The street is much like any other. Narrow. Scrawny dogs sleep on the sun-baked cobbles, and people cling to the cool of the shadows. History hangs heavy in the humid air. The rattle of Sennacherib’s chariots and the tramp of Caesar’s legionaries echo faintly, along with the brutal jeers of Allenby’s Tommies. The toll of ancient bells carries screams.  

I cannot love you here. The blood drowns my tenderness.

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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 children are hiding. Again. Perhaps they think if they can’t see us, we can’t see them.

Lily can’t crouch. Her rigid spine forbids it. And so, she will be taken first. The art of concealment is less about being invisible than about blending-in.

Kids like to stand out. But not in ways that make them different. Lily is too different to survive.

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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

Afternoon lay, humid and heavy, on the harbour. Dogs slept in the quayside shadows, and even the air seemed to pant moistly.  

I wanted to escape and, suddenly, buying a boat seemed like a good idea. I dialled the number on the “For Sale” sign.

“Oui?”

“Je voudrais.” I began fluently, “um … vendre”. No, that was sell, not buy. Already, events had taken the wrong path.

Cutting the line, I collapsed into the wobbly metal chair.

 “Café, s’il vous plait,” I instructed the waiter, one of the few fluent phrases I commanded.

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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’s in the wrong place,” he screamed.

Seaweed draped the foreshore like a bad comb-over. I could see this wasn’t pretty, but it skewered Anton’s brain.  Once, when we’d taken up kitchen floor, and he glimpsed the terrible truth of soil beneath the house, he’d bawled that way.

“Just storm waves,” I explained.

But we had to labour all morning, returning every strand to its home in the water before he’d calm.

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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 kiss was overpowering in its intensity, its delicious wrongness. That much she remembers. She lifts her fingers to swollen lips, feeling the bruise left by the urgency.

Her husband continues to read his newspaper. Will he notice the wound? Does he at already know?

What happened after the kiss, she’s not sure. There were drinks, many drinks. Perhaps the story playing in her head is only something she’d read.

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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

When you have caught your bear, let her be sequestered in a cave. It is important she see no sunlight. Also, that she eat only garlic and mugwort. After twenty one days and nights, the bear will transform into a woman.

Take heed—she will be sad and lonely as the sole human. You will likely have to take her to wife, and, in this way, you will father a people.  The tending of nations is a topic beyond the scope of this spell.

This story is based on a Korean creation myth. 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

As you can imagine, I was outraged. Finger pointing at the pile of trash dumped on the sidewalk, I tried to summon words: “Who? Who? Who?”

Henry, who liked to think of himself as something of a wit, jibed “What are you? An owl?”

I tried again. “What? What kind,” my lip curled, “… of person  … does this?”

“Pretty ugly,” he agreed. “A real eyesore.”

And then it came to me, a chance to out-Henry Henry. “Help keep America beautiful. Throw away something lovely today.”

We strolled on, laughing.

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 about the place was just slightly wrong. It strove for gentility and a sense of timelessness—etched glass and dark wood, old casks and dim lighting. But the scent of madeira and cigar smoke had been sprayed from a bottle or applied with a cloth. The waiters’ cravats weren’t tied quite right, and the mournful music was recorded. You can’t really have a fado salon anywhere but Portugal. And, behind the bar, a sign that read “Please do not ask for credit as a punch in the mouth often offends.”

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