This photo stumped me. So I’m going to repost a story I wrote a year and a half ago, also in response to a similar picture by Joshua.

 

Grandpa scratched his thin beard, the turkey wattle flapping on his neck.  “Dammit, we used to make things, we were somebody.”

I didn’t know why he’d brought me to this derelict building, or what he wanted to teach me. Grandpa was just an old man, to be humoured.

“Can’t see how you’re ever going to amount to anything, Josh.” A sad shake of his head. “You can’t make a world out of selling each other insurance policies and burgers.”

Now, fifteen years on, with the DNA price crashing, Grandpa’s message makes sense.  I stare bleakly at my own wasteland.

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on reveals.

 

You reckoned I’d spin you a sob-story with these shoes, didn’t you? Like Hemingway’s “baby shoes, brand new, never worn”.  Or like the boy got his feet blown off in the war and never wore them again. I’d have thrashed him if he’d been that careless.

Liked to walk, my lad did, and he were a good strong walker. One day, he walked and walked, and walked right out of these shoes. Where did he go? Dunno. This story’s a mystery, not the tragedy you was expecting. The shoes live under his bed still, but the boy never came back.

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on reveals.

There’s an image of the Virgin Mary in my toast, picked out in darker browning.  There is, really! I knew yesterday something special was going to happen when I saw that starling with the one milky eye.

On the bird’s sighted side there were empty plastic bags, daily commutes and nastygrams. But on the other side! Oh! On the other side, jewelled castles, miracles and daring quests.

And now, here in my breakfast, the annunciation of my very own miracle.  I kneel, head bowed, and pray – for peace, healing and for Tara in Accounts to notice me.

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on reveals,.

I don’t exist. The track unravels empty across the moor – the physical world contains no first person singular. Though my spirit presses insistently on the arches of my eye socket, like a hawk trying to escape a cage, really the thing’s a ghost.

Fingers flutter and reach for yours. “Give me a hug,” I say.

Even if the outside domain has no room for an “I”, there is a “you”.  I know that because I can see you. And through “we”, for a time, I can feel myself in the world.

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on reveals.

 

“There’s earth right under our feet,” he said. “Earth and roots and worms – it can break through any time.”

How could I have known the ruined castle would terrorise him so? Imagined tourneys and jousting and round tables was what I expected. Instead, he saw decay, a child’s first glimpse of our impermanent hold on eternity.

“Everything’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

He seemed to recover until building began on the plot next-door.

Looking into the foundations’ depth he screamed, “dirt.”

For the next decade he wailed and fought whenever we took him outside.

 

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on plot and endings.

 

Lyra and Will enter the café. Waves lap the sweeping littoral, and colonnades shade abandoned terraces. I sense the heat. This West African seafront belongs to my memory, not the author’s script. But the children who people the scene, fearful and hopeful, are strangers to me.

The book takes root and sprouts in an alien soil. Together the author and I create new and unintended versions. Our stories escape and breed in the wild with other tales.  Dark shapes move across the hills.

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on plot and endings.

 

This just couldn’t be right. It offended against everything I’d ever heard.

“You’re kidding, surely?”

“Why?” Ka’arsnak waved a tentacle. I’d learned this signalled irritation. “What’s wrong?”

“The portal opens into a shower?”

The tentacle waved more vigorously. “You wanted maybe a waterfall? Rainbows? Heavenly choirs?”

“Well, it’s not, you know, dignified. Not believable.”

The choking gargle was its way of expressing sarcastic mirth. “An angel with green skin and eight tentacles you can accept, but not a doorway through a bathroom? Get over it, you’re dead. Time to go. Chop-chop.”

 

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.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on plot and endings