Everything has changed—the way I fit into the world and how I move through it. In an instant, I have become old. I am invalid. Kind people offer help, and I feel anger. Inquisitive glances glide off me when I look up at them. I am a Teflon pan—nothing sticks to me.

If only I hadn’t climbed that roof. If only I’d left home five minutes later.

“We’ll remove the cast next week,” the doctor says, and I am summoned back to life.

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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 blankets hide us in warm safety. Your legs part when I put my hand on your thigh, and I feel the moist arousal. You offer me your virginity. Yet, I cannot. Or, I should not.

Three years planning and your five-thousand-mile journey stymied by a single look.

While you were already in the air, just half a day ago, I fell in love. I lack the wisdom to know what to do next.

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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 called it the magic door. Crowds would gather outside, peering in. When Harvey pushed his way to the front and squinted at the glass, all he saw was a dim hallway beyond, with some tatty overcoats hanging from hooks.

And then. The reflection of mama crossing the street, shopping bag swinging from her hand. Mama, dead these seven years. He whirled. But the street was empty.

Perhaps, he’d find her again if he went in. Throwing his shoulder against the door, he crashed through. Black and white tiles, and a flock of coats nattering like old ravens.

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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 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