John Cox

Joined January 2021

207 stories

Bio

Twisted teller of mind bending tales. I never met a myth I didn't love or a subject that I couldn't twist out of joint. I have a little something for almost everyone here. Cept AI. Aint got none of that.

Achievements (14)

Stories (207)

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Make it to the Next Town
Maybe we can make it to the next town, our dad said. Our mom did not answer, her back stiff with fear. Maybe, I thought. Maybe?
By John Cox2 years ago in Fiction
Rules of the Game
The 2nd Lieutenant Acting TAC officer looked and sounded so ridiculous as he chewed us out, that I snickered and that set him off like a bottle-rocket. The veins popping out in his neck, he shouted "You think this is funny, candidate? You won't laugh on TAC Tuesday!" After he stormed out of the platoon area, we doubled over in laughter.
By John Cox2 years ago in Serve
Artisan. Top Story - January 2024.
It happens sometimes that silence speaks with greater profundity than language, inarticulate emotion arising in response to form and movement, its figurative essence an alien and forgotten tongue of old. As a much younger man I felt it in the sweeping gesture of my arms as they sliced through the air surrounding me; I felt it in the balls of my feet as they balanced and turned on the tiled flooring beneath them; I felt it in the complete absence of guiding thoughts, each motion as routine and instinctual as breathing.
By John Cox2 years ago in Feast
Anonymous
His face is smooth, beardless, trapped in a netherworld between adolescence and the prime of manhood. His coat is too big, beginning to slip from his left shoulder. His hair is thick and sensuous, the glory of his youth. His expression is resolute. What little remains of his story is captured in the tintype taken of him after his enlistment. There is nothing more.
By John Cox2 years ago in Confessions
Untold Tales
On the darkened porch, memories float wraithlike in the humid evening air, an old metal chair waiting in silence for an old man now almost twenty years dead. It seems reminiscent of him as he once sat long ago, lost in quiet thought or gesturing with long bony fingers as he shared oft told tales of early manhood, the promise of youth hanging heavily in the still and haunted air.
By John Cox2 years ago in Fiction
Remember the Waves
Do you remember when we did not fear? Limbs flailing in the wild sea's waves and sand, Boldly daring the depths coating Earth's sphere.
By John Cox2 years ago in Poets
Invisible Woman
“Your free,” Kat whispered. “I’m free?” Slowly wrapping her arms around me, she kissed me softly on the lips. Closing my eyes, I held her a little tighter, melting in the warmth of her embrace. For a moment or two, my pain and disappointment slipped away, like sand in the top of an hourglass.
By John Cox2 years ago in Horror
When Angels Bleed
“Can you spare some change mister?” He extends his hand feebly toward me, his eyes staring self-consciously at the ground, his hair hanging in greasy strings around his jaundiced face.
By John Cox2 years ago in Criminal
The Soldier and Death
The smell of rain hung heavily in the night air while a sail flapped below us in the harbor. The moon that had shown so clearly earlier in the evening now hid within a heavy cloudbank, lightning flashing in the far distance without the following echo of thunder. What had started as a pleasant sea breeze began to sting my eyes.
By John Cox2 years ago in Fiction
This Good Land
Sparks floated lazily above the fire as the twilight blue sky slowly turned black. Surrounded by our children, their little ones nestled in their arms, I felt the hard-earned contentment of old age.
By John Cox3 years ago in Families
Light and Shadow
A holy man attended by an orange robed boy sat crossed legged in the sunlight, his eyes glazed white with blindness. "One question," he said softly as a supplicant made his offering.
By John Cox3 years ago in Fiction
All that remains
“If walls could talk,” he said with a mournful laugh. The emotion in his voice briefly revived the sweltering heat of forgotten summer nights in the little bedroom that he and his four siblings had shared, a tear appearing on his cheek as he remembered their first home. Half listening to the unseen speaker on the phone, his desire to see again the clapboard shack where he was born revived an almost forgotten sorrow. But the walls that once witnessed his tender youth were torn down like unwanted chapters in a book, a cherished period of his life suddenly ending.
By John Cox3 years ago in Fiction