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Robert Egan

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2023

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169 Followers
28 Following

33 Stories

1533 karma pts

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Put Me with the Cicadas

Weekly Contest #235

I thought, for some time, that dying while holding hands with my soulmate would be romantic. It wasn't. First off, it took an awful lot of convincing, and when we finally did jump off that bridge together, I was preoccupied with ensuring our heads hit the pavement simultaneously. As for what came afterward, well, that's now, and it's just awkward. The other soul rubbing up against me is bland, well-rounded, probably whale-bound after a few more human orbits. It shudders because I'm all spikes, the type of soul who always ends up in a...

30 likes 17 comments 17
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The Divorcee's Hat Emporium

Weekly Contest #234

Dust gathered on dust like fossil layers in the roadside hat store as a red pickup truck sent up more of the same outside. Melinda's heart rose then fell as she watched the Ford F-150 pass the skeletal remains of the old steel mill that loomed like arthritic dinosaurs over the land of the forgotten. The store's hats were in their display cases, relics in glass tombs waiting to be exhumed. All the hats' pewter pins still shone, and each hat was a Harry's original, priceless beyond measure. But the place hadn't seen so much as a single cus...

15 likes 10 comments 10
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The Six Must Decide: Quetzalcoital or Drext?

Weekly Contest #230

"Leave me quetzalcoital with your Hemingway-six!" the bearded lady roared. These were the perfect words with which to begin the meeting, which was why she was the boss. Her "Hemingway-six" echoed across the labyrinthine cave, fluttered feathered serpent–like across six pairs of ears, and crafted wind jewels across entangled neurons. The effect was neither sensuous nor sensual. It was quetzalcoital, and all six in the cave knew it at once. The bearded lady and her five confrères were the only ones who knew about the cave. It was their ov...

21 likes 6 comments 6
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How I Met Your Grandma

Weekly Contest #229

Vivi had arrived at her grandparent's doorstep with her heart frozen over in disbelief, her eyes twin pools of desolation. Some spiteful child at school had told her that Santa Claus wasn't real, so Grandpa was doing his best to warm that frozen heart. Grandma, too, in her own quiet way.They were making Grandma's special cookies, usually reserved for Christmas and not the night before. Now, everyone knows it's a sad fact that most cookies don't taste as good as raw cookie dough. Not so with Grandma's cookies. No one, not even Grandpa, knew h...

20 likes 12 comments 12
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Person Lion Seeks Free Will

Weekly Contest #228

The person lion hadn't missed much these past three years. There had been a pandemic and a terrible fourth Matrix movie, but that was about it. There had also been a massive seizure at the very end, but that was normal, part of his arrival. The person lion found himself lying on the kitchen floor with a person standing over him. "John? Oh my God, John! Are you okay?" asked the woman who had witnessed his arrival. The person lion searched John's memories for her name. It was either Tiffany Jane or Jane Tiffany. It wasn't an easy name ...

18 likes 8 comments 8
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VISE News Real Talk: The Art of Soul Swapping

Weekly Contest #226

New research proposes a radical solution for the estimated 13 million people who unwittingly lost their souls in last year's Black Friday mishap. While Hell isn't offering refunds anytime soon, a soul swap isn't out of the question, says Sam Ackerman, sole author on the study and CEO of ExoSouls.His paper, titled "Devilish details: A sparse Bayesian learning framework for enhancing the ExoSouls algorithm," is published this week in Chaos: A Nonlinear Journal of Translational Science.In it, Ackerman claims to have unraveled the 2-for-1 soul s...

20 likes 14 comments 14
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Alien Love in the Age of Platypus

Weekly Contest #224

Men, women, cyborgs, androids, and one hyper-intelligent beluga. Yanni G has loved and been loved by them all. Yet neither Yanni G, nor any man before him, has ever known the love of a Platypus."Third person. Narcissist." So says Bartholomew, the raven perched upon Yanni G's… my left shoulder.Yes, it is Yanni G, Saturn's only three-time Grammy winner, who writes this. Music is my voice and love my sustenance, yet now I find myself mute, starved, humbled before the Platypus. Rest assured, I don't mean the duck-billed, egg-laying, mammalian cu...

17 likes 11 comments 11
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Afterparty

Weekly Contest #220

FADE IN:EXT. L.A. RIVER – NIGHTA battered Mini Cooper, headlights off but interior cabin lights on, is parked under the Fourth Street Viaduct. Water curtains both sides of the bridge as the car putters in place.A once-in-a-decade rainstorm is hitting the city, and the L.A. River—nearly concreted out of existence during the last drought—is remembering what it once was. As the water rises under the bridge, the car continues to idle.INT. CAR – NIGHTViolet Caffrey, 29, an old soul trapped in a girlish body, snorts the remaining dot of her latest...

19 likes 13 comments 13
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No chicken tenders, no multi versus

Weekly Contest #218

🐈‍⬛ Karen B. ★☆☆☆☆ Sep 11, 2023My advise... stay away!!! Place does NOT have multi versus, not even one. And rude. They laughed when I said I was waiting for date and had reservation. Made me sit alone at bar. Super expensive plate tasted like sand vomit. Don't know why its still in business. U act like ur all special but don't have diet coke and not even have chicken tenders. Seriously? And manager tried to kiss me. Gross. Not hygenic.🌌 Response from Felix S. of Parallel Dine 49 (Business Owner)Sep 12, 2023: Hello Karen, First off, no one i...

22 likes 24 comments 24
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Kid Cube

Weekly Contest #217

Sensei Bob pays me 'nother visit in my dreams. He ain't dead or nothin' like that. I just ain't been answerin' my phone. "Billy-san, destiny call. Why you no pick up?" I act like I'm dozin' in my dream, hopin' that old bastard'll finally leave me be. But Sensei Bob's still floatin' above me when I crack open my right eye. He's wearin' that black gi and givin' me that blind soulbreaker stare. And when he pulls out that damn short sword and points it at his pot belly, I know he's fixin' to commit Seppuku, that fancy Japanese way of spill...

14 likes 14 comments 14
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A Taste for Dragon's Blood

Shortlisted for Contest #215 ⭐️

The townsfolk watched as the black wings swung like two scimitars away from the Korinth sea. They held their breath as those wings sliced back towards the jagged peaks of Grymdor's spine. And a few cheered when, with a cobblestone-shaking roar, the beast in the sky let out something that blasted the foothills below: It was dragon's dung, the lifeblood of Queen's Quay. Most in the failed fishing town raced toward the impact site, each hoping to be the first to pick free the scorched treasures that the dragon hadn't digested, but Khisane mer...

32 likes 25 comments 25
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Deerhead Mansion

Weekly Contest #213

Old man Hinkley liked his boys young… but probably not in the way you're thinking. What I mean is I never once saw Hinkley take off his three-piece suit. As far as I know, the man was born wearing one. And he hardly ever raised a hand to us because he didn't have to. His stare burned holes through us while his voice steered us toward Armageddon, all before his toothless smile brought us back from the brink. I was 6 years old when I first met him, this stick-thin man with slicked back hair who swaggered toward the pair of housing officers...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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Bottle in a Message

Weekly Contest #212

Dear Immortal Drunkard, Your addiction to the land of the living has upset the cosmic balance. For every bottle you leave standing, another town goes down in flames. The stain of your continued waking existence will draw God's sober ire. Drink up or face the consequences. The typewritten note ended with a crude sketch of a bottle approximately one third full, and the message itself was taped to a full bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle 10-year bourbon. So, it wasn't a message in a bottle, but a bottle in a message on a bottle. The no...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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Leaving the Almost Palindrome City: Notes from a Second-Rate Villain

Shortlisted for Contest #208 ⭐️

What do you do when you realize you're not the hero of your own story? I, for one, have fallen in love, and as this city squeezes itself ever tighter to fit some preordained golden proportion, I take solace in the chaos my love has caused me. Picture a peacock clock stretching across a city block, all wrought in gold and fashioned after the automatons of old, a nest of gears and sprockets residing in a corner of Miami known as Coconut Grove, a place I've come to call the Almost Palindrome City. My love sits on her courtyard bench, waitin...

28 likes 26 comments 26
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Dog Park, High Noon

Weekly Contest #204

Paradise isn't easy to come by and it's even harder to keep. But a good dog knows that she has to stand up to protect what's hers. This is the story of one such dog, the one they call Bella.Now, paradise was Three Forks Dog Park in Snoqualmie, and even on overcast days, of which there were many, the park was a bright place to be. But the sun was shining on that October Saturday when Greg and Bella rode their Ford Bronco into Three Forks. Heads turned, as they always did, at Bella's arrival.Greg strolled, but Bella pranced. Greg was a well-gr...

10 likes 3 comments 3
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