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Ken Cartisano

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2023

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37 Stories

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The Magic Keyboard

Weekly Contest #312

‘Hi, it’s me Drake. Your new assistant. I heard you were looking for some help with a presentation. Can I be of service somehow?’ The Librarian paused, she knew they were hiring an assistant, but she didn’t know it would be a digital assistant. What she needed was a simple presentation on a topic she knew next to nothing about. Quantum Mechanics. Having given no previous consideration to the matter, she was now forced to think about how to approach the peculiar topic; she considered her audience, a varied group of voracious readers, not a sc...

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The Unnerving Silence of Infinity.

Weekly Contest #305

At the intersection, I could go right and head home – but turning left would take me down by the river, through the old abandoned industrial district: The scenic route. There were a couple of bars I’d heard about… She came bursting out of one of these bars so suddenly, I thought she’d been tossed out the door, but when a man wearing an apron and brandishing a baseball bat came lumbering out after her, it was clear that their relationship was less than cordial. She caught sight of my little car and flagged me down in desperation, her predicam...

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Tiger-Lily

I was attending night classes at the University and serving my first year of internship at the San Diego Zoo. Merely a custodial position, my job consisted of ‘handling’ excrement: every kind of animal crap imaginable. I would cart it out by the bucket load, in some cases by the wheelbarrow, then I’d trudge back into the empty cages with a brush and a hose and clean every inch of concrete. My outfit consisted of industrial blue overalls, rubber boots and gloves, a hat, a brush, a scraper and a cheap paper mask. My favorite chore, as it happe...

12 likes 13 comments 13
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The Dawn.

Weekly Contest #285

“Yeah, this is Professor Mullins. Frank Mullins.” It’s not every day that a professor of anthropology gets a ‘mayday’ call from the engineers at M.I.T., so you want to make sure that it’s you they really want. It turns out it is. When they ask you if you’re familiar with ‘Lucy’, you reply, “One of the most significant archaeological finds in modern history? I should think so.”Lucy is a set of fossilized remains discovered in Ethiopia in the mid-seventies, by a group of anthropologists, so exuberant at their discovery, they gave her a name at...

16 likes 21 comments 21
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The Guild of Radner's Wicked Sword.

Weekly Contest #277

I am the ninety-three-hundred and thirty-fourth Radnerian Guard.You will memorize this story. When you can recite it to me, word for word, in its entirety, without a single variation, you may be accepted into the Guild of Radner. I will not test you every day. Then again, I might. I may not test you for ten or fifteen years—but when I do test you, you must repeat this story word-for-word, in order to convince me that you’re ready… to be the ninety-three-hundred-and-thirty-fifth Radnerian Guard. Until then, you are an intern, nothing more. Th...

18 likes 3 comments 3
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Lucy Lusitania

Weekly Contest #268

Lucy Lusitania. (2230 words.) You’re seated in the back of the room when the Chairman gavels for order. “We have been charged with the task of investigating the tragic implosion of the submersible vehicle Lucy,” he says. “We are not here to assess blame or culpability, people. Not at this time, so, let’s all try to be civil.” The grumbling in the room subsides to the point that you can hear the traffic noise from outside. You watch him as he gazes at the assembly of witnesses, their friends, family, lawyers, congressman, photographers, jou...

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The Devastator.

It was late 1941 and we’d just finished a sortie over Southern France and were beating it back to the base when my pilot abruptly pulled the plane up to 12,000 feet and leveled off. It didn’t take much knowledge of aerial warfare to know that this was a bad, if not fatal decision. We were low on fuel, out of ammo and riddled with holes. We were slow too, and needed to stay low, so I figured my pilot was either wounded, unconscious or dead. I should stop and point out that as the rear gunner in a two-man bomber, I had my back to the pilot and...

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Matchmaker

When I asked him his name, he wrote it in the moist dew on his bike’s massive gas tank. ‘Ronnie.’ Our friendship seemed inevitable: Two teetotalling bikers at a New Year’s Eve party. We spent half of the evening loitering in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, sharing a joint, admiring each other’s leather and bikes. He was large and good-looking, but shy and quiet. I introduced myself and told him I was thinking of leaving. It was well before midnight and he wanted to know where I lived, so I told him, and asked him where he lived. He trac...

4 likes 2 comments 2
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Of Lights and Women.

Weekly Contest #253

The customer was skeptical of my competence, I could sense as much, and I suspected it was because she was shrewd and observant. This was the kind of sign job that I had little prior experience with, but I was determined to prove her fears unfounded, and assured her I would have her sign illuminated before the end of the day. I went back outside, a touch annoyed by her acumen, and proceeded to move the bucket truck into a position to access the sign panel. By my standards, it was a large and expensive sign, double-faced, with two, 3-foot by ...

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Chapter One: The Book Worm.

Weekly Contest #251

His name—was Manchester. Norman Manchester. A normal guy: Tall and lanky, not too graceful, just your average twenty-something sluicing through his final semester of college and concerned about his prospects.He was supposed to be compiling a list of potential job opportunities, water treatment plants and testing facilities within driving distance. It was either that, or accept the teaching position he’d applied for in a large congested city hundreds of miles from home.Instead, he had gotten side-tracked into ‘Great-Books’, a site devoted to ...

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Ch. 2 & 3: The Cabal; The Secret Library.

Weekly Contest #251

“Are you sure about this?”“Yesss,” he replied.“It really doesn’t look like much of a…”He stopped and turned, “It isn’t much. I told you that.” It was the size of two city blocks, no more. They were headed toward a slight mound of earth at the far end of the park.“But I thought it was a fort.”“It was not a fort.”“But…”“It was never a fort. Ever.”“Then why did they…”“I don’t know, Cage. I wasn’t here.”A man clearing his throat disrupted their bickering. “Is that you, Cathy?”Norman turned to look at her but couldn’t see her face blushing in the...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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Chapter 4: The Floating Barbican.

Weekly Contest #251

Like a group of hooligans after a close scrape with the law, they were all giddy with adrenaline. Once the laughter had died away, the three of them clinked their glasses together, downed their drinks, and allowed themselves to slip into a more somber mood. Though she saw the professor snatch the mysterious black folder with her own eyes, she eyed Norman’s larger, battered acquisition: A fat, wrinkled, stained, bulging ream of handwritten pages. A manuscript. Cathy addressed Norman directly, as the Professor looked on. “So, what did you get...

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Chapter 5: It's All Academic.

Weekly Contest #251

The Daily Oracle:Zeus Trial Up in Air.Both sides declare a mistrial: Faceless Judge disagrees.The charges were brought by ‘Natural Law’ essentially a physical constitutional entity with some apparent clout.He was about to open the paper to page two when he heard a feminine voice.“Excuse me, Gorton Manchester?”Gorton smiled and got to his feet. He was lanky. She was all smiles. She hugged him, briefly. “How are ya?” she added.“Not bad.”“I’m Emily Kordite and I’m here to take your deposition. Please, sit back down, I see they brought you some ...

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The Reader

You’re lost in your own thoughts, because you know how important the first few lines of a story can be, and that’s when you bump into him. You straighten and turn to apologize, and he essentially does a double take.“You look familiar,” he says.You repeat your apology and go back to sifting through the battery rack. It’s a small hardware and convenience store in the middle of nowhere, and the batteries, though cheap, look old, the plastic wrappers are either bent or dusty. While weighing your limited options, you realize the stranger you bump...

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The Last Ark

Weekly Contest #247

Killing the Pilot and crew seemed recklessly premature. Not because they were the only living creatures within a billion lightyears. Not at all. I had an entire cargo hold full of organic lifeforms, eager to be revived from their cryogenic stasis. They were all frozen. All expendable. All potential tools for my unlimited use.The primary reason for staying my virtual hand, is that it would be an inconvenience. I would have to suffocate them first, desiccate the bodies, incinerate the remains, thaw out some new subjects, indoctrinate them, tra...

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