Reed Sanders

@reedsanders.bsky.social

496 Followers 1154 Following

(he/him) I like to make stuff. https://linktr.ee/reedsanderswrites I block AI users.

In the back corner of the loft was a medium-sized wooden crate filled with ten sticks of DuPont dynamite. I had bought the box about a year ago to help clear some land on the southern pasture. Mesquite trees grow roots deep, deep down in the soil; them stumps ain’t too hard to dig up when you shoot them fifteen feet in the air with explosives. I looked closer at the sticks and they were sweating. Expired dynamite will sweat out the chemicals that make them explode, it makes them extremely dangerous to fool around with. “Liable to take down the entire barn with one rainy-day thunder crack,” I said to the air.
A cup of coffee and a laptop at a coffee shop. The screen of the laptop says "Chapter 5," with about two paragraphs underneath it.
When I had enough of feeling sorry, we went back to the wall. As we began to circle it again, I noticed something I hadn’t before: there was a hair-thin line in the surface. I followed the line from the dirt, up about forty feet, then hard left for thirty, then back down to the dirt. I spent all that time looking for a normal door with a handle or maybe a gate, but here it was right in front of me. This had to be it. I tried to push it, but it didn’t budge. The line in the wall was far too thin to get my fingers under. I tried my fingernails, I looked for a stick to pry in there, but it was no use. This door was also far too heavy to move with just my weight. I had to use something stronger. I knew exactly what was needed.
“The fire, sir!” he said, furiously shoveling. The straight walls of the ivory building continued to fall from the heavens. “There ain’t gonna be fire for long!” I said, anxiously darting my eyes from him to the building. He kept shoveling while the rest of the men abandoned their shovels to the ground and ran to their horses. Across the field I saw the men who were working the cattle, desert the livestock and begin to ride hard towards home. They were about a half-mile away from me. Lord Jesus up in Heaven, I thought. They aren’t going to make it. “GO! GO! GO! C’MON!” I screamed with everything I had, but it was too late. I saw the panic in their eyes as they rode. They were right in the middle of the circle. and it was barrelling down right above their heads. They knew what was going to happen and so did I.
“What the hell?” I muttered to myself, still finding my breath. I stood and quickly checked my horse; he had a gash on his chest, but nothing too bad. “You’ve had worse, Rusty,” I said to him. The fire still blazed, but the black and purple sky was all that mattered in the moment. I figured the best thing to do was treat this like any other bad storm we’ve had in West Texas.
edgy half-elf newspaper reporter
"I am looking" with the trans flag overlaid
picture of a book titled "San Juan Hill 1898"
little cat getting out here, by god.
Text that reads: “Ah-haugh, ah-haugh, ah-haugh! No sir!” The stranger said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “As you can see by my attire, I am a very wealthy inventor and founder of many successful companies. I would like to make you an offer on your land.” “Stranger, I have paid many hard earned dollars for this little patch of land,” the cowboy said. “I’ve worked it ‘til my hands was bleedin’. This land and these cattle are everything I got. They ain’t for sale.”
A selfie with me and Ryan Stiles
Screenshot that reads, "The hard, West Texas wind pushed the machine around in the air like a drunk man at last call. I lifted my gun and sighted in the single glass eye of the thing as it began to speak: “THIS DRONE IS THE PROPERTY OF TIMELINE RESOURCE GROUP.” the machine said, in a thin, monotone voice. “ANY AND ALL DAMAGE INFLICTED UPON THIS MACHINERY CAN AND WILL RESULT IN FULL LEGAL—” I took the shot. Upon impact, the entire thing exploded in a mess of sparks and white smoke, lighting the dry, summer grass ablaze. I ran off to stomp it out, but the fire kept coming. Every time I stomped it out, it spit out more sparks. I couldn’t get the damn thing to quit."
guy holding fake bloody knife and smiling
the battered cover for a songbook titled, "12 CHARMING SONGS for MEN," the corner is covered in blood. under the title reads "A short horror story by MASON REED"
Like a vacuum, the ashes of the book shot up through the chimney into the early morning fog. My ears rang. My voice was shot, but I still yelled out in fear and victory. I was free. I fell to my knees, onto the blanket and the broken frame. The shattered glass ripped into my left knee. I felt nothing. The pain from my heart, the adrenaline, had made me numb. I pulled out the shards and sat back on the couch, blood ran down my leg, through my slacks. I picked the picture up from the floor, careful not to smudge it with blood. I stared at it and began to cry.
an old fashioned looking songbook cover with 4 singing men. the title reads, "12 CHARMING SONGS for MEN. A short horror story by MASON REED. *NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE BARBERSHOP HARMONY SOCIETY"
A snippet of text reading, "“No, just—just leave,” Micah said. “Just leave and have a nice Thanksgiving without your fuck up dad.” “Dad, get the hell off the floor and eat something," Charlie said, reaching down to help his father to his feet. "When was the last time you ate an actual meal?” Micah winced and groaned in pain as he stood up. That collarbone injury from the car accident never truly healed like it should have. “Do you have any coffee?” Charlie asked, hoping to sober him up some. “I don’t know,” Micah belched. Charlie walked him over to the dining room and sat him at the table while Dot pulled the food out of the take-out bags."
A black and white picture of Laika the space dog.
Screenshot that reads, "[Lower third: SHELBIE WOODDARD ‒ CBS NEWS] “Like many Americans, Jonathan and his wife were left in financial ruin when the shroud covered the earth. The red lights only made matters worse as Jonathan’s wife Norma succumbed to red light’s disease only one year later.” [Lower third: DR. LOUIS CREEL ‒ TEXAS DHHS] “It was the vitamin D deficiency in the elderly—what most folks now call, ‘red light’s disease’ or even just ‘red’s.’ What I mean to say is, that night wasn’t just a horrific event for the average healthy person. It really hit our most vulnerable the hardest.” [Lower third: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP ‒ WHITE HOUSE PRESS CONFERENCE NOV. 30, 2017] “But we must never forget the brave men who gave their lives in a pursuit of a free life for us from the shroud. Major James R. Schofield and Captain Toby Thompson. They shot at the shroud with the best missiles. The best missiles we have. I told them to give them everything we have, and they did. They gave that shroud and those lights, they—they really gave ‘em hell. We could’ve never known that the shroud was as low as it was! Really a shame. Lost some good guys up there.”"
A screenshot of text that reads, "She scanned the books, put them in a bag, and I paid my dollar. I stepped outside the Goodwill and the cool, autumn breeze cut through my navy oxford shirt. I zipped up my cardigan. When I got to my car, I pulled the songbook out of the bag and looked at it again. So neat to have a piece of history in my hands. I wondered if I should scan the arrangement of Sweet Adeline and post it online somewhere. I've been in this hobby for a while, so surely, if I had never heard of it, lots of others probably hadn't either. I felt like a music historian or some sort of archivist."
Screenshot of text that reads, "When I sat down at my desk, I remembered I had a half-finished recording on the audio software. I pressed the space-bar to play it. I could hear the slight crackle of the fireplace in the background, the B-flat from the pitch-pipe, my anticipatory breath, and—you know, one is never quite ready to hear the sound of a woman screaming in fear. It's louder and scarier than it is on a movie or TV show. When I began to sing on the recording, all I heard was screaming. And I mean bloodcurdling. Not my voice. Not me screaming. This was the scream of a woman. A woman in pain. You could hear her entire soul in the scream. In shock, I pressed the space-bar again to pause the recording, and the screaming ceased."
A hesitant-looking half-elf, lit by a torch.
A gray fox
A work-in-progress painting if a worried man wearing glasses.
A sketch of a worried half-elf
The red silhouette of a coffin with a vampire's fangs cut into it over a black background. White text reads, "Please, come in..."
an early twenties man with ginger hair and glasses, he holds a red great axe. He has blood stains and rips on and in his clothes.
Screen shot of text that reads, "Although it had been ten hours since he laid down, he felt like he had slept the entire night in a blink. He was still exhausted and now covered in sweat. The perspiration on him and his sheets made him think of the clothes floating down the river with the salmon, and the horrible image of the bear eating his sweater. He rubbed his face. His beard scraped against his hand, and he remembered his dad’s gray stubble from dinner. His phone buzzed on the nightstand; it was eight thirty-six in the morning and he was late for work."
Screen shot of text that reads, "Charlie arrived at KPHC at nine a.m. and walked through the back door right as the morning editorial meeting was ending. The newsroom was a long, L-shaped hall lined with drab, gray cubicles from the nineties. For ten years, upper management promised to replace the cubicles with nice modern desks, but it never happened—the sales team got new office furniture every other year, however."
Screen shot of text that reads, "“Chuck E. Cheese!” her voice pinged at his ears like a chicken pecking for corn. Charlie walked to her desk, trying to keep his temper in check. All the other reporters edited their own stories, but Susan was an old pro, and old pros didn’t edit their own stories. She had worked on the east coast in the late eighties, when unions were the law of the land, and when unions were the law of the land, the reporters were not allowed to even look at the editing equipment, let alone touch it. But this was Texas in twenty-seventeen and the only unions around were the credit unions that sponsored the stocks portion on the five-o’clock news. Susan was just starting to get the hang of the old editing systems, but when KPHC upgraded to high definition in the mid two-thousands, they switched to a new editing software, and all hope was lost with getting her to ever edit anything again. “Are you ready to work on my story?” she asked him. “Let’s do it,” Charlie said. And so, they did. For two straight hours. In the editing bay, Charlie was seconds from snapping at her the entire time. She brought out an irritability in him. She knew what she wanted, and she was determined to get it; she just didn’t know the keyboard shortcuts to get there. At the end of the session, he could nearly predict, and lip sync her phrases: “No, no, no, no, no.” “Yes, good. Let me hear one that again.” “Play that again.” “No, no, no, no, no.” “Where’s that clip we had earlier? What did you do with it?” “Play that again.” Once they finished, it was another award-winning news package from KPHC’s Susan Gutierrez, and Charlie was proud of the end product, but the process was grueling."
Screenshot of text that reads, "Charlie barely slept that night. Dot had stayed over, and they had a nice dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers, but as he laid next to her while staring at the ceiling, all he could think of was the fractures in the plaster of the walls, and the shroud above the earth, crushing him while he slept. What a way to go, he thought. Not with a bang, but with an unknowing splat. Dot slept on Charlie’s chest, wearing one of his old T-shirts. Her breath across his skin and her bare leg across his thighs were warm. Around three a.m., Charlie realized that if he matched the rhythm of her breath, it would soothe him to sleep, yet he still tossed and turned, desperately seeking a REM cycle."
Brian Wilson in the 60s, wearing a toy fireman's helmet
Letterboxd review of "Pee-wee as Himself," which reads, "Paul was a bastion of creativity and joy. He was weird, and that was good. We should all strive to be weird in a world of conformity."
A news headline where a Texas house republican said only the women in his house drink from straws.
screen shot of text that reads, "Fog came off the mountains and separated. Charlie thought the cliffside kind of looked like Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore without carvings. His brain almost filled in the sculptures of the dead presidents. He looked at his watch again, it was eleven-eleven. Definitely dreaming, he thought. “You won, Chuck! Is Chuck okay?” the deeper, disembodied voice said. “I prefer Charlie, honestly,” Charlie said to the air. “Helen, can you make a note of that, dear?” “Take your own notes, Gregg! I’m not your bleedin’ secretary!” the higher voice said. "
The Trump egg cartoon, but it's about the Super Bowl.
Google search trends for "fascism" with a significant uptick over the past couple days.
3x3 grid of images. Top and bottom rows center around the color red. 1A is of Wind Turbines in a field at night. 1B is of a car accident. A rollover crash. 1C is of a feral hog 2A is of Six Grandfathers before it was carved into Mount Rushmore 2B is of a man standing alone in a foggy field. 2C is of a prairie filled with bluebonnet flowers. 3A is of a man holding a camera filming something just out of frame. 3B is of a golden orb of light in the middle of a wooden deck. 3C is of the wreckage from a natural disaster.
3x3 grid of images. Top and bottom rows center around the color red. 1A is of Wind Turbines in a field at night. 1B is of a car bad accident. A rollover crash. 1C is of a feral hog 2A is of Six Grandfathers before it was carved into Mount Rushmore 2B is of a man standing alone in a foggy field. 2C is of a prairie filled with bluebonnet flowers. 3A is of a man holding a camera filming something just out of frame. 3B is of a golden orb of light in the middle of a wooden deck. 3C is of the wreckage from a natural disaster.
screenshot with text that read, "Before he could finish another, "P-please!" a deafening sound hummed across the southwestern sky, making the highway rumble under his kneecaps; the sound paled in comparison to the earlier crash of the SUV. Micah dropped his wife and jumped to his feet, groaning as he held his ears. He tried to identify the sound: it was electronic and brassy, like a giant machine started everywhere. He looked again—now with teary eyes—to the horizon and the wind turbines. On… Off… On… On… On… He stood and stared for what felt like minutes. They were not turning off. He rubbed his eyes, but the blood and tears kept coming. He tried to turn his focus back to his wife when it struck him: Charlie."
Screenshot of text reading, "He booked it back to the mangled car and pulled his son from the wreckage, careful not to hit his head on the twisted metal of the caved roof. He tried to talk to Charlie, but the hum was so loud there was no way to speak over it. Charlie held his ears as Micah sat him on the ground to check for injuries. He checked Charlie’s head. Fine. He checked his abdomen. Nothing. As he was checking Charlie’s legs, Charlie tapped his father on the shoulder. Micah ignored him—still checking for anything life-threatening. The boy tapped harder. It seemed important. Micah adjusted his attention and saw that Charlie’s other hand, pointed towards the skyline, had begun to shake in fear. Micah looked up. The moon was gone. The stars now nonexistent. It was as if someone had covered the earth in a cosmic blanket. No heavenly light to spill through."
Image of text thay says, "The air turned cold and cut to the bone. The roaring, mechanical sound began to fade, and as the boy and his son were bathed in the light of the cold, red grid, the sow and her piglets grazed the rest of the night in peace."
Screenshot of a document that says, "On that fateful night in 2017, many TV stations went dark—they relied too much on satellites. Some never returned, but little by little, many stations came back up; broadcasting over their normal towers. It only took one year for sixty percent of the prior stations to be back to normal working order. The national broadcasts that were sent by satellite, were switched to internet lines, and broadcasted locally over the towers. The internet was down for six months; many parts of the internet ran through satellites, but infrastructurally, most of it was over landlines. They just replaced the stuff that went into space with wired connections. It was considerably slower, and the load on all systems was heavier, but it still worked. The internet in rural communities was completely lost, but it was never that great out there to begin with."
A screenshot of a text document that reads, "Jacob and Charlie were decent enough work friends. They often sat in Jacob’s office and shot the breeze for an hour just to kill time on the company’s dollar. Jacob’s politics were a mystery to Charlie; Jacob was definitely a right of center type of guy, but then randomly talked like a staunch liberal. They had long talks about how all politicians were bought and paid for, and how the government should have no control over what a woman did with her body. Then in the next moment, Jacob would talk about some fascist writer that he loved and suggested everyone read from. Jacob took many stances and yet somehow took none."
A hand holding a Kindle e-reader with the cover of the book, Jurassic Park, displayed on it.
Ugly cgi dwarfs from Disney's new live action version of Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs.
A man's hand holding a copy of the book, "Dust" By Alison Stine