Josh was always a joker. “Shall I tell you the tale of how the guitar got its stripes?”

But I wasn’t listening—rapt in another tale as the instrument called to me. I had been born for this.

“For a thousand years,” I breathed, “This instrument slumbered in the stone. Champions have come and tried to draw it. And they failed, because I am the rightful king.”

 Stretching out a shaking hand, I grasped the hilt.

“What stone?” Josh asked. “It’s on a rack, dummy.”

“Excalibur,” I intoned as the thing drew loose and heavy in my grip.

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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

Aromatic tobacco smoke circled his head—a cloud of knowing. The Great Detective regarded me with amusement. “You know my methods. All the clues are there. What do you see?”

He could be an annoying git. “Two rickshaws,” I muttered,

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“Exactly. Two rickshaws, sans drivers and passengers. And a river sans sampans. Where did they all go? The young ladies have disappeared down-river with the drivers in the sampan.” He puffed smugly on his calabash pipe. “The drivers were, in fact, lovers. This is a double elopement.”

Git! “Umm, very clever. But shouldn’t we check whether they’ve just drowned?”

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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

When you left, you took my certainty. You accuse me of betrayal, and I can see why, on consideration. But I dare not contemplate this. To do that would erode the precarious ledge of footing, risking a catastrophic plummet.

So, I must blame you, and counter this betrayal to mine. I should have known—your eyes were always too close together.

The truth is, I don’t know what to believe, or who. Trusting has become so hard, including in the story I imagined was mine—I am no longer made of whole cloth.

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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

An object has been found. A citizen riding a horse encountered the aforementioned in the forest. This has rendered it impossible for your government to continue in its previous of policy of not noticing the object’s existence. A committee has been formed to officially notice and classify the thing. Experts will be called. We shall be making no comment on theories in social media about what the object is and whence it came. Citizens are advised that there is no danger.

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.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

There’s special spots around this world. If you know how to look, you can find them—places where the barrier’s worn thin between here and afar. One lies at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile, Others are set into quite ordinary streets.

Don’t frown at me that way, mate—I’m not funning you. Buy me another beer and I’ll tell you. Oh, you’re a gent, that’s better. How do you recognize them? Perspective. The perspective’s off, like, foreshortened.

What can you do there? Why, walk through, of course. But there’s always two doors. Don’t choose the wrong one.

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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

OK, I’m lazy. But why put in the work when a machine can do it for you?

It’s not like I don’t know how. I span golden webs of emotional prose for two decades, ever since the online world matured. Believe me, I understand how to craft a tale to tug at the heartstrings and evoke exactly the response I want.

Now, I only have to slip-in the right query. “Write me a series of letters that will get a rich widow to part with her savings.” And then I pop it into the mailer. 

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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

There is, in these practiced motions, a kind of ease—a release. My wrist relaxes into the twist of unscrewing, my hand and eye into the coordinated pour and apportioning of quantity. It’s all about craft skill, the reassurance of know-how.

This may not be “eye of newt and toe of frog”, but still I feel connected to a line of mages. As I stir, the steps follow easily, one from another—they make sense, and so I make sense. And, though the exercise of control may be illusory, the ritual of control is real.

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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

Sands sift slowly. Already, the city is half buried, and, one day, all hint of these creatures ‘existence will vanish. We can only guess at the purpose of some of their devices, but our find is clear—this a vehicle garage.  

Perhaps it was a museum of transport because the power sources belong to different technological eras. The black one ran on carbon and seems the most primitive, while the grey one is electrical and must date later. The green device is mysterious and we don’t know how it was powered.

I believe it may have run on joy.

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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

“Ethan, Ethan,” the girl beside me screams, her arms outstretched to the distant stage.

Elsewhere in the crowd, fans cry out for their favourites, but those nearby catch the call. “Ethan, Ethan.”

Call and refrain: a bubble rising from the deep, a colour washing through the palette. Green, let’s name our colour green. Our green spreads and ripples through the roiling host. Now it’s half the stadium, pulsing and merging with the wash of yellow from the other wall.

I belong. It’s us—we are the living thing, we are the spectacle and the glory. Here we manufacture gods.

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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

What if the edge of the world is at the top? What if there’s a sheer drop?

I step onto the first moss-covered step, and the trees seem to bend in a little closer to spy. An elegant fern unbends and caresses my face, depositing dew on my cheek. The moist air carries scent of earth and stone and decay and growth. Surely, there’s magic in this place, this stairway leading to a revelation.

A peewit calls “Don’t do it, don’t do it”, and I am unable to place my next step. Is it better to remain unknowing but safe?

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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