I set my ear against the curve of the giant shell. This is a ritual every time we come to the palace. The police guards stiffen to attention because it’s odd. Harve looks panicked because it’s his friend who’s being odd. But it’s a thing I have to do.

“You know they’re not real eggs, right?” Harve always asks. “Those are decorative barriers against truck bombs.”

Nobody knows except me. Inside these eggs, dragons are sleeping. And when the country’s in peril, they’ll scream forth into an angry sky. Inside the shell, I hear a tapping.

 

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.

Mary woke to find a man crawling in through her bedroom window. She lay absolutely still as he wriggled through and plopped onto her bed.

“Oh, bugger,” the stranger said.

“Just what I needed,” Mary said, wrapping him in a bear hug. “Do exactly what ask, and I won’t call the cops.”

Bernard, who had come to plunder, was ravished. He remained ravished for the next four months until Mary tired of him.

 

Lest you think this is a male fantasy, it’s based on a real event. 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

“You’re Charcoal Charlie,” he said.

The name’s Fred, but I guessed they gave everyone a name in the ballooning club. Perhaps the moniker was a slur, on account of my skin colour.

“Get under the envelope and flap the edges open,” he said.

“Sure thing, massa.” I hoped he’d understand the irony.

Holding the edges of the balloon and flapping like a rooster, I felt ridiculous, but the bag began to inflate.

Then, a wall of flame jetted past me.

“WTF? You almost burned me to a crisp,” I yelled.

“Why do you think the job’s called Charcoal Charlie?”

 

 

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 probably think I’m a bit strange. But then they probably see only a messy picnic blanket here. That would explain why they’re trying to pull me away. If the picnic’s over, it’s time to go. But I wasn’t here to eat the chicken drumsticks and the potato salad. This mess is exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

The geometry of crumbs on the checkerboard pattern describes one particular folding of space-time. Perhaps today, this will be the universe that contains you, and I can dive in and find you again.

 

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 dirt track became a cobbled street, twisting between high buildings that leant together, nodding their heads and clicking their tongues at us.

Marta began to tire, feet dragging and hand pulling in mine. “Let’s go home,” she said. “I don’t like it here.”

The street opened on an avenue, straight as marching soldiers.

At the end—a great plaza. Waters danced in fountains, and flocks of starlings hid the distant palace behind a curtain of coruscating wings.

Marta turned and turned. “Daddy, I didn’t know there was so much space in the whole world.”

I determined things must be different.

 

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

[In homage to Stephen Spielberg and Arkady & Boris Strugatsky]

They came in great flying ships that blotted out the sky. Like inverted pyramids with radio masts. The ships I mean, not the Overlords. We knew them as Overlords, because it was so written on the sides of the vessels.

With lutes and bagpipes we met them, hoping music might communicate. And they spared us.

But they erected a scaffold on the summer meadow, and we were afraid. They capered there with stringed devices that blasted sound.

The next day, they were gone. The meadow is covered in strange litter. Perhaps some of it has power.

 

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 look out to sea. Gentle waves stay all the way out to an empty horizon. No cruise boats.

Nobody come.

For the fourth time, I rearrange the wire bush of tourist hats, bobbing in the breeze like shrunken heads. Gaudy shirts billow and cowrie shell necklaces clack.

My feet do an anxious little dance. Maybe I’ll go tend my taro patch instead.

Jesus wen cry.

 

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 was a grand idea. One that would tie all the threads together and lead to an unexpected place. I thought, “I must remember this solution when I wake.”

In the morning, it had scuttled away into the wainscoting, and all I was left was a sense of the colour red and a cross-hatched pattern.

 

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 we plugged the dilithium crystals into the manifold, it happened. The dustbin began to shake and, on the old zinc sheet, a ghostly image formed.

“What is that?” Tony asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Damned if I know,” Truth is important to me.

But Peg was our visionary. “It’s another world,” she said. “We’re seeing into a parallel universe. Look, there’s a building and a tree.”

It looked suspiciously like a baked reflection of our building and a telegraph pole connected by a manifold.

“Not as good as television,” Tony decided and went home.

 

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