Friday Fictioneers – Overlords

~ neilmacdon
band
PHOTO PROMPT © CEAyr

[In homage to Stephen Spielberg and Arkady & Boris Strugatsky]

They came in great flying ships that blotted out the sky. Like inverted pyramids with radio masts. The ships I mean, not the Overlords. We knew them as Overlords, because it was so written on the sides of the vessels.

With lutes and bagpipes we met them, hoping music might communicate. And they spared us.

But they erected a scaffold on the summer meadow, and we were afraid. They capered there with stringed devices that blasted sound.

The next day, they were gone. The meadow is covered in strange litter. Perhaps some of it has power.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

68 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Overlords”

  15. LOL, this is the second story I’ve read about alien visitation and almost feeling like maybe I missed the cue. I like how this one adds a mysterious note in terms of the litter. Perhaps it is instructions for how to come to their next concert? 😉 Great story.

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  19. I am not surprised they didn’t stay, how could they compete with stringed devices in comparison to bagpipes and lutes. I wonder if the Overlords decide that such country people couldn’t be converted. (to what I’ve no idea).
    I felt a sense of peace when reading this, and think perhaps the aliens from space won’t eat us after all. It is the aliens amongst us that I worry about, those that spread diseases.

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  23. What a delightful imagination you have! I enjoyed so much about this. (The meadow is covered in strange litter – a bit like my piece about Woodstock. I can’t imagine what that field looked like when the masses left.)

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  29. Loved this. However, I’m so focused on the litter they left behind. Confetti from the most brilliant composition ever for the humans to put together to learn? So well done, Neil. And I have to check out Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. I’d never heard of them before. Don’t you feel like we’re always playing catch-up in a game of learning everyt but thing we can but probably never will?

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