Sometimes, I think the Almighty has a weird sense of humour. Take gateways, for example. Not the entrances to fancy buildings, but the wrinkles where worlds meet. Don’t deny you know what I mean. Everyone has encountered at least one, but we blank them because the altered geometry offends. We look but we unsee them.

I recognised this stairwell as a gateway by the impossible Escher steps with two dimensions folded into one. But did it have to reek so strongly of impatience? Humour, you see. I swung my leg over the railing and picked my way gingerly down.

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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

I’ve been making memories all my life. Videos of my first steps, the family holiday in Israel, my role as Gratiano in the school play. Then came my graduation, our wedding, that incredible boozy fortnight in Magaluf. And on and on. They told us the memories would live forever, digital ghosts on distant servers that our descendants could watch.

Over and over, I parse the e-mail from the Home Office. “Storage maximum has been reached globally. All citizens are required to delete 50% of their data.”

What to amputate?

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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

You know this fire thing you’ve invented? Good for tenderising food, sure. But great for lighting up the dark. Tak and I used flame to explore the deep earth. The tunnel goes a long way back, a long way. Maybe forever. Maybe into the other world. It got too narrow to squeeze through. Listen, here’s the big thing. There’s a body at the end, a dead badger. And it hasn’t decomposed. If we bring our dead to the shaft, they can live on in the other world.

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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 are two possibilities—the Smiths have got themselves a dog or a baby. The chewy toys drying on their line are consistent with either. Yet, there is no  barking, nor also wailing.  

I shift my plaster cast to a more comfortable position on the stool and reach for the binoculars. Nothing moves next door except Mrs Smith ironing. Whoever or whatever plays with those toys is not visible. Silent? Invisible? That can mean only one thing—a soundproof, locked room. And that can mean only one thing.

I dial. “Hello? Police? I’d like to report a kidnap gang.”

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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

My hand extends, and my lips curl back from the teeth. “Mr. Marjoribanks. What an  honour to welcome you to our humble home.”

Pleased? Effing terrified, more like.

He looks nonplussed.

Oh, sweet suffering Jesus. What did I say wrong?

“It’s pronounced Marshbanks,” he says.

Yeah, right, just had to correct me, didn’t you? Couldn’t have let it go, could you, you supercilious twat?

“May I offer you a drink?”

Laced with a smidgen of laxative.

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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

My dearest Alice

My heart yearns to be with yours;. you who complete me and who fate has allocated as my future helpmeet. Merely think of you, and there comes a hammering in my chest. Never was love truer, I swear. There is, however, one small slipped stitch in this tapestry of bliss. I fear I cannot cross the river and take tea with you this Friday, the North Bridge being in wind what the Hellespont is in water. Between you and I, an uncrossable gulf yawns.

I am your humble servant

John

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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

The way up is arduous. The path is steep, forcing me to scramble over jagged rocks and traverse sheer drops clinging by fingernails. But more—entering forbidden space, the realm of the gods, is terrifying.

Looking down, I glimse hunters raying out across the plain, and then only the circle of the village. Finally, everything to do with people is erased, leaving only the great curve of mother river and the land stepping away to forest.

The air is thin at the summit, and I gasp. There are no gods here. They were easier to see from far below.

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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

Just off the path, in the underbrush, two small faces stared out at me—a paired deity, carved in springstone. I had to be close! Kneeling, I caressed the effigy, the rock cool in the morning air and smoothed by the careful intricacy of the sculptor’s art. A tiny breeze lifted my hair and kissed my brow.

Up and up, through the trees I sprang towards the hilltop village. Would they know me here? By the first hut, a carved ancestor with the head of a bird nodded gravely to me. A small child examined me and ran screaming.

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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

Behind the door, someone stands. He doesn’t mean me well, but I need him. When he abandons me, the crust of the world becomes paper thin, and I fall. The fall never stops. You can get used to falling. It’s simple really: just believe you are static and the world is moving upwards. There’s a kind of peace in that. But the certainty of the man’s embrace is better. Though his talons sink into my flesh, at least I know where I am.

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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

PHOTO PROMPT © Brenda Cox

It was a sign, of course—an old French movie spliced into my street. But what did it mean?

Marie said it was just a green Citroen 2-CV, but Marie sees no meaning in the pattern of clouds either.

Faintly, I heard hooves and a voice chanting. “Any old iron. Any old iron.” Another intrusion.

I rushed to the kitchen and poured myself a medicinal brandy, terrified by the faint cry from the street “Up she goes.” When I returned, the 2-CV had vanished and our street returned to normal.

Marie didn’t think this spooky. “They probably went to work.”

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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