SoulFire77

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I have 149 stories published in 11 collections on the site.
My stories have been read 49349 times and 159 of my stories have been cherry picked.
12 of my 84 comments have been voted Great Feedback with a total of 19 votes

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J. Oliver Padgett

J. Oliver Padgett writes horror and dystopian fiction from the North Carolina Piedmont. His work explores economic coercion, institutional complicity, and what people become when survival demands compromise. Novels include "Lily", "The Interview", and "Escape From Room 101". His prose favors psychological dread over graphic violence, working-class authenticity over literary posturing, and endings that deny comfort. By day, he works in warehouse logistics—a background that informs his fiction's attention to the quiet machinery that grinds people down. 

My stories

Gold cherry

While I Wasn't Listening

In the hush after a ping, the breath between notifications, the half-second before refresh— nothing at all. I remember quiet. I remember reaching for...
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Cherry

The Less Miserables Enter a Contest (3)

(Cont.) He finished fourth. The bleached-hair kid from Winston-Salem took first—no surprise there, his runs had been surgical, every trick landed...
Cherry

The Less Miserables Enter a Contest (2)

(Cont.) For the next two weeks, Hector changed everything. He stopped running lines. Instead, he broke his contest sequence down into components and...
Cherry

The Less Miserables Enter a Contest (1)

The flyer was taped to the window of All-City Board Shop, already curling at the edges from the July heat. SUMMER STREET COMP Saturday, August 5th $...
Cherry

The Rules

My son has rules for bedtime. I thought he made them up— the way children do. Games that only make sense to them. But he was serious. So serious it...

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