“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

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