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Martin Ross

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2021

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Las Mujeres

Weekly Contest #198

“You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore." — Cesar Chavez2014Dodge struggled to focus on his lesson plan during the Tuesday morning trek to Phoenix. “Sister” Frieda had permanently assigned him shotgun, and an obligatory period of cautious small talk was de rigueur.By the time Frieda’s Mercedes negotiated the I-60 West ramp, however, he usually was forgotten, as Frieda and Joan and Antonia dished liturgy and rightwing do...

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Non Compos Mentor: Tinkering Part 4

Weekly Contest #198

"What is the fundamental difference between the natural and the supernatural? What is the essential characteristic of magic?" George R. Price "Science and the Supernatural," Science, August 26, 1955 2014 “Feel better?” Reynolds growled lazily, sipping noisily at his Viente Americano. Danzer considered, settling in with his Grande Kona as he glanced absently at the cadaverous panhandler at the nearby junction of Baseline and Val Vista, where Mesa met Gilbert in a torrent of mid-morning traffic. Reynolds had suppressed a smirk as Danzer ...

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Another Life: A Mike Dodge Tale

“The only problem with your murder theory,” Dr. Deshpande suggested, “is the absence of murder in any form.”“Not in the traditional sense, maybe,” I countered.“If by the ‘traditional sense, you mean caused to die at the hands of another, neither by accident nor the transmission of disease, then I’d be interested to know in what innovative and exotic manner you believe Mr. Rawalpindi died. There is no doubt whatsoever that Arjun was the victim of anaphylactic shock resulting from an insect sting?”“No…” I admitted. That Saanvi Deshpande had us...

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Everything Possible: A Curtis Mead Story

“I need to confess,” the woman stated.It was on the bright side of 11 a.m.: Curtis Mead had been called out on an early morning shooting downtown just as he’d brought the needle down on his New Zealand Dark Roast pod. After seeing the body off, after questioning the half-dozen white-collar witnesses and destitute spectators who’d set out early for coffee or coffee money, after officiously but diplomatically telling the local media to find a private corner for self-fornication until the sun had at least crossed over the Courthouse dome, Curti...

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The Adventure of the Turret Goner: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Gadzooks: Strong language. “Ah, Holmes…” my trusty sidekick murmured.“Yes, Watson?”“So you’re Holmes, now?” Det. Curtis Mead mused. “I’M the sidekick? You want to oversee the evidence collection, maybe question the suspects? Wouldn’t mind you wanted to do the paperwork after this shit’s done. And swear to God, if you call me Lestrade…”“Didn’t know you were a Doyle fan.”“And just why not?” I was skating near the polar bear end of the ice. “Must be like a million Sherlock Holmes books out there — most done-to-death dude ever. Even Kareem Abdul...

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The Mc’ler’s Tribute

Dedicated to Russell Mickler, the forger of fantasy and fancy, whose tales of the intrepid and virtuous halflings and their neighboring realms deserve so much more than a Tolkien glance. Russley planted his broad quarterling rump in his beloved Lazyboar recliner, caressing the bristly but somehow supple upholstery he himself had crafted after battling the great beast Porkham to reclaim the Dark Swamp of Treyf from the armoured, terraforming Fieldsmiths. Russley’s fine leather Croqs, cobbled by the Croq Monsieur who lived in the Sandalwoo...

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Short Stuck: A Mike Dodge Mystery

“…So of course, I got the short end of the stick once again.”“What’s that even mean?” I asked.Jay blinked, and stabbed a fry into his Heinz. “What do you mean, what’s that mean?”“Literally. Or I guess metaphorically. A stick is a stick – it has no long or short end.”“It’s just an expression,” Jay muttered. “You want me to be a little plainer? There’s soccer moms next door.”That he’d been leering at the millennial school-day lunch bunch since “I’m Erin” had recited the lunch specials, rendered his sensitivity suspect. “If you’re suggesting wh...

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Stewed Over: A Mike Dodge Mystery

It’s the thought that counts.Wonder what Albert Einstein might have made of that one. Would he have dropped quantum theory and devoted his life to crafting fine sachertortes and punschkrapfens? We’d all still know his kindly, fuzzy mug from the Harry and David’s fall catalogue, but we’d gobble Al’s pastries for that “little taste of prewar Vienna” rather than to assuage our postwar nuclear angst.I wouldn’t have entertained that thought if I hadn’t been hangry when I ran into Deanngela Hofstra at the Gemm’s Mart. St. Patty’s had passed leavin...

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Mine Craft: A Mike Dodge Intrigue

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’"Mending Wall"Robert FrostMost folks believe Robert Frost was a big wall guy. But verse is an iffy basis for popular discourse, especially hereabouts where poetry is for eighth graders and the Hallmark Store and the occasional bar band that actually buys that the Friday crowd is craving original works that illuminate the human experience of bar band dudes.In point of fact, Fro...

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Karakuri-Netsuke: A Mike Dodge Minimystery

Seth Waldron’s living room was overpopulated with hares and dogs and mice and octopi and dragons and spirits and skeletons and not a few couples engaged in eternal copulation.“Ah, you’ve found the shunga,” the master of the house breathed behind me. Dad had a 30-year run of National Geographics shelved in the new bedroom I demanded at nine, and it didn’t take long for me to develop a literal Indiana jones for the more fascinating anatomical aspects of sub-tropical anthropology. I couldn’t feign studying the use of cowrie shells as indigenous...

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Mum: A Mike Dodge Mystery

“Well,” the elfin gift shop volunteer reflected. “I suppose it depends.”There are three basic types of hospital volunteers. She was the third variety, and so came around the counter to peer at Ecumena’s meager floral selection.“Frankly, a nice houseplant provides a positive life force, and do you know, I read somewhere that a tropical like a spider plant can purify the air in the room?” “Verna” related, almost breathlessly.“My wife wanted something more, ah, ornamental,” I smiled, almost apologetically. She patted me on the forearm. She unde...

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Jeff and Gina's Wedding: A Mike Dodge Mystery

“Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”I immediately shifted for a look-around. Sarah’s fingers, resting softly on my right paw, constricted into a vice I might not have anticipated from one who forced me to scientifically document her lunchtime fats and calories.Just as Sarah’s tender(er) mode had activated the second the organ sounded the bride’s approach, my Pavlovian adolescence kicks in when I hear those words followed by even the slightest rustling or throat-clearing. In film – or at least the genre of film Sarah prefers com...

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Like Hell: A Mike Dodge Mystery

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there…”Saanvi was running exceptionally late, so I decided I’d roam the halls of academe. Academe wasn’t thrilled.I’d met two of what sufficed as the University’s finest within about fi...

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Perfetc.

Weekly Contest #188

“It was a perfect day.” For a nanosecond, I think it’s an auditory hallucination.Part of the blood on his face, his arms, the Jimi Hendrix tee, is his. Only people with tubes and pipettes and machines will be able to distinguish that that isn’t.The blood on my fingers, my “Keep The Immigrants/Deport the Racists” tee, is of the same composition, though as the minutes pass, the blend richens with fresh arterial. My skin is unbroken, but whatever perfection he found in this day is now draining onto the sidewalk and soaking through my shirt.**No...

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The Cat, The Dragon, and The Maneki-Neko: A Mike Dodge Mystery

Weekly Contest #187

The mid-September breeze caressed my newly shorn neck, and I felt like the shit, senior heavyweight class.At the right-angle gutter between the Dollar Palace and Sandy’s Beauty Supplies, warm, brisk cross-currents had trapped a dust-devil of discarded Rescue Squad Subs wrappers, dead Fireball nip bottles, used vape pods, and even a deceased Trojan kiting about like a Man-of-War in a hydrothermal vent of sadness. The sirocco coursing in from the Beltway bore an incense of double-stacked burger, non-trans-fried chicken, cumin and curry and gar...

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