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T.A. Jennings

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2024

Stories (10)

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10 Stories

103 karma pts

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Fall back

She cups her eyes shut with one hand and counts backwards from ten, loud enough for us to hear the seconds. This is what I see when I play those days back in my head. Her leaning against the banister, morning kissing the midnight of her nap dress through stained glass. Him clad in the bone white of our living room drapes, his face woven into the threads. Me tip-toeing to the kitchen, crawling into its brick laid mouth, closing the door with a clink.“Nine…eight…seven…”We hid wherever we could fit, thinking she would look someplace else.“Six…f...

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The Men's Room

One chalupa is all it ever takes for me to short-circuit. The moment I wedge that warm quilt of fry bread between my lips, that soft blanket of beefy something slathered in melted cheddar and avocado, I’m on cloud nine.Those suckers, they clean me right out lickety-split. By the time they do, I’m about ready for another one.All comes down to the kid behind the grill who makes it in the end. Too often, it’s some pimple-faced freak you sat next to in high school who would just as soon spit in your food as sprinkle ex-lax all over it like someo...

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Say Uncle

Submitted to Contest #297

This must be a test. Half-expect someone to come crashing through that door or jump out of our closet. Smile! You’re on Candid Camera. I need someone—anyone—to tell me I’ve been punked. I’m beginning to think I share a house with a lunatic. Friday night, me and the missus are running the bases when the little squirt raps on our door. Bottom of the ninth, he saunters in with a teddy under one arm, rubbing the sleep out of his eye with the other. He tells us the same old sob story. “Mommy, there’s a man in my room,” the kid says. We just abou...

3 likes

Stories We Keep on Display

Submitted to Contest #286

Red, white, and blue were the colors that greeted me when I arrived at the front door of my grandparents’ house one hot day in June as the American flag blew in the breeze overhead. A six hour plane flight and a half-hour drive across Ohio’s endless acres of corn later had brought me and my father to their little cul-de-sac for three days and three nights of no internet and no cell phones. “Wifi, I miss you already,” I thought to myself.My father and I had just begun our first day in Germantown, Ohio, which would largely be spent in the Vete...

1 like

Nanna

Dust danced in the light cutting through the shadows in the attic. Planting her knees on the creaky floorboards, Haley rifled through musty boxes adorned with faded scribbles. Living Room. Bathroom. Den. Keepsakes. A box caught her eye. It was different. Older. Corners frayed by time. “Hello, what's this?” she whispered to the mice watching from the cobwebbed rafters. Haley's fingertips grazed the box’s dust-laden cover as she heaved it from its shadowy corner with a grunt. The lid creaked open like a novel's first page, inviting her b...

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The Deep End

Submitted to Contest #274

It was just after 11 p.m. when the lights blinked themselves out, leaving Millie dripping wet in the dark.   With its dying breath, the shower head cried a river of ice, bathing her in Antarctic cold from every angle. She let out a shriek even their neighbors across the way must have heard, flailing her arms as she drowned in pitch black.   Millie shuffled into their windowless bathroom thinking a hot shower would help her catch some Zs. She was wide awake now. No one was going to sleep tonight.  &nbsp...

7 likes

Purge

Submitted to Contest #273

You fall out of bed like a corpse. The sunlight stings your bloodshot eyes. You haven’t sleep because your stomach was twisted into knots. Groggy, you gaze at the phone lying awake on your nightstand. The battery’s nearly drained. It’s only showing two bars. You dialed a number. The one your friends group told you not to. You stare at the digits on the keypad. You switch it off and throw it in your backpack.It takes ages to pull yourself up from the cold, wooden floor. You need to get changed for school. You’re terrified to look in the mirro...

6 likes

The cuckoo clock

Submitted to Contest #271

Her room was painted shades of black and white, the color of deadwood nestled against a sea of spring. Their wintry bark bore scars like eyes. I remember wanting to peel it back to see what was underneath.   Oma would sit for hours staring into the thicket above our beds like it was a window to the old country. Mom was knee high when the nine of them boarded a steamship bound for Ellis Island—her sisters, her uncle, her brother, her mother. They all came to live with us the day after Oma was diagnosed.   She tal...

9 likes

The Pearly Gates

Submitted to Contest #265

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” — 2 Peter 3:10-13I’m shackled up to my feet with a chain ‘round my stomach, rid’in a bus with a band of thieves and murderers to God knows where. The summer sun is dancin’ high above Montgomery as sweet home, Alabama passes us by. It’s my birthday—feels like my last day on Earth.Sitting chained up next to me are cold-blooded...

4 likes

To make your August

Submitted to Contest #264

A man who sits in the middle of a bar either thinks he’s the life of the party or needs to get something off his chest. Bellied up, three whiskeys deep, I did precisely that when the bartender popped me the question of the evening. “You do’in all right, partner? You look pretty glum,” he asks, planting his forearms on the countertop and a towel draped over his shoulder. It’s a sweltering Saturday night in August. I’m at mi amiga’s wedding reception wilting on a Manhattan rooftop nursing a grudge against the fool who booked a weekend getawa...

3 likes