She loved the ring. Of course she did; who wouldn’t?—a cluster of garnets set in a silver mount. Bling! And its tech features charmed her—the monitoring of heart rate, movement and sleep patterns. With the GPS tracker, I know exactly where she is at every moment. That’s true love. We have a bond.

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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 a dead dog on the floor. My dog. A moment ago, before the injection, she was wagging her tail trustingly. Now death has come, silent and graceful, to my home—a black furry absence. My dog is no longer in this body.

Before it happened, I’d begun washing the car, something I stopped half-way when the vets arrived. Now afterwards I’m not sure what to do. All that suggests itself is finishing the car wash. I’m glad she had that totter around the park on Monday.

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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

“Way back in the old days, when I was a boy before the Chiasm, big tech corporations manipulated information for profit.”

“Wow! What’s a corporation?”

“Yeah Dad, and what’s a profit?”

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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 catting satting on the matting, ideaings passing through their heading: ideaings of dinnering and of hunting.  A womaning was arriving. They were holding out feeding to the catting.

The wave function collapsed. And the cat sat on the mat.

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In our grammar, nouns are things and verbs are actions. But what if we didn’t make this distinction between nouns and verbs and saw, instead, processes? The quantum world is perhaps a bit like that.

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

Is it not beautiful in death, this stump? Though no more rings will expand out from the hurled stone of its existence, so much history is still recorded here. So much life.

No? You don’t see? Sure, it’s misshapen, but that’s the talisman of age, stooped and gnarled.

Get the thing off your lawn? No sorry, my dear. I believe I will build a stumpery.

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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 emperor with many stout castles and cunning generals must needs be afraid.”

In silence he gazed at me, clear grey eyes twinkling in merriment. This was another test, of course—a paradox I had to solve. Over and over again, he’d impressed on me that a ruler has to think, not just act. Did he perhaps mean that cunning generals might rebel and usurp my throne? Trust no-one, eh?

When I offered this interpretation, he gave me his “try harder” look. I shrugged helplessly.

“An emperor so endowed,” he said at last, “must indeed have many enemies. “

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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 don’t like Erwin, though I’m not sure why. Okay, he’s charming enough, and unfailingly helpful. But my brain flags him in some way as dangerous. Probably, I once knew the reason for this judgement and have now forgotten this, leaving only the chafing suspicion. Or perhaps he reminds me of a bully back in the dim haze of the school playground. I remember remembering my dislike of Erwin, so it’s happened before, but I just can’t recall when.

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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

So, I was being a Chicken Little, huh? “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” you mocked me. Well, who’s laughing now? Sure, asteroid 2024 YR4 won’t hit the Earth. But that won’t keep you safe, smartasses. It’ll smash into the moon in the biggest strike for 5,000 years.

And do you know what’ll happen then? A shower of impact debris, that’s what. Oh, it will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, you think? Yes, likely it will. But not before taking out a lot of satellites. Bye-bye, GPS. Bye-bye civilisation.

I’m stockpiling food. And I’ve bought a rifle.

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Asteroid 2024 YR4 is real. It has a 4% chance of hitting the moon in 2032. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_YR4)

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 is not at all like in story books. Not knights riding out to slay dragons and rescue maidens, we are savage marauders, reeking and unkempt. Only our weapons are meticulously clean. The villagers share their paltry rations with us, not out of gratitude, but from fear.

I arrived here dreaming of noble deeds and just reward. But chivalry is a myth. The fair maidens scream and endure while we rut and laugh, glutting on lewd revenge. Someone will die at my hands. Whether it will be the enemy, my comrades or my commander, I’m still unsure.

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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 watch my sons playing, adventuring identities. A spyglass and cutlass make them explorers and corsairs. Finding the scimitar, they bicker scrupulously over which should be Salahadin and which the infidel crusader.

For a child, it’s so easy. For my husband, less so—the gentle ophthalmologist recalled from London to fill his father’s bloody shoes. The Presidential identity fastened on him, like a terrible mask, with fear and reluctance. We dreamed of bringing change, hope, modernity. Some denied our vision. Traitors cannot be allowed to block progress. So I told my beloved.

Me? I am becoming Lady Macbeth.

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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