Behind us, bright lights ho-ho-humming in the night, and the merry jingle of coins pinging into their slots, the city one immense pinball machine. Ahead, darkness.

Oh, they were good times! We didn’t know it then, but we do now. Simple times—the times before. We understood what to expect.

Anything can lurk in the obscurity to come. Maybe a dragon, but maybe also a unicorn. Probably nothing. But it’s the uncertainty we fear. Even if we believed cataclysm was coming, we’d be buoyed by the knowing, and step forward jaunty to meet it.

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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 a goddess, a liminal deity of boundaries and of spaces in-between.

“Give me wine, men, and song,” she would say. Sometimes she would grin and say “Wine, women, and song would do just as well.”

Of course, she inducted me into the ways of love and, of course, I became wholly her creature. Her touch thrilled and, yet, drenched me in a frenzy of self-loathing.

When at last it ended, as it had to, and she cast me into the darkness, she gifted me a fine St. Emilion and a song I could sing forever.

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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 sister got the house with roses around the porch. Well, fine! I’d broken out of that slammer long ago. Aunt Tilly got the family silver. Fair enough! It has been their mother’s.

But why did I only inherit that photo of a grubby garage? This had to be a clue, the beginning of a treasure trail.

I was in high spirits when I set off for Wensleydale. Roper’s garage was a dump. But, inside those locked doors, I knew there’d be a link. There was. A jumble of engine parts and a note: “Get your life together.”

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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 no dunes on Dune View. Only scrubby marsh—land too poor to develop, left to creatures that slink and wriggle. And above the scrub, ranks of bungalows march down the hill in tight formation.

They should never have zoned this green space residential. But a planning committee trip to the sister project in the Virgin Islands swung the deal.

The crapper was supposed to be a pointed joke. But it became a feature, the only one in a featureless landscape. And after adding the second story, we became celebrities—we have a voice, but 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

Horacio recognises trouble when he sees those shoes. They are plain evil—dusty brown, the leather hard and cracked like the soil after a six-month drought. These are devil shoes. The feet plant themselves on the shoeshine stand with swaggering confrontation.  

Horacio’s shoeshine station is reserved for good men. They ascend its throne to rent, for five minutes, the lofty experience of a master craftsman serving at their feet. Uptown is better, in the canyons where they excavate money. Or the tourists in the plaza, but they wear flipflops. You can’t shine flipflops.

“Begone devil,” he says to the shoes.

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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

Now let’s see if I’ve got this straight. You’re saying this parcel of land is yours, and that I can’t hunt across it. Right? Everything within this little fence is yours alone? Does that also apply to the sky above? If a wind blows some of your air into my nose and I breathe in, do I owe you recompense?

Don’t you understand, the idea of owning the earth is as absurd as the idea of owning the air? Nobody can own the land or the beasts and plants on it. And that is why I tore down your fence.

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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 plain is white. The mountains are white. With each step I take, the pale buildings fade into the background. Once, there were other things—fairgrounds and picnics, horse-rides and autumn walks down leaf-strewn paths. If I lose my past, I will lose myself. All those yesterdays that once buckled the land are smoothing.

I look back. Cracks are forming. And they snake out towards me on thinning ice. Perhaps the end will be dramatic, after all. Not a blind wandering in the beige wilderness, but a descent into fresh, clear water. Perhaps I will enjoy that.

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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

Do you remember? The goats strolling down the middle of the evacuated street, nibbling on garden hedges? And how we stood at our doors once a week, waving hesitantly to neighbours, and clapped the nurses and doctors? Do you remember what we learned about who we depended on and who was truly important?

Can we have forgotten so fast? Once, we knew what building back better might mean. But the past is sticky. It has oozed back to submerge the future we believed we once saw.

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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

It took a while to get used to the headset. It bumped the pillow and woke me. But this was worth it to earn without effort. And gradually, I adapted to the equipment—even became comforted by the way it cradled me.

Networked with other sleeping brains, the company mines my dreams to solve problems I couldn’t begin to understand. Collectively, we manage topological transforms and matrix algebra.

And I have all the working day free to walk, and to garden, and to chat. Truly, this is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Isn’t it?

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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 cry was plaintive and piercing, “There’s no Worcestershire sauce.”

Not this again, please no! “Darling, I explained already. They eat different food.”

The image of the frozen smile on the waiter’s face endured. When Sam had adopted the slow monotone he believed allowed foreigners to understand English and said, “No spaghetti. Fish-and-chips, comprenday?”

“Do it to be annoying, don’t they? Like pretending they don’t speak English. I mean, they have their word for bread, right? But how do they learn it without knowing ‘bread’ first? Eh, tell me that.”

He snapped his fingers. “Garçon!”

I sank into the shadows.

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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