That’s what we’ve come to name it—meal by cloud. Quarantined in our own homes, we take to inviting virtual guests for dinner over Skype. We call from window to window across the city “stay strong”.

Only ambulance sirens and the rumble of military vehicles echo between buildings in the empty boulevards.

It must end soon. This cannot be forever.

 

 

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

 

She’s a good girl. She’ll carry me up the mountain. She prepares my meals and launders my clothes and bathes me. She mends and sews and brings me healing herbs.

This is how it is. I carried her in her youth and now she carries me in my old age. It’s the circle of life. At the end, she will carry me all the way up the mountain to the stars.

But who will carry her when her time comes?

 

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

No maps lead to this trackless place. A white landscape, a white sky, and a desolate biting wind. Yet here, half glimpsed in the ice, a dark and massive shape.

Snow rimes my eyelashes. This land is so terribly silent. Once though it was lush and tropical, and this beast undulated in the warm Tethys Sea.

That sea has long vanished. Once there were maps, but they led to a different place.

 

 

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

That was my father to a tee–“Keep Out of Reach of Children”. He wasn’t stern, never beat us, but he could wither your soul with a sneer. Pretty, sweet and icy to the core like this sorbet.

Every time I see that warning on tins of powdered milk, “Not to be Used for Babies”, I think of him.

His eyes are wide, as if in surprise. Yes, you weren’t expecting that in your choc-chip, were you? But the corners of his mouth are turned up. How I loved it when you smiled at me. The whole world became honey.

 

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

Inside the dome, we have beauty and abundance, lack nothing. Imagine a thing and you need only stretch out your hand to claim it. There is no hardship, and really all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

At night, I press my cheek to the glass wall, seeking that one pinpoint of light high in the sky. I reach out a hand. But I cannot touch it.

Oh, why would you insist on staying behind?

 

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

 

Lights glimmered, undulating with the slap and slip of the waves. The early morning air was still and cool. And he saw, saw the whole thing.

“I know where it’s gone,” he shouted.

“Where? What?” she asked.

“Half the universe is missing. Dark matter–it’s there, in the mirror world.” He pointed at the reflection.

A pigeon looked up, shook its head, and took lazy flight, feathers rustling like a ladies’ fan.

“Actually,” she said, “more like 85% of the universe.”

His shoulders slumped. “Bugger! I thought I’d cracked the problem.”

“Tea?” she suggested.

 

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

What’s it like to be a bat? Or a Martian? I’ve spent my life wanting to know. I remember as a kid asking Mum what it was like to be her but she just shook her head and said it’s being Mum.

Later, the connectome of a flatworm gave me the entire wiring diagram of a brain but revealed no understanding of wormness.

Now the solution to the conundrum is within my grasp. When this upgrade installs, the Blue Horizon AI will cross the singularity into consciousness.

I wait.

I ask.

The machine speaks. “It’s being Blue Horizon.”

42, I think glumly.

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

Madame Mimi and Madame Zoe Stael have not been seen together for over twenty years. If you’d met them then, you’d have been unable to tell them apart. They’re twins, you see. Now they fight on opposite sides of our war.

I wonder how this is possible. To be born of the same place, the same season—that should make them the same person. Twins trouble me. We are each unique, except for those born together. My uncle says twins are not people but birds.

Today, after the battle, only one of the pair will survive. The victor will become a person, and we will know our path.

 

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 summer. The band played and crowds cheered as they marched off. Girls showered the boys with flowers and kisses. It was all a grand adventure. Marnie was the only young woman to enlist. I wanted to give her a flower. I wanted to kiss her, bend her back like a movie heroine. But I was ashamed.

Now it’s winter. They’ll never come back, those boys and Marnie. All gone. We’re ashamed we encouraged them so. Nobody ever visits this bandstand now.

Except me. I’m glad I didn’t enlist. I’m still alive.

 

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 can never take it back. One look at her eyes, wide as a cartoon, and her trembling hands was enough. She’d seen the anger he’d locked away and could never feel safe again.

“It’s a prophecy,” he tried. “See, like in the painting.”

He gestured at the hole his fist had made in the wall and then at the picture, the one mirroring the other. “They’re the same.”

Hoping for hidden treasure, he reached into the cavity. Silent, she shook her head. His fingers closed on nothing, and he knew the real emptiness he’d revealed was his own.

 

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