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Robert Egan

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2023

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174 Followers
28 Following

34 Stories

1542 karma pts

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Making Room

Weekly Contest #362

Steve noticed it first in the onions.Not that they were burning. Burning happened. Kitchens were built on the edge of burning. It was the hesitation that unsettled him—the quarter second between reaching for the knife and knowing how to hold it. As though someone else had borrowed his hands, then politely returned them.He blinked.The rhythm came back.Dice, gather, slide. Dice, gather, slide.The line cooks orbited around him in the organized violence of late afternoon service, each station keeping its own tempo while somehow contributing to a...

4 likes 2 comments 2
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Horse Thief's Conundrum

Weekly Contest #328

Fog from Heaven's mount rolled across the field as a furtive figure crept between haystacks. When hooves sounded through the haze, the man dropped beneath his drab cloak to the dark earth and lay there stone-still. He recognized the hoofbeats of his Atreus—the finest horse within 40 leagues if not all of England. The black destrier would be heading Viscount Escofet's procession to the joust, and Escofet would undoubtedly be bringing his second horse as a reserve, which left his third-best behind in the stables. The would-be horse thief didn'...

22 likes 8 comments 8
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Time Perverts

Weekly Contest #317

Content Warning: Impossible sexual implications. From the Peabody's mezzanine, I watch as the Duckmaster in his crimson regalia arrives to usher the ducks from the hotel fountain. What began as a 1930s prank fueled by Tennessee whiskey is now a time-honored tradition. Each morning at 11, the ducks slip into the marble fountain with practiced ease, ripples of time spreading outward beneath the crystal chandeliers, a wholesome counterbalance to the sordid spin cycle of my own life. Now as dusk approaches, they will begin their gentle ascent to...

23 likes 12 comments 12
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What My Dog Thinks About When He Pees

Weekly Contest #314

Walk? My bonded companion does not heed my plea. There is no jingling jangling clanging incantation of key. Walk? Walk? Walk? He does not understand, so I put it on the floor for him to see. Yes, BAD. Yes, NO. Yes. Walk. We ready the harness and the cord of binding to be as one in the search for the scents that need finding. Outside, all is infernal heat, but I drag my feet even so. He wants to rush and leave no mark. I have tried to teach him, but he squanders all his inside. That tree? Now it's ours. Same goes for that car. How else are we...

25 likes 14 comments 14
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The Green Mamba Rises

Weekly Contest #299

Bartholomew had a very important task. He and he alone had been chosen to guard against the Transmogrification. All of Capparta, not to mention the entire Midrealm, depended on him. It involved keeping his eyes open, and it was boring as hell. Why Stonemere had selected him among all the other acolytes was beyond anyone's ken, especially Bartholomew's. Sure, he had some modicum of talent for the lower forms of physical magic, but elemental spells eluded him and he was a miserable failure when it came to astral projection. Yet no magic was ne...

23 likes 9 comments 9
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I Left the Baby in Dimension X

Winner of Weekly Contest #293 🏆

There's a baby in the back of the glider, but it's not mine. Sure, she looks like my baby, but my baby never cries when we're cruising through the Kuiper belt. Quite the opposite. Cruising through the solar system's outer reaches is sometimes the only way I can get her to fall asleep. But this baby is wailing like an electric guitar. And if there's any doubt, then there's the smell, or the lack of it. My baby farts like a race horse. No filtration system known to man can completely dilute it. Weaker noses would rush for the airlock, but I'm ...

189 likes 135 comments 135
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God of the Greyhound

Weekly Contest #276

Lately, the San Diego beach had taken on a screaming emptiness. There were people there, sure, and sun and sand and sea and sky, but they were hazy lines against the roaring void that I'd come to call the Big Zero. Plus I no longer recognized anyone at my hostel up the street. The crowd had changed to mostly young Europeans on holiday whose eyes passed over the zone of invisibility that my urine-scented top bunk had become. I was one of those guys who had stayed for too long. They knew it. The Big Zero knew it. And so did I."For $20, I can g...

38 likes 20 comments 20
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Adtopia in the House of Dandelion

Weekly Contest #274

In that corner of the world where moments pause and linger, where the air holds a secret, there is a room of porcelain and quiet. That place where the walls whisper echoes of those who've come and gone, where the faucet's drip marks time's passage, and the tile's cool touch grounds you. That place whose people are 3-ply people, seeking solace in softness. Whose wipes pass like a silk breeze across the stillness of their sanctuary. Fred finger-mimed blowing his brains out until the toilet roll dispenser fell silent and dispensed three sheets ...

32 likes 16 comments 16
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The Matchmakers

Weekly Contest #273

"So, have you ever tried following someone, you know, without them seeing you?" Theo asked to break the latest awkward silence."That's stalking…" Katie, the psych major seated across from him in the Cafe at the Loren let her silence hang, as if accusing him of some unspoken crime.Theo had thought her shy at first, but over the past 20 minutes bordering on infinity, he'd come to see that she reveled in these painful pauses. Like some self-satisfied boa constrictor, she'd squeezed the life out of every attempt at conversation while staring wor...

33 likes 15 comments 15
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October Surprise

Weekly Contest #272

"Oy choi, show me your tongue!" That's what you got to say to a suspected serp. They can't hide their forked tongues even if they've gotten better at copying just about everything else. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you. I mean, it was all over the feeds, this little old man, he could've been anybody's Grandpa, except he was living under a stolen ID and preying on small critters near a school zone. But luckily some Final Front guys caught him, and when they backed him into a corner, out came that freaky serp tongue. And that's just one exampl...

37 likes 10 comments 10
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The Blossoming of Gerald Bloom

Weekly Contest #251

There is a book whose title is untitled, whose author is unknown, and whose language is not language. J.D. Salinger is said to have caught a glimpse of this book's untitled title page before fading from public view; Hemingway kept a few pages tucked away in memory before it all overflowed; and Homer made it through an entire chapter before going blind. And as for Gerald Bloom, well, he intended to read the whole damn book. A daunting task to be sure, but Bloom had one thing going for him: He wasn't a writer. Like the ageless book itself, Blo...

23 likes 12 comments 12
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Dear Lord

Weekly Contest #250

Lloyd was not one to pray. That's what made the child's sudden prayer all the more terrifying. It came while Lloyd was working the heavy bag. Fists up, he whirled to face the sound's source, but there was only the voice, a little white girl's by the sound of it: "Dear Lord, please tell Rufus to stay out of my room. He can't be in my room because he's dirty. And please make me pretty like Mom, and if you could, have Beth Marie invite me to her birthday. World peace is good, too. Thank you, I love you." Now, one gloved hand paused in front of ...

17 likes 11 comments 11
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The Medusa Coin

Weekly Contest #244

"The coin never fails, but I'll give you a fair chance." "Coin? You want money?" "No, I want you to flip it." "What?" "The coin. You can't look at it yet. Not until after you flip it." "Hey, watch where you're pointing that thing. I know you. You're that guy who put the Kalinksi brothers in a coma with some kind of coin trick. They call you Percy, right? What do you want?" "You know better than I do." "Did Falcone send you? Listen, if this is about his wife, nothing happened. She simply came to a show." "Like I said, you know better." "You k...

24 likes 10 comments 10
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Life in the Woods with my Microwave

Weekly Contest #243

In 1845, a journeyman by the name of Henry David Thoreau set out to tame nature. In his head were plans for a steam-powered chainsaw. His goal? To prove that one man alone could level an entire forest and remake it in his own image. Within two year's time, Thoreau had toppled every tree for miles around and built a boardwalk empire that spanned Walden Pond, a place of power where cheerful clouds of smoke replaced woodland canopy and sounds of industry blighted out birdsong. So began the Age of Mechanicism as America freed itself from romanti...

24 likes 13 comments 13
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The Boy with Frozen Wings

Shortlisted for Contest #238 ⭐️

"You have my attention," says the Grand Assassin. "Who?" "He…" The boy drops his gaze to the Varos gold coin on the tavern's backroom table, his guarantee of safe audience, then looks back up at the man. The Grand Assassin's wrinkles and white hair may or may not be real, but the eyes are. Pinprick pupils caught in stillwater stare back at the boy. "I can't say it." "Have you heard the story of the little bird with the frozen wings?" the Grand Assassin asks. "Are there two birds and a stone in it?" "No, lad, it's the one about th...

44 likes 38 comments 38
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