Sparks arc, zigzagging up between the conductors. Mr. Henderson thinks he’s demonstrating properties of electricity. In fact, he has opened a door.

I peer closer. But I’m not learning about short circuits. The air crackles with brimstone and I see tiny angels ascending the ladder to heaven. For a moment, the heavenly kingdom becomes visible.

The seraphim, in high voices that only I and dogs can hear, chant “holy, holy, holy.”

Their Lord is angry. They issue my instructions and, with grim determination, I steel myself for the task.

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 old house was leaking light. We tried to staunch the flow, bandaging our home with drapes and then with shutters. But that prevented us keeping watch.

Ma pulled her shawl tight and said every family was allotted a ration of brightness—when it ran out, it was gone. Dad would grunt and carry on whittling.

We never found out what he was carving, maybe a house-deity to protect us.

Neighbourhood children danced and played in the dwindling fountain.  Other shapes too moved faintly among them. Inside, we dwelt finally in eternal darkness.

 

 

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

Harvey was appalled. The street below pullulated with people, jostling and pushing noisily through each other.

“Mum,” he said, “Those folk are idiots. No social distancing. Don’t they know they’re going to die?”

Taking him by the shoulders, she gave him that look, the one that said she had something important to teach him.

“Those folk don’t have the option of staying home. If they don’t go out and earn money, they’ll certainly die.”

Harvey asked why.

Because they’re poor, she explained. But this only led the lad to ask why they were poor. Her answers ran out then. And that set the course of his life.

 

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 never stops. The long segmented worm trundles round the tormented globe, zipping it back together. We patch the rips from which poison oozes and make the world whole again. That’s what this machine is for.

 I was born on the train and I will die on it. Behind our clanking passage, land heals, seed stirs. In my dreams, I slip from the footplate and tread the mulch, weed the crop, harvest food. But we have a job to do. The train never stops.

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 always a backdoor—you just need to know how to find it. In Roxy’s case, the way-in was animals. She adored them, specially dolphins and whales.

I’d never have got through the iron gates and security cameras at the front, where her fans and the paps waited. But tomorrow, when I take her to the aquarium, I’ll go down on one knee and she’ll be mine.

The snap of Rover’s leg in my hands still haunts me. But he’ll be running around soon. The break was clean and Roxy ensured he had the best vets money could buy.

 

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 felt daring. And noble. This was a grand thing I was doing, an act that would render me immortal.

Yet my face flushed as I reached the plinth and let the flimsy robe slither off. It made a silken hiss as it fell like a shed skin. Through the forest of easels, the zephyr of a collective sigh. Cool air caressed my bare flesh.

The gentlemen peered, squinted, grunted, as they began my slow transformation into art.

The movement behind the easels grew more frenetic, and the grunts louder.

 

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

Up to the edge of my hedge, I am safe. I stare out into the empty road—no cars, no people, only increasingly bold foxes.

Then there, at the bottom of the lane, a figure silhouetted by the early morning sun. It walks towards me, as if out of a dream. Another person. Tentatively, I raise my hand.

“How do,” it says, stopping at my gate.

Stranger danger! Who knows what the creature carries?

I run inside and bolt my door.

 

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 told him once, I told him a thousand times–cups go on the left, plates and pans on the right, cutlery underneath. I cook, clean, and mend. It really shouldn’t have been hard for him to manage the washing-up.

There has to be a system for everything. Left-overs go to the hogs. No need for acid baths or body parts in freezers.

 

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

“Go! Go! Go!” he captained us.

The cry was imperative, and we were trained. Legs strode, hearts pumped. Rifles in hand, we dashed. He was dashing too, in his starched uniform with the yellow braid. So captainly.

“Go! Go! Go!” Again.

“Yes, Sir.” I snapped off a salute. “But go where exactly?”

 

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