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

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