“Waiter, there’s a man in my soup.”

I could see him contemplating completing the old comic one-two. Except the man next to me at the counter really was collapsed face down in my plate. The waiter looked around anxiously. Was he worried the goulash caused it, and checking how many patrons had noticed?

I nudged the fellow. “Oi, mate, you okay?”

No response. But he was breathing.

The server brightened—someone else had assumed control. I batted responsibilty back to him and asked, “Can you call an ambulance? And bring another goulash, please.”

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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 a footprint in the rock, and a tingle as I tentatively step my own foot into it. The fit is perfect. A long stride, and then another—this person was running. Towards something, or away? In hope or in fear? I’ll never know. Their tracks are here, fossilized across millennia, but the emotions have dispersed in a puff of chemical breeze.

“Ben,” I say, wanting to share this ache of ignorance with him. And then I stop, looking at him in a piercing moment of loneliness. I have no clue what this living, breathing man is feeling either.

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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

Someone went to considerable trouble to build this. It had a purpose. There are projecting shelves, enclosed areas, and a solid base. Was trade transacted here? Perhaps this was a wet market, or maybe citizens shared beverages and faced each other across gaming boards.

Without knowing what these creatures looked like, it’s hard to guess. Assuming they sat at these shelves, they may have been a little under three metres tall. Why no skeletons, not even a scrap of clothing (if they wore clothes)?

Where did they all go? What might this lever do if I…….

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

Not so bleeding clever now, are you with your big house up on the hill? Well, it’s falling down, innit? Ooh, you have had the cowboys in. Can’t get the workmanship these days.

You thought you’d just build that sodding castle up there where you could look down and intimidate us. Who’s looking down now? Sod off back to France, you Norman gits. And take them Romans with you. England for the Anglo-Saxons, yeah.

Come to think of it, take your Angles and your Saxons too. Britain for the Celts, I say. Not so bleeding clever now, are you?

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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 were lives here once. If you listen, you can still hear the honkytonk with its out-of-tune F sharp. If you look, you may half-glimpse the flounced skirt of a bar girl.

A house, sure—a house can disappear. Fires catch easy, and carpenter ants will gnaw through a building in days. Even whole streets vanished in the war. But towns, towns shouldn’t just blink out.

I turn to Tommy. He’s long gone too, of course. “The main street were right here, weren’t it, mate?”

And he shakes his head and says, “Till the seam ran out.”

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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

She hung on my every word. Oh, I was glorious, compelling, charismatic. “If I put this next to that, see?  Harmony emerges.”

“It’s a cruet set and a glass in a pipe.”

Brushing aside a twitch of irritation, I found patience and explained. “Yes, but curated, composed. The context is everything. It’s all about the act of bringing them together. That’s what makes it art.”

Now, surely now, I had her. I leaned closer. “And if I put this next to here….”

The slap seemed unnecessary and unkind.

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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

Everything looked normal, peaceful, suburban. So why did the hair stand up on his arms? Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

The stop sign? Arret? No. That just told Sanders he wasn’t in Kansas anymore—he hadn’t expected to be. The absence of any people? No. A feeling of dislocation fizzed at the edge of consciousness.

The bins! It should be green bin day, but there was a brown bin out. Two realities had been stitched together, almost, but not quite, seamlessly.

Then he spotted the translocator pole. And the creature who stepped through.

Sanders zenosyned.

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I think I may be channelling Laurie here. 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

At the centre of the lair, receiving and collating intelligence about the war, sat Greta. In my fancy, she was one of the Moirae, the Greek Fates, spinning the destiny of the world.

I confessed this once. She laughed and asked, “There were three: which Fate am I, the Spinner, the Allotter, or the Cutter?”

To me, she seemed implacable, the one who chose. But I didn’t tell her she was Atropos, the Cutter. Instead, I lied and chose Clotho the Spinner, and that seemed to please her. Perhaps she would choose me.

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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.

This story is an excerpt from the novel, Boundarising, that I’m currently working on

Say it with flowers, they urged—if you don’t have the words to speak your heart, use the language of blooms. But I lack the insight to begin this conversation of coded blossom.

A hyacinth, apparently, means “Your loveliness is charming”, and a red tulip, “I declare my love”. If she sent back a poppy, it would warn “I am not free”, while a pink would signal “Yes”.

The florist is dumbfounded when I ask how to code, “I’d enjoy a dalliance but am frightened by commitment.”

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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

She was just so achingly beautiful, standing in the window wearing bridal white. And I’d been so alone since Martha died. You can understand what happened.

Purchase proved unaffordable, so I rented her by the night. Of course, I fell in love and couldn’t bear to be without her. Perhaps you’ll say I’m  a foolish old man, but I believe she loved me too.

Before dawn, I bundled my darling into the car and headed north. Headed where? Gretna Green maybe? This was never going to work—at start of business, she deactivated.

Perhaps, a hacker?

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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