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Zack Herman

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2020

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43 Stories

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Uncle Pete and the Monsters

Weekly Contest #347

It’s a full moon tonight. They’ll be here. I have to get ready! First, I make the crosses. Two pieces of wood, tied together with a strip of rawhide. One end sharpened into a stake so that I can drive them in the ground and they’ll stay there.Then comes the garlic. I’m not sure what it is about the garlic, but they hate it, can’t stand it. It repels them. I string it together like my grandparents used to string popcorn and cranberries to make homemade Christmas tree trimmings. Yeah, I come from a poor family. Anyhow, I’ll have the garlic str...

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Texts

Weekly Contest #346

This story contains language and concepts that some readers may find to be disturbing and/or insensitive. 2/17/25, 8:48 PMHey, Danny, it’s me, Earl. Wassup? 2/17/25, 8:51 PMEarl? Earl who? 2/17/25, 8:52 PMEarl who? Come on, Danno, your best friend, Earl Couch! 2/17/25, 8:53 PM2 problems, dude:1.Earl Couch hated cell phones. Said it was the government’s way of tracking us. 2. Earl died a year ago. Who is this really? Is this your sick idea of a joke? Get a life! 2/17/25, 8:55 PMDanny, I’m alive enough to be callin you, bro! how ya doin? 2/1...

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Two Pops

Weekly Contest #345

I’m here at the Suds Club Laundromat. I hate this place. It’s a microcosm of the way my life is going. I have to wash my clothes here because a $400 studio apartment is all I can afford on my lousy job working at a group home- a studio apartment that has no room for a washer and dryer, not that I could afford one. I reach into my pocket and pull out the handful of change that I have to pay for the privilege of clean clothes. I sift through and realize that I should have enough extra coins for a can of Coke. I take my spare quarters over to t...

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The Hangin' Tree

Weekly Contest #344

1/1/79Moved into the new house today. I don’t have to share a room with Petey, so that’s good. My room is down here in the basement. Petey is on the second floor, across the hall from Mom and Dad. Since he’s little, four years old, they want him close to them.After dinner, while Petey and me were watching TV and I heard Dad telling Mom, “No, Robert, really doesn’t need to know about that.”I wonder what it was that I really don’t need to know about. 1/3/79Had a nightmare last night. A bunch of men were standing around outdoors. They had torch...

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Look, Timmy

Weekly Contest #343

CW: This story contains implied violence and racism that some readers may find disturbing. I remember things from way back. Mama and Pop are shocked by my memory. Hellene, my wife, says her oldest memory goes back to when she was in first grade. I remember things from back when we lived in Chicago. I was born up there and we moved away when I was eight.There’s one afternoon that’s as vivid as the day it happened. I was probably, judging from the newspaper clippings that I have collected over the years, only 3 or 4 years old.Those clippings: ...

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Granny Grace

Weekly Contest #342

Today, Mommy hung pictures in the long hallway at our new place. I’m fascinated by old pictures and the past, in general. Anything that happened before I was born interests me.The one picture that I’m fixated on is probably from the 1960’s. It is a colored picture and I can’t put it into words, but there was something different about color back then. Anyhow, the photo is of a woman standing in front of a field of tobacco. She’s tall and lean. She’s wearing a flower print dress and a pair of brown loafers. One thing that stands out to me is t...

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Billy Jay

“Hey, Buddy, you’re the only original Hoosier Harmony Boy left in the group, ain’t you?” Sonny asks me.Sonny is our bus driver. We’re headed down I-65, headed to Alex City, Alabama from our home base in Salem, Indiana. I’m hanging out with him up front. The rest of the group are relaxing, either in the lounge or their bunks. I’m in what they call the “buddy seat”, already in my sweats, T shirt and socks. “I sure am,” I answer his question. “When we started up in ’74, I was the tenor singer and bass guitar picker. Around ’92, I started having...

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Friday Night at Cozy Corner

Weekly Contest #340

I’m seated in my usual booth at the Cozy Corner Café. It’s Friday night, and it’s raining. Merle Haggard is playing on the jukebox. If he can make it through December, everything’s gonna be alright, he knows. Well, it’s October and I’m not as sure as Merle is about things being alright. I dip one of my fries in the ketchup on my plate and take a bite.“Gonna need anything else, Claude?” Beyth’s voice asks over my right shoulder. Tall, slender, blonde Beth, the only server on duty tonight. Sweet, lovely Beth. She makes me wish that I was many ...

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Luke Tillman

“Boy, you need to stay away from that Luke Tillman!”If I heard that once back when I was growing up, I must have heard it a thousand times. From Mommy and Daddy. From Mamaw and Papaw. From Brother Evans, the preacher at our little church. It seemed nobody over the age of 12 wanted me to be friends with Luke.None of that phased me one bit. Luke was everything that I was not. He had blonde hair that came down to his shoulders. Papaw cut my hair and he had learned to barber in the Army. There came a time when short hair became cool. I didn’t ...

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Marie

The first time that I ever saw Marie, I was nine years old. She was standing in the rain, under a streetlight on 4th Street. She had her broom propped against the streetlight post and she was wearing a bright yellow rain cap and a matching raincoat, so she wasn’t getting soaked at least. I, on the other hand, was running home from school and I was getting drenched. She smiled a sad, crooked smile at me and waved.“Hi!” I said in response to the wave. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had what I guess would be called a “sixth sense” about ...

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The Yellow Light

Weekly Contest #331

“Maudie, what can I do about mosquitoes?” Mama asked Granny Hickman.It was a Saturday afternoon during the summer after I had turned 10. We were all out on the front porch of the house where Mama and I were living on Flat Fork in Caudill County. My mother and grandmother were seated in rocking chairs, shoes kicked off. Mama was drinking a Tupperware tumbler of iced tea and Granny was puffing on a hand rolled Price Albert cigarette. I was sitting on the porch swing, reading the latest issue of Baseball Digest.“Got a skeeter problem, Tessa?” G...

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A visit With Saul

Weekly Contest #329

The other day, I asked Daddy about this memory that I have. He shook his head and said, “I never understood why you’re always diggin’ up the past, son!” Here’s what I know. As far back as I can remember, I had heard the adults in my family talk about my father’s second cousin, Saul. Saul had moved to the Cleveland area to work in a factory. His mother had begged him not to go up there. She said he belonged down here in Kentucky with his family, not up there with strangers. Saul moved anyway. He was doing well. He made plenty of money and wou...

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The End Shall Come

Weekly Contest #324

CW: Mass suicide, Gun violence, Physical abuse The Children of the Firstborn are gathered in the Cavern awaiting the Second Coming. There is a large digital clock mounted on a wall of the cave and it reads 10:30:49 and counting. A stage has been constructed near the clock and there is a podium on the stage. 14 year old Dougie Starnes sits on a rock near the clock. He is uncomfortable and, deep down, he really doesn’t want to be there. Like everybody else, he is dressed in a long, white robe and he is barefoot. Like most boys his age, he is v...

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Nellie, the Hat Man, & Me

Weekly Contest #314

My baby sister Sally’s crying wakes me up. Sally is five years old and I’m 10. There are only two bedrooms in our house, so we sleep in the same room. It’s a whimpering kind of cry. The kind of crying that a little girl does when she doesn’t get her way, not the crying she does when she’s hurt. Still, I hate to hear her cry, so I get out of bed and go over to where she’s lying. I reach out in the darkness until I feel her curly, blonde hair and stroke her head as if she was my dog, Scruffy. “Hey, there, sissy, what’s wrong?” I whisper. I am...

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How I Met Cindy

When you are the preacher’s kid, sometimes, you end up doing things that you really don’t want to do. It was the first day of Christmas vacation. I was 16 years old and had my first vehicle, a Ford pickup, painted burnt orange. I was a very self-centered young man and was determined to spend my vacation time hanging with my best friend, Judd, and my girlfriend, Monica. Dad, naturally, had other things in mind. “Look, son, we have all of the groceries from the food drive delivered except for one family. I have to work tomorrow and I’d appreci...

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