Joel Pryor
Stories (3/0)
Cracks
As the plane descends, the memory becomes more and more vivid. I’m reliving it, moment by moment, in unprecedented detail. It was morning, a week or two after my ninth birthday, and I was playing in the backyard when Mr Dodd, my elderly neighbor, poked his head above the fence and called me over. This wasn’t in itself memorable; I’d known Mr Dodd for as long as I could remember, and it wasn’t unusual for us to chat to each other whenever we were both outside at the same time. He’d always been a jovial man, but on this occasion his old, worn face was devoid of its usual cheerfulness. He looked anxious. It’s unnerving to a child to see an adult appear so unsure of themselves, and I approached the fence tentatively.
By Joel Pryor3 years ago in Fiction
Tell Them How It Happened
Our world changed the day the ghostmen came ashore. We had grown hungry in the days before their arrival. Our fishing nets had been coming up empty and unusual rain had driven the land creatures from their feeding grounds, leaving us with nothing to hunt. You know all too well how it feels to go without food, my son; but back then, hunger was a rare thing. We served Nature, protected and preserved Her, and in return She gave us all that we needed. So when food became scarce, we thought we were being punished for something we had done wrong. It wasn’t until later that we realised the scarcity of food was not a punishment, but a warning — a warning to flee.
By Joel Pryor3 years ago in Humans
Two Freaks at a Festival
She looks superhuman: bathed in the blue stage light, her leotard-clad body bent far beyond the average person’s breaking point. She falls to the floor and for a moment lays flat on her stomach; then, keeping her upper body motionless, she peels her legs away from the floor, curling them above and behind her like a scorpion’s tail. She pauses to acknowledge the smattering of applause and then continues to curl her legs, bringing them down over her head like a crashing wave. Her toes touch the stage in front of her eyes; she shifts her centre of gravity forward, thrusts her torso toward the ceiling, and in one graceful movement inflates her body into a smoothly arching bridge. She holds this pose for a second, and then, with nothing but the sheer strength of her core, pulls herself up into a normal standing position.
By Joel Pryor3 years ago in Humans