She’s not gone. Not really, not totally. Like scent, she lingers in the air. I turn and turn the ribbon-tied packet of letters, caress the image of her face with my fingertips.

She speaks to me still. Words I remember and social media posts I’ve forgotten or never knew. Their joy slices my heart, these curated words.

How to explain it, this e-mail? Does the soul, after all, survive? Do ghosts exist? Maybe the dead persist in binary sarcophagi, amidst secret chambers of the digital pyramid.

She needn’t be gone. I have her password. She can wear me.

 

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 hated the way he slurped his shake—a bubbling of gastric juices. By some malign alchemy he could transform even the sweet vanilla pods of Madagascar into anger. Every slow suck was a rebuke.

“Pissant little assholes,” he rumbled round the straw. “Ungrateful.”

No need to ask who he meant. It didn’t matter Pop was angry with the whole world.

The rictus of a smile painted on my face, I raised my shake in a toast, “Happy Fourth.”

He squirted ketchup on his fries as if that might drown them, and glowered. “Yeah.”

I sighed. “Pass the freedoms, Pappy.”

 

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

Beyond the footlights, the audience is an unseen expectant mass. Zeina El Hefny commands the stage, her coloratura notes easily ascending the runs and trills of Handel’s score to hit a high F.  She has made it, all the way from Cairo to the heart of Europe. But how she missed her own civilised bathroom and its bidet!

A house light sparks off a tiara in the Royal box.

A stray thought sparks off Zeina’s mind as she regards the opera-goers. “All these people smear their shit around their arses with bits of paper.”

 

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 sage who said it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive, Robert thought, had never visited an airport. There comes a point where you can’t manage another sushi portion, another trip round duty free. Where it becomes problematic to stop yourself smacking the doting parent beside you who won’t control their children. Patience of Job or what?

He reached the end of his book and wondered about starting the next. Surely, they’d be boarding soon!

At last! The mannequin behind the desk tapped the microphone. Robert gathered his bag.

“We regret the delay to your flight. Plane’s gone technical.”

 

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 chandelier resonated with marching boots on the parade ground. The salon walls shook as heavy vehicles rumbled onto the quay.

The author buried his head in his hands. “I can’t create in this din.”

“How about,” the brigadier-general suggested, “we toss a corpse into the sea, pockets stuffed with secret plans for an invasion at Calais?”

“You don’t understand fiction do you?” the author said in withering tones. “The enemy will see through that in a second. We need to misdirect them from the Normandy denouement, sprinkle-in clues so readers are forced to work out the Calais conclusion themselves.”

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. This one is a belated 75th anniversary tribute, of course, to the unsung heroes of D-Day You can find other stories here

When the glass shattered, everything stood still. Dad’s greenhouse!

“Joel!” Dad sounded anxious.

Joel knew soon the tone would change to anger. “It was just a pebble, Dad. A small one.”

But Dad didn’t get angry. He put his hand to his mouth and gazed at the heavens.

“Just a small one,” he said. “A one gram microsatellite. Accelerated to a quarter the speed of light.”

He whipped out his calculator, punching the keys in panic.

“Jesus Christ! There’s no way of slowing it down. Impact of a small nuclear explosion on collision. How will the aliens understand? What have we done?”

 

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. I won’t.

No, I can hear you perfectly well from where I am. You may say I’m up a tree without a paddle. But you can skedaddle. Just how much use do you suppose a paddle is in a tree, eh?

I can see for miles and miles and miles. As many coconuts as I can eat. And no bear’s going to get me. Jagulars maybe. Strorny good droppers, jagulars, as Pooh remarked. But not bears. You, on the other hand, are extremely vulnerable to roving ursines.

So, which of us would you say is crazy?

 

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 at the link below

Oh, you may say it’ll never catch on. But I fear its terrible appeal. The young folk like it. They spend hours sending messages back and forth to each other.

In my day, we spoke to each other, danced, played. If there were stories to be told, we recited them. Now we are become shallow, relying on this infernal invention while our memory withers.

No, I say writing will corrupt us all. Nothing will be the same 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

Jamie’s eyes were fixed on the sea loch. Never on me. The brine- and shellfish-scented wind ruffled his hair into a halo and stirred the water. Out by the headland, a vortex formed.

“Look,” he shouted, pointing, “it’s Nessie, the monster.”

A grey head broke the surface. I knew it for a selkie, because I’d seen the shed sealskin once on the beach. A selkie, here to take a comely lass’s form and carry poor Jamie away under the sea.

Turn to me, just once, I silently willed him. Only once and I’ll save you.

He didn’t. I walked.

 

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

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