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Scott Christenson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2022

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604 Followers
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150 Stories

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The Calm Before the Twitter Storm

Weekly Contest #363

As I sit at my window in Hoboken, snowed in and trying to focus on rewriting the final draft of Lindsey Graham’s memoir, my mind keeps slipping away to the shitstorm I had unleashed. Despite writing the (now posthumous) memoir of one of America’s most famous politicians, it was getting involved with a local, not even a real celebrity, Emma Larson, that caused my national disgrace.For you to understand what happened, I think I need to explain a few things.First, Emma Larson is one of those online zero-waste influencers, sort of a Brooklyn ver...

12 likes 16 comments 16
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RBS London – The 2:00 p.m. Alarm

Weekly Contest #360

Snippets from my childhood play out in a dream like a movie montage. “You only care about music and reading books; you’re going to be a failure,” my dad tells me. “If you want to be a success, you need to learn math,” my older brother advises. I ignore them, and then, years later, graduate with a degree in engineering and move to Wall Street to prove them wrong.I jolt awake and process where I am in an all-enveloping darkness. A London hotel room in late December with the curtains drawn. Recollections of flying in yesterday and struggling to...

27 likes 20 comments 20
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Cat's in the Cradle

Weekly Contest #358

“Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake,” Zach told his wife Michelle, retelling the story about setting up a command bunker in Baghdad Iraq during the war.She smiled patiently. “You are an American hero. Now, can we please watch some TV?”He leaned back on their living room couch, and with her familiar warmth at his side, he felt deeply at peace. And that evening, for once, the three secure lines downstairs remained blessedly silent. From somewhere, the giggles of his daughter Isabella, drifted in, busy with whatever it was teen...

23 likes 20 comments 20
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A Fitting Tribute

Weekly Contest #355

For the robber, it felt fitting to steal from the Hoboken True Crime Podcast Club on the evening of Bob Horowitz’s wake. A touching tribute. A murder could have been even more appropriate, but one member was already dead, and the club’s numbers had shrunk to the point it was teetering on extinction.They were meeting on a Tuesday night as usual. “HTCPC” meetings were held on Tuesdays so they “wouldn’t interfere with anyone’s plans,” but, in truth, no one, had any other plans.Eight HTCPC members huddled around a table of in the back of Pete’s ...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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The Last Tide

Weekly Contest #353

The morning chill stung her face. The branches hung unnaturally still, a sharp reminder of how alone she was. Lalik was acutely aware that the broken branch grove was an unlikely choice of place to meet. It wasn’t safe to be alone in a land where predators roam. Her stomach churned; yet if she hadn’t come, she would lose her only chance to meet him alone.She felt a vibration in the air, an energy emanating from the birds in the branches, before he appeared. Abruptly, he burst out, full of impatience. Tight muscles rippled around sharp, bony ...

20 likes 6 comments 6
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The End of the Beginning

Weekly Contest #350

With an IQ of 145 and 800 on my SATs, I’ve never understood why Dad insists I’m “just a child in a grown man’s body.” Take action. Be a man. Do something with your life…blah blah blah.Amidst the vast entropy of the universe, what’s the point in working, or meeting the rigorous societal requirements to have a girlfriend, when I can simply stay at home in Antioch, thinking deep thoughts? (and playing the occasional game of League of Legends).At the present moment, I sit at the table in my family’s darkened kitchen, illuminated by a forest of g...

20 likes 16 comments 16
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The Milk Upstream — Hannah’s Diary

Winner of Weekly Contest #349 🏆

My hands were shaking worse than usual the day Todd Schultz first noticed me. Not from nerves, but from the milk. Twenty years of living downstream could do that to anyone.It all started when I was refilling the punch bowl at the Elkhart Lake community center's monthly dance night when he lumbered over. “I’m Todd. I’ve heard about you.”“What have you heard?”“That you're from downstream,” he said. “And that downstream girls know how to keep a man happy. That true?”I smiled the way that mom taught me, small and grateful. “I guess that depends ...

160 likes 137 comments 137
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The Atheists of Dayton

Weekly Contest #347

The heavenly aroma of freshly roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe wafted in the air as Jake, an aspiring sculptor, made latte after half-skim no-whip-oat-milk latte. He carefully etched his personal triangle design into the foam before sliding each cup across a polished counter to a waiting, thirsty customer.Cafe Kumagaya, the Japanese single-origin gourmet coffee emporium, felt like the most exotic place to work in Dayton, Ohio - at least until after you put in a few months of 12-hour shifts.As he fell into the rhythm of his work, and the morning...

18 likes 14 comments 14
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The #944 to Tabriz

Shortlisted for Contest #345 ⭐️

As the train departed Isfahan station, Amir reached into his suitcase and felt it. Pulling it out, he carefully examined the colorful shard of ceramic between his fingers, remembering its history.That morning, his apartment shuddered; dust and plaster raining down from the ceiling. He decided to leave before it was too late. As he hastily packed his suitcase, the yellow fragment glimmered on the floor and he plucked it up, a memento of the home he had lived in for seventeen years.The American bombings were unlike anything he had ever witness...

43 likes 30 comments 30
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Memories of Pangrati

Weekly Contest #341

There is a Japanese novel called Before the Coffee Gets Cold which tells the story of a cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time. Most visit wanting to return to their greatest regret of the past—perhaps to act differently, say something else, or just spend one more moment with someone they love.As the title hints at, there’s a catch. You can only stay in the past until your coffee in the cafe gets cold. You'd better act fast. If you don’t do or say what you plan to quickly, you might miss the moment.Through the page, I can hear...

33 likes 30 comments 30
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A Hero is Forged

Weekly Contest #319

It was on the steps of the Temple of Heroes that Sigrun earned his everlasting glory. The Orc King, a brute named Gorag the Devourer, had led a horde of beasts from the Blackspire Mountains into the heart of the Valley of Mimir. Sigrun, standing alone at the temple's entrance, faced down the beast king. With a roar that shook the forests and the valley, he swung his Hammer of Mjolnir in a wide arc that hit its mark, smashing Gorath's demon skull to bits. Poisonous orc blood cascaded down the marble steps like a river, staining the sacred sto...

15 likes 3 comments 3
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Surviving Saribung

Weekly Contest #318

When the guy Mckenna was dating (if spending years hunting and fishing expeditions in northern Wisconsin and Canada could be called “dating”), replaced her with a wilderness expert from Australia, she found herself at a loss on how to respond.“Thanks for letting Logan take your place” is what Karl had said. Lately, he had been getting annoying with the internet’s latest advice of saying “thank you” instead of “sorry.”Worst of all, he thought she wasn’t 'knowledgeable" enough to guide their expedition to Nepal.Sabotage wasn’t her style, so pl...

22 likes 7 comments 7
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Gaza Bot 2067

Weekly Contest #312

Khan YounisIn Gaza, under the weight of Israel’s pervasive AI surveillance, armed resistance had ended decades ago. By 2067, to live in Gaza was to be watched constantly, all while trying to navigate the labyrinth of the territory's thirty-two thousand residency regulations.From her second-floor bedroom window, Gaza resident 9121 watched a young man pluck an orange from his family’s tree. He peeled it carefully, offering half to a girl who smiled next to him. For a moment, resident 9121 even envied them sharing a moment of joy, savoring some...

20 likes 12 comments 12
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Last Call

Weekly Contest #310

What would you do if you were a male model in Los Angeles, going on thirty with a patchy resume of ad shoots and a part-time job at a coffee shop, if someone offered you a hundred grand to represent an App on Instagram—you’d take it, right? Even if the contract came with a 1 year no dating clause?Ashley leans over, her golden hair bathing in the warm glow of the candlelight between us, “you are so tall,” she coos as she taps my leg flirtatiously under the table.We met at a reading group at an independent bookstore in Pasadena. She put her mo...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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Shadows of the Rift Valley

Weekly Contest #309

The air in Kibuye was heavy with humidity from the lake and with smoke from the roadside grill Jessica stood in front of hoping to get served. Six months into teaching English in Rwanda, and Jessica lamented how she was still seen as a “Muzungu”—an outsider—viewed with a distant curiosity by locals, and with stark suspicion by those who knew her ex-boyfriend, Emmanuel.Back in Short Hills, New Jersey, Jessica remembered wanting to be different than her parents, to ride above their performative liberalism and empty rhetoric. Staring at Lake Ki...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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