Alex speaks a language no-one else alive understands. Well, we call him Alex, but we don’t know what he calls himself. He’s always refused to signal this.

It’s not that he has any hesitation about speaking. He will happily speak all day. Just that nobody knows what he’s saying. We detect pleasure, frustration, thoughtfulness and a range of other states. But the argument he’s advancing so passionately eludes us.

Today, though, Alex is silent. Is he angry? Sad? Or has he simply finished reciting the entire history of his race?

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

Mrs. Gant always scared me. She’d race out of the temple at us kids, waving her mop like a scimitar. The fear meant I never did get to find out who they worshipped in there. I imagined stern priests, stone slabs, and human sacrifice.

It seems fanciful now, slinking past the bland block structure. Four decades since I walked the neighbourhood. Mrs. Gant long gone.

And yet. The iron railings carry wrought shapes. And those swirling shapes pull in shadows from the temple garden, plucking with lean fingers at the shades from the street. I turn and run like hell.

 

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

Reflections were no longer perfect.  The above ceased to mirror below. Below the meniscus the granite cliffs and great purple bruise of a damaged sky were gone.  Down under, a gentle surf lapped the peaceful strand, and fishermen cast their nets on a sea pulsing with cod and bream.

“Tis the devil’s work,” Molly declared, needles clacking as they wound the soft strong wool. “Paradise be above, and below, a vale of tears.”

Nothing could convince her. Heaven below must be hell.

“The sky will clear,” she said, “and we’ll go back up. When I’ve finished my Jeb’s new jumper.”

 

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 wanted to say I’m sorry. But she wouldn’t listen. She ran. She fell and didn’t move. I was frightened. So, I never got to say sorry, and I never got to be forgiven.

Do you see? You are my second chance. That’s why I had to hurt you. So I could say sorry, and so you could forgive me.

You do forgive me, don’t you? You must.

 

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 the kind of place you expected to see a ghost walk. A tragic heroine, perhaps, throwing herself from a tower in the despair of a forbidden love. Shadows lay deep, and the fresh morning air, scented with mountain pine, carried a shiver.

It was the kind of place that primed you for belief. When the cowled figure, silver-shadowed in the dawn, floated towards me, it seemed to fit.

I don’t expect you to believe me or the message I received. But, unless you release me, I know terrible things are going to happen. The message must be delivered.

 

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 light was failing. And it grew cold, so cold. Hoarfrost crackled on dying limbs.

“How can this be? How can the sun abandon us?” Frank was shocked by how reedy and tremulous his voice sounded.

His granddaughter put a hand over his. “It’s just the way of the universe. Everything has its season, comes into existence, lives and dies. As with people, so is with stars.”

“Great,” Frank muttered. “Philosophy.”

She was wise enough to remain silent, knowing she could say nothing. When a grandparent dies, she knew, a world dies with them.

 

 

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

Effie, crawling beneath the gnashing machine, tried to remember soft rain pattering on their turf roof. But the great shaft frames of the weaving hall had a different song: implacable, voracious.  The noise and the odour of oil and cotton dust choked Effie. A frame scythed just above her squirming back, rattling the heddles. The sharp shuttle flashed athwart.

“Mama,” she called through the clatter. “I have it.”

She lifted the trapped bale.

In the din, nobody heard the scream as the shaft took her hand clean off.

“How will we survive,” she thought, “without my daily tuppence?”

 

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 man behind the municipal desk looked municipal. Stanley knew the look—bored, unimpressed, implacable.

“Leave this with me,” the man said. “I’ll put it before the Council.”

He meant he’d shove it in a drawer and have a cup of tea.

“Listen,” Stanley pleaded, “it’s important. My giant fan will blow the miasma away. The city will be safe.”

The official straightened his cravat and nodded.

“Or we can all choke to death, I suppose,” Stanley added. Bitterness filled his mouth.

The man shuffled his papers and looked over Stanley’s shoulder at the next in line.

 

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 mind is certain of the purpose this exhibit fulfilled. Our best analysis shows it to be a fusion of organic materials from both the sessile and motile sets, part shaped biologically and part industrially. The device lacks obvious outputs.

Since all trace of the planet’s dominant life form has vanished, we are forced to conjecture about many of the excavated artefacts. Most authorities believe this was a mechanism for food production though some hold that it was involved in social bonding rituals.

 

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 first package arrived on my eighteenth birthday. In brown paper tied with string, as butchers used to wrap meat. A printed copy of Dermot Callaghan’s The Lighthouse. Surprising, because Callaghan drowned before he finished the novel. There was no return address.

I sniffed the aroma of fresh printers’ ink, then set to work, copying the whole thing out and submitting it to Callaghan’s publisher.

Every birthday, a new parcel. And every year I published a new sensation.

Now, a lifetime on, my steps falter in the sand by the lighthouse. I walk into the sea, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript.

 

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