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

The city dreams, respiring slowly—the outbreath no longer poison, but blossom-perfume. I sniff the reveries, and they’re heady. My head swims, and lips curl in a smile.

From window to window we call and birds swoop from among the towers carrying our cry like pollen. Buds break on spires and pinnacles. Basements put out roots and taste the earth.

Newness is being born.

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 air holds a limpid clarity. A goat, nibbling my hedge, looks in the window at me looking out. Birdsong resounds over empty streets. I skype my neighbours, even those I don’t like. In the highway’s asphalt, a crack widens and a seed takes root. There will be no going back to “normal” after this is over.

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

All that remained were his last photographs. Surely, they held a message? Some final trace of him to quiet my anguish; a response to everything I should have said.

If only I’d…. But, no. It is what it is. He’d have known I hadn’t meant to leave, that I’d be back.

There it was! A sparrow looking-in through the window. A reprimand? Or forgiveness? Was I the bird, or he?

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 am aghast. “It’s monstrous,” I say.

He seems faintly amused by my outrage and turns from the keyboard with a shake of his silver head. “It’s necessary,” he says. “The way we stop this disease is to isolate the vulnerable and let the healthy catch it. Most will recover and when they do we’ll have a shield of herd immunity.”

“You can’t know that,” I say. “You’re running a terrible experiment with millions of lives.”

His mane tosses like a lion’s. “The peak will be sharp, but it’ll be short.”

Somewhere, faintly, a phone is ringing.

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 promised me cheap and plentiful power, Dick Tracy watches, moon bases, freedom to make the life I wanted. They promised me flying cars.

I guess I got the watch. The internet was unexpected, and that’s wonderful. The nastiness, less so.

Where’s my flying car?

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 cannot be so terrible, so decisive. Look! The sparrows continue their squabbling in the branches. A thin rain is falling, like yesterday, warm and gentle. The sun continues its climb up the wall of the sky as always, and the water plays in the fountain.

Nothing decisive has happened. When the summons comes, I will open the 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