With each day I am moving into the time before. I am becoming an ancestor. My limbs are frail and my breath comes heavy. Never again will I chase down a deer.

But the young ones sit at my feet and ask me “In your experience, how is this done?” And with every answer, they venerate me more. I move in a loop, catching up now and again with the era of my forebears.

 

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.

Ten steps lead up to the door. I’d dated Esther ten times. These things have a meaning, I know.

In my pocket, Mum’s ring bumps against my hip as I mount the stairs, like an ambassador bringing tribute to a potentate.

I press the bell. Overhead, a flock of new-hatched starlings trace patterns in the sky. There are ten of them.

She opens the door and I smell the scent of gardenias. A waft of coriander has followed her from the kitchen. On one knee, I proffer the ring.

“Are you nuts?” she says. “We’ve been on, like, ten dates.”

 

 

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’s purple. Not like a bruise but like an emperor. What’s it doing on my drive?

Perhaps it’s a swarm of rare butterflies on their elusive migration. The Purple Emperor avoids flower nectar and seeks out rotting flesh.  Maybe what’s in my cellar is attracting them. With a shiver of revulsion, I try to brush aside the fear.

But too late. Already lepidopterists are gathering under my trees, armed with nets and small packets of Stinking Bishop cheese. I rush to bolt the door but two have taken up station with field glasses in my kitchen.

 

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

You probably remember the headlines about bacteria in that sample of Mars rock. Life on other worlds!

You won’t remember, because nobody blabbed, the bacteria were earth-like. Same genetic code, same enzymes. Too earth-like.

Buy me another whiskey and I’ll explain.

We thought contamination, of course. But the sample was four billion years old. Here’s the kicker—life on earth started around three and half billion years.

You put the pieces together. Life on Mars was earth-like. It began before life on Earth. See? Our life originated on Mars. Nothing else fits. They suppressed that.

Another? Thanks. You’re a gentleman.

 

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 dialysis machine clicked and hummed. Nurses came and went. Days passed, weeks.

Then there was a doctor. “I’m afraid there’s still no suitable donor. The wait might take years.”

“I don’t want to die,” I said. “And I can’t live like this.”

The doctor stroked his chin. It made a rasping sound. He looked around him and lowered his voice. “Have you considered going abroad? In China you could get this done in weeks.”

“How can they do that?”

“I’ve heard they harvest the organs of executed prisoners, but no-one is sure.”

For a long time, I pondered.

 

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

There is a castle on the hill. Of course. Bright pennants fly from its turrets, and tin men issue from its gates for quests and feats of derring-do.

There’s a dragon in the valley, puffing great gouts of fire. Naturally.

There will be a bay with a captured treasure ship riding at anchor. I can’t spy it yet but I know it’s there.

And there’ll be a princess, awaiting rescue from the evil baron. That’s what princesses are for. And she’ll swoon and love me.

The summer hols stretch ahead as far as the imagination can see.

 

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

Why are you chanting woo-ooo at me like an idiot? If you got something to say, speak. Oh yeah, right—you’re a ghost. The white sheet thing? Great to meet you. And I’m Santa Claus.

Listen, I’m telling you, you’re going to need a better story than this. If you’re after money, wait till Halloween. I don’t have a bean anyhow.

You want me to believe that’s your body, or at least your skeleton, in the glass case? No, I can’t see your ribcage. That’s a stack of pretzels.

Beat it, before I call the cops.

 

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 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