had silver spoon perks and obligations. Even “ordi...

16 likes 0 comments 0
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Being a Grown-up

Weekly Contest #105

Being seven years old stinks! This evening I was supposed to go to the soccer club pizza party, but I’m grounded for failing a test in school and trying to lie about it. I wouldn’t have been able to go anyways just for failing the test but I still didn’t want to miss it if I could help it!  Wendy Green was going to wear her new JoJo Siwa watch and Taylor Gates was bringing her Glitter Girl doll in a new outfit, and I have to miss seeing them! And it’ll be so embarrassing to explain why I couldn’t go! Mom and Dad are out on a date t...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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A Summer Carnival Carol

Weekly Contest #97

In the moments that morning rush hour took to progress beyond the carnival setup in the park, the sight through John’s sedan windows transported him through the past, present, and future, much like Scrooge’s ghosts (except outside of Christmas) Early in the day, the lot was closed to visitors, the kiosks were closed, the rides were still, and the festive lights were off, but John couldn’t help seeing its life. Much less his life in the carnival’s liveliness. The city’s Summer Carnival event kicked off the season since the nineteen-fifties...

11 likes 0 comments 0
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The Living Library Business Meeting

Weekly Contest #91

Imagination brings storybooks to life, but little do readers know that a story's life does not end when they finish the book. With that in mind, one can only imagine what a library is like when everyone is gone. A secret society called the Living Library helps provide order and purpose to these ongoing, vivacious beings.At six fifty-eight every evening, The White Rabbit wearing a waistcoat stands watch over the library as the librarian ends the day. She sees any last-minute patrons out of the building and starts her closing duties of locking...

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Droids Just Want to Have Fun

Weekly Contest #82

Open log #380-421I was born Androxdroid 380.21.456000, commissioned by the home planet to surveil the planet earth.Having intercepted an interstellar instrument of the earth planet civilization, originally an unfamiliar entity, the Androx resolved to investigate said planet, its beings, and its ways.The Androx are the most scientific and technically advanced beings in many galaxies. Having intercepted an interstellar instrument of the earth planet civilization, originally an unfamiliar entity to us, Androxians resolved to investigate said pl...

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Growing up in the Stars: Nova’s Story

Weekly Contest #76

This is a prequel to “Child of the Stars”, featuring Nova’s backstory portrayed through dialogue)-kindergarten-“Caelum! Guys!” Little Nova called after her male classmates. “I want to play ‘rocket’ too!” “Girls can’t play “rocket’!” Caelum scoffed. “It’s dangerous!”“you pretend you’re on rockets and missions!” Nova bit back. “Pretending isn’t dangerous!”“Teacher! Teacher!” The two of them hurried to snitch on each other. She told Caelum to let Nova play before her attention was needed elsewhere. “Then you sit here and be ...

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Child of the Stars

Weekly Contest #67

I was on my way to work but all I could think about was the drifting space junk I tracked all day up to this point. Sure, I have a rather unorthodox hobby, but I’ve gleaned so much more about the final frontier since I started tracking and collecting abandoned satellites and space craft. The way I see it, its original owner is going to miss it if it's aimlessly orbiting or crash-landing into the civilized parts of outer space. My side hustle makes great money too, and I feel I’m doing outer space civilization a small service in it. My par...

7 likes 0 comments 0
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The Young Ghost of Montgomery Manor

Weekly Contest #64

My name is Ellie Greer. I died in 1927 of the Spanish Flu. I was only eight years old. I lived with my uncle, William Montgomery, at his manor house, aptly named, Montgomery Manor. He took me in after my parents died and raised me like his own daughter. Uncle William was a rich and successful businessman but also a widower. He lost his own wife and the child she carried shortly after delivering her. Uncle William and I were all each other had until illness left him alone once again. To my dying breath, I could not stand that thought. So e...

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2-XL: The Smartest Toy Robot in the World

Weekly Contest #61

Maggie and Andrew were staying with Grandma for the weekend while their parents took a trip by themselves for their anniversary. Not thrilled about the prospect, Grandma lived beyond civilization in their opinion. (Granted, it was one they kept to themselves as they knew to say nothing if they didn’t have anything nice to say.) She lived nearly thirty miles away from them on an acre carved out of some woods in the hillside. Riding through all the curves and turns just to get there, nearly getting carsick, was one thing, but cell phone and in...

13 likes 0 comments 0
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Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

Weekly Contest #49

Kennedy swiped right and matched with a handsome twenty-six-year-old named Cody. The tags on his dating profile claimed he worked out, looked for a relationship, had no kids but wanted them someday. He didn’t smoke, earned a college education, and even shared her political and spiritual affiliations. What’s more was that he lived five miles away in the next town over from her. He had to be the most local match she found so far who met enough of her personal criteria as well!Kennedy didn’t hesitate to answer the dating app’s prompt encouragin...

10 likes 3 comments 3
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