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Scott Speck

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2025

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48 Stories

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The Middle Place

Weekly Contest #369

This is yet another story that's a "work in progress". I had every little time again this week to write... The parlor walls strobed with a dazzling, white light. Then the deafening crack of thunder, as if the stormy skies above Portis House had split in two. Alice, my daughter, stepped closer and took my arm. As if, as her father, I could fend off such power. Rain hammered the windows, and a howl of wind wound its way down the chimney. The fire I’d just kindled – it blossomed in a sudden woosh of air, and we welcomed the incr...

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Fenroth

Just the beginning of a longer story. Very busy this week with selling our house, but I wanted to share what I've written thus far. Fenroth Ever since I became house librarian at Crow’s Nest House, it has rained every day – two weeks straight. In the brief pauses between downpours, the skies have looked grim – rendered in bruised purples and charcoal grays. Thank goodness the house has electricity – generated by coal-fired boilers in the estate’s largest outbuilding. I stand now at one of the library’s windows, as large, ice-cold drops sm...

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Mind Bender

Weekly Contest #367

Mind Bender I run down an empty hallway. My life is hanging by a thread. “Freeze, or I’ll shoot!” a man bellows from behind me. If I obey, I’ll never get out of here.  I’ll lose my freedom, my high-paying career, new house, luxury car. Yes, that’s how selfish I’ve become.  At what point did my cushy life supersede my conscience? For doing work that is morally reprehensible. Evil. The click of my shoes echo down the hall. Behind me, other clicks mark the three armed men pursuing me. “Stop!” he shouts again,...

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Cornelius on the Bluffs

Weekly Contest #366

Experimenting with an unreliable narrator in this one... Cornelius on the Bluffs The storm continues this morning. Sea winds whistle through gaps in my home’s age-old windows, and, from up in the third floor attic, a moan rises and falls with each sweeping gust. It haunts me, that moan. I hear it clearly, from all the way down here in the first floor parlor. Resting my hand on the arm of a wing back, I feel something fuzzy. Pulling back, I note the shocking amount of dust clinging to my hand, and the clear handprint I lef...

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The Prank

Weekly Contest #365

The Prank “Hey, Bob, you hear the rumor?” I say. Bob is tall, lanky, and lugging four heavy books under his arm – what a nerd. He pushes his thick, Coke-bottle glasses up the bridge of his nose and regards me calmly. “About what?” he says. “That missing kid from Piedmont High?” “What? No, I hadn't heard. When did he go missing?” “A couple days ago, on Saturday afternoon. Listen, his parents passed out flyers at church, so I’m handing some out at school.” I hold out a sheet of paper, still warm from the school secretary’s Xerox machine. The t...

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Blackmoor House

Weekly Contest #364

Blackmoor House I stood inside a cold, square, windowless room – my arms numb, muscles spent. A fug of shattered brick dust hung in the air. Its red particles floated through my torch beam as I swept it about the chamber. A wood table sat at room center, the objects atop it concealed beneath a shroud. Atop that, a thick layer of dust blanketed everything. One hard blow kicked up a cloud of talcum-fine gray. Coughing, I waved it away and removed the cloth. There lay a Ouija board, its black letters faded, scuffed with age. A wood planchet, te...

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The Call of the Sea

Weekly Contest #363

The Call of the Sea I stood at the rail, amazed to be alone on the promenade deck. Only yesterday, we had lined this rail, two deep, as friends and family stood on the docks and waved their farewells. Today, most passengers were seasick below deck. Beyond our storm-tossed ship, the sea was a sharply peaked range of rolling gray hills and valleys – immense wave crests capped with foam that the wind sliced free, then shaped into clouds of mist that stung my skin with cold. While my face grew numb, the hooded mackintosh and waterproof trousers ...

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Afreet

Weekly Contest #362

Afreet I’d never encountered a living coffee cup before. I mean – if a bulbous, blinking eyeball stares up at you from the porcelain’s concave bottom, doesn’t that qualify as alive? ----- My life has taken many strange and unexpected turns. As a boy dreaming of walking on the moon, little could I have foreseen my current profession. And how, this morning, just twenty minutes ago, I was running for my life, pursued by my would-be assassin. Imagine darting in and out of train cars, dashing down crowded corridors, bounding up escalators and bey...

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First Light

Weekly Contest #361

First Light I step down off the train, onto a crowded rush-hour platform. The long line of electric lamps above us buzz annoyingly, and flicker rapidly on and off. The stroboscopic light pattern makes me feel dizzy. It’s five PM, here at the open air train station, as the mood of the commuter crowd drops from gloomy to abysmal – strange for a Friday afternoon. “Same old shit,” someone complains. “Make twenty Lux a week, and still I gotta stumble home in the dark.” Then the station lights stabilize, brighten a bit, and the crowd grumbles out ...

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The Interview

Weekly Contest #360

The Interview Royce walked beside me. I wore a brand new suit, while he wore khaki slacks and a polo shirt. Our disparity made sense – after all, I was the one being interviewed. I was the guy desperate for a job. This was my last, best chance. If I bungled things, I’d lose my lease, my car. I saw how little Royce had changed over the years. Since grad school, we’d communicated solely via email and phone calls, but his manic gesticulations were still on full display as he prepped me for my first interview in months. “I’ve been telling you e...

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Two Homes on Snickleway Street

Weekly Contest #359

Two Homes on Snickleway Street My next-door neighbor is a kindly old spinster. She lives alone, with no family nearby - like me, actually. She’s four feet tall, with well-coiffed gray hair gathered neatly in a bun. Can’t weigh more than eighty pounds. Unfortunately, she's quite forgetful. And I fear she's losing her mind. Or already has. I thought so anyway, until one of my visits last month – the radio incident. That's when I started to doubt my own sanity. I visit her most days after work for a welfare check, a bag of groceries in hand, be...

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Rosenhurst Asylum

Weekly Contest #358

Rosenhurst Asylum I awoke, suffocating. My lungs were paralyzed. Or I’d forgotten how to breathe. I sat bolt upright. Shoved my hands hard into my diaphragm. Five seconds. Nothing... Ten. I kept pushing, and gasped an airless prayer for life. When at last my chest heaved upward. I sucked in a lungful of cold, damp air. Then I smelled the stale, acidic breath of my three cell mates. And thanked God I was alive. Emily lay closest to me, snoring in the bed beside mine. She was given to wild mood shifts, alternating between bouts of fevered mani...

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Halleran House

Weekly Contest #357

Halleran House My hands have gone numb, so I pull on gloves. A portable heater sits beside me in the van, but I can’t indulge creature comforts. We need all the juice stored in that lithium pack. Given the remoteness of our location, no alternate power sources were available, and this is our most ambitious ghost shoot yet. Outside, in the light of a full moon, snow begins to fall. Despite Jack’s location – deep inside the Halleran mansion – his helmet cam signal is plenty strong. Bits of fuzz appear on the main monitor, but I’m still recordi...

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The Engulfed Cathedral

Weekly Contest #356

The Engulfed Cathedral I hover at twenty meters, here in the warm, sun-rippled depths. Puffs of silvered bubbles rise about me in a ragged column. Their sound is calming, synchronized with my outbreath, while my heart plays a faster rhythm in my ears. For thirty years, I’ve found my peace, my refuge, down here in the sun-stabbed depths, where curtains of pencil-thin beams form, morph, disappear, layer upon layer, until they vanish in the distance. A cardinal rule of diving is – never dive alone – but what does it matter, with sixth months to...

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The Wake

Weekly Contest #355

The Wake Carl had a small circle of family and friends. Today they converged not on the Nautical Lounge (Carl’s favorite bar), but on his creaking asbestos-shingled homestead on Asbury Road. Storm clouds lined the horizon as his mourners arrived and parked their cars, trucks, and motorcycles along the curb out front. The home’s cramped interior grew louder by the minute. Most folks muscled their way into the kitchen, where bottles of booze – Canadian Club, Popov, Seagram’s 7 – lined the countertop. They filled glasses in their grief, while c...

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