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

“That’s such a great idea,” Pfennig said. “A seed bank.”

And it was true. The metal shelves held hazelnuts, garlic cloves, and lumpy nodules I couldn’t identify.

We’d survive, Pfennig decided. Dig up the parks, plant the seeds, harvest our own food. When the soldiers at last removed the barriers around the city, they’d find us healthy and thriving. Then we’d walk out proudly into the sunshine of the new world.

He clapped me on the back, and I beamed with pride, unable to confess a squirrel had done the collecting. All I’d been gathering was graffiti.

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 curtain rose. She gave a gasp. The first time she’d seen live theatre, and her reaction was everything I’d hoped.

“Why isn’t it in colour?” she whispered.

I explained the play was about the old days, and things then were in black and white because colour hadn’t yet been invented.

“You know,” I said, “like in the old movies.”

As the crowd spilled out of the auditorium, she announced “I’m going to be an actor when I grow up.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was all done by avatars now.

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

Perhaps because his mother was not of this land, he was always able to dream of other things, places, possibilities.

But when the opportunity came to leave, he hesitated. It would mean parting from Bertha. If only she would bid him go with an easy heart! But she couldn’t. She cried and begged.

And his going was soured.

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’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