Next to the shoe tree, the bush grew, and the story encoded in its DNA flowered. The newly fruited books hung heavy from the branches.

Daphne plucked one at random, opened it, and read.

“No,” she said, “Juliet is supposed to die.”

“Mutation,” Karl explained. “Random mistakes change the tale.”

For a long time, Daphne was silent. At last she said, “Then nothing is certain.”

Karl nodded. “But, in this universe, I love 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

The stones were old, very old. Things had happened here. I laid my hand flat on a dressed block, and my palm tingled. The past spoke through me. There was smoke, and screams, and the clash of metal. A warrior king strode the battlements, looking out to sea, desperate to glimpse allied sails.

I possessed a gift.

Like anyone blessed with The Sight, I endured mockery.

My wife brandished the site guide. “Don, this was a granary, not a castle.”

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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 pores and pits on his cheek make a moonscape, as he leans in close. His breath smells of garlic and rotting flesh.

“Tell me,” he says.

Silence is the only power left to me—the choice to withhold communion, to remain locked tight. Of course, he will get angry. That, too, is a power I retain. There will be threats, even violence. I may scream.

But I won’t talk.

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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

Her face was a shuttered barn. No light gleamed through the windows, no cattle lowed within. Was she sad? Angry? Shattered into pieces? He couldn’t tell.

If only she would talk, cry, he might put a hand on her arm and say, “I know, I know. This is terrible”;  bridge the gulf of language, culture, experience.

A sudden anger flared and he took up the red stamp, printing Denied, on her paperwork.

“Next,” he called.

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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

Leon stood, hands on hips, gazing up. Movement atop the campanile—two soldiers and a glint of light on glass. Yes, the tower held an enemy observation post. And oh, it was exquisitely beautiful.

A trio of Nazi soldiers strolled by, cat-calling to passing signorinas. Leon restrained the impulse to pull the cap lower over his eyes, a gesture that might have drawn attention.

He turned, retracing his steps back to his unit. His duty was clear—to call-in an artillery strike. But the tower was history. It embodied Pisa.

“Nope,” Leon reported. “Nothing there.”

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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

They say we must learn to live with covid, if we want to preserve our way of life. So, I am learning. Now we’re on a transition path from pandemic to endemic, I have girded my loins and borrowed a book from the library, How to Live With Covid. Tremulously, I go out and about to the office, shops, worship, and parties. At the beginning, they called this herd immunity, but that seemed callous. Learning to live with something, on the other hand, empowers me—it’s heroic.  

I am learning to die with covid. This will be glorious.

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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

He liked confined spaces. In all that vast mansion, his favourite spot was the understairs cupboard. When I asked why, he’d ruffle his tousled hair, grin a toothy grin, and say he was waiting for the owl from Hogwarts.

“But you’re not an abused boy,” I’d argue. “So you don’t have to live below stairs.”

“I’m a magic boy,” he’d reply, as if no more explanation were necessary.

That’s the trouble with books—they bring alarming possibilities into the 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

If I could buy a kit to make a dog or a cat, how many parts would it contain? That question had obsessed him since he was a kid.

“Simon’s always taking things apart and putting them back together again,” his Dad liked to tell anyone who’d listen.

The boy’s interest in the family jalopy soon palled. You could disassemble a bike or a car and rebuild it. But, he soon discovered, that wasn’t possible with a frog. Why not, he wondered?

And so he came to an unusual fork in the road of his life. Surgeon or serial killer?

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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

Her parlour is crammed to overflowing. I perch uneasily on the threadbare chaise-longue, avoiding the broken spring. Charity-shop portraits, of people who are not her ancestors, glare at me from the flocked wall. Outside, a storm brews.

“Another cuppa, vicar?” she asks.

My eyes sweep the brocaded lampshades, the carved giraffes, and a set of faux-leather-bound books entitled “Great Novels of the Twentieth Century.”

I shake my head and can’t stop. The chiming of a clock, playing Edelweiss, wrenches my neck round, as if gripped by an assailant.

I stand.

“Do stay, vicar. It’s so nice to have company.”

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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 song, an old and now-unfashionable ditty. But, hearing it again, the memories flood him like a drain backing-up. All those days and all those secrets! Secrets he has never shared. The skylight’s great eye glares down. And he stares at her across the ballroom, his eyes full of love and despair.

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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