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Scott Speck

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2025

Stories (13)

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7 Followers

28 Following

13 Stories

156 karma pts

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Bloody Mary -- a Manifestation

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #335

Bloody Mary – a Manifestation The Bateman Home, 9:00 PMCindy, thirteen years old and wearing pink pajamas, stares into the bathroom mirror. Downstairs, her friends wait impatiently in a basement lit only by flickering candles.Let them wait, she thinks. I’m the séance medium, and I need time to get ready. She puts on her witchy look – face angled down, long hair mussed and wild, and that penetrating stare. The ritual is simple – eyes shut, then five repetitions (with a generous pause between, for effect), then eyes open. She chooses her voice...

0 likes

Forgiving Yourself Can Be the Hardest Part

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #335

Forgiving Yourself Can Be the Hardest Part “How long has this been eating away at you?” Sister Mary Bonaventure asked. She sat across the table from me, a thickly loaded corned beef on rye grasped delicately among her fingers. Mary has such beautiful fingers – she works as a freelance hand model. She’s worn Cartier rings for full-page ads in posh magazines for the super-rich. She’s sported glitzy Swiss watches on her wrist, shown off any number of new nail polishes, skin exfoliating cleansers, and hand moisturizing creams. All the jewelry sh...

2 likes

The Junk Yard

Scott Speck

The Junk Yard It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Clarence and I stood near the back of the yard, between two rows of old junkers. He was leaning against a light pole, placed in the yard to discourage thieves. The orange lamp atop the pole illuminated the snowflakes swirling about in the rising wind. It was bitterly cold – I had to keep my hands stuffed deep into my coat pockets so they wouldn’t go numb. Clarence wouldn’t let the dogs roam the junk yard tonight. Both hounds were safe and warm inside his mobile ...

1 like

The Forest People

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #334

The Forest People It was pouring rain, the afternoon sky dark with greenish clouds as I rounded a curve on Benner Road. No radio reception up here – only static sputtered from the dashboard speaker, punctuated by the AM crackling sounds of lightning. The Jeep’s wipers were set on high, but their frantic movements did little to clear my view.The wind intensified, and occasional bursts of hail jolted the Jeep with clatter. Twice, I nearly drove into the trees as I lost my way through a blur of rain. I was driving into the worst of the storm, w...

0 likes

Dinner for Two

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #333

Dinner for Two Minnie Ayers certainly didn’t look the part. I'd expected some dark-eyed, mysterious sorceress with flowing robes and long, brightly painted nails. Instead, she was punctual, direct, and dressed in her nine-to-five secretary's dress. As she stepped gingerly about my third-floor flat on Potts Street, she reminded me of Nancy Drew in a mystery novel – aged twenty years and burnished of all the affects of childhood.“Something happened here,” she said, raising her gaze to the ceiling, beneath which a dark wooden support beam ran h...

8 likes

A Killing Rain

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #332

A Killing Rainby Scott SpeckAt eight A.M. the Politburo interrupted radio – every station. Twenty minutes later they commandeered television – every channel. Aleksandr was wheeling his bike out the door when the emergency public address system squealed and crackled to life.Then a female voice spoke. It was her he realized, the voice chosen in the direst of circumstances. She was… Motherland – all-knowing, confident, demanding obedience. Her every syllable echoed off like a ghost among the gray buildings.Complete all preparation by twelve o’c...

6 likes

A Magical Evening

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #331

A Magical Evening Heavy snow continued to fall. I watched from the warmth and security of my third-story flat while the window’s many mullioned panes crackled and creaked in the wind. Thick snow had already blanketed the neighborhood’s stately homes, and all I could see of the street lamp across Potts Avenue was a glowing yellow smudge. Then it winked out, along with the lamp on my sideboard. Power outage. Fortunately, I’d stocked up on both wood and coal for the fireplace. In the near darkness, I drew hard on my cigar, and its hot ember rev...

13 likes

Late Night Caller

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #330

Late Night Caller by Scott Speck “Allen, do you still love me?” The whiskey glass leaps from my hand and explodes on the floor, but I barely notice. The phone is tight against my ear. “Lucy? Wait… How...” I stop myself, embarrassed at my own stupidity. Allen, you’re a goddamn defense attorney. Act like one! “Why did you leave me out here? Here, Allen, where it’s so… cold…” Over the phone, wind is blowing through trees. I know how bitterly cold it is out there. Hours after getting home, my swollen red toes are still itching and tingling....

4 likes

Serendipity

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #329

Serendipityby Scott Speck October, 2025My death came suddenly. It happened one sunny, windy day in October while I whistled a merry tune and strode down Main Street. The air around me was filled with the delicious aromas of wood fires and fermenting apples. The sidewalks and streets were alive with the skitter of vividly colored leaves.Then, ten feet in front of me, a man appeared from a doorway. He was short and thin and, most alarmingly, wore a black ski mask. I stopped dead in my tracks as he sprinted past me and was gone. Then a policema...

4 likes

The Inevitability of Fate

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #328

The Inevitability of Fateby Scott Speck1.In the candlelight of the tent, my tarot reader glowed upon her throne. Beneath her tattered red turban, one eye bored into mine, while the other appeared lifeless, hazed over long ago with a cataract. She seemed a strange kind of paradox - her manner imperious, her wrinkled appearance almost hag-like.I was here on the insistence of my friend Linda, who had visited Madame Toussant the previous weekend at the Renaissance Faire. She claimed Madame was the real deal, that she would provide valuable insig...

5 likes

Cat in a Tree

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #327

Cat in a Treeby Scott Speck1.It was Halloween night, and so windy that he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the wind’s roar through the trees that kept rousing him, but instead, his love of the windy weather, itself – a fascination that had brought him, a year ago, to rent this apartment – the attic floor of a quite large, old house, divided long ago into three main floors of apartments. With only thin layers of insulation, wood, and asphalt shingles above him, he enjoyed living that much closer to the sky.By one o’clock, he was finally drifting off...

4 likes

Guilty Conscience

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #326

Guilty Conscience, by Scott SpeckIt’s 3 AM. The street below is quiet, deserted, but I still can’t sleep.Folks need months to adjust to the noise of the city, my landlord said when I signed the lease. Tonight, though – this late – it’s quieter than the country in winter. Across the street, rank upon rank of brownstones extend into the distance, silhouetted chimneys smoldering. One coal-black column obscures the spiked crown of the Empire State, while Chrysler’s summit is unobscured. I don’t deserve my own place – so luxurious, and all paid f...

14 likes

The Transformation

Scott Speck

Submitted to Contest #326

1.Somewhere, invisible to her in the fog, an ocean still roared with last night’s storm. The air about her was impenetrable – cold, clammy, and so thick she couldn’t see the ground. Her morning walk had become a labor, for she had to test each step before taking it – across hillocks and divots, past unseen foxholes, through tangles of beach grass.Then, at last, her feet sank into sand – blessed sand. She smelled the pungent decay of seaweed, and her next step burst the watery sack of a bladder wrack. There, too, was the scent of salt, the sa...

1 like