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

When I confess to the bad thing, the very bad thing, you don’t cry out or scream. You don’t reject me with a surge of anger.

You just go very still, as if the world has stopped. As if you have to be very careful not to shatter.

 

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

In the silvered night, he steals down alleys, ferrying old books from the library to secret caches. The Pure are already calling beyond the walls. When they enter the city, they’ll root out heresy with a great bonfire and smashing of icons. Corpses will swing from the gates.

The librarian isn’t sure whether astronomical texts, and studies of verse are heretical. But he suspects they may be. He believes the invaders might find the land inventory useful. And this too he bears into hiding.

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

Organising it took ages. The same corner table in Marcel’s; the red dress; the precise day. A cloudless sky with hunter’s moon. But love finds a way.

My woman sits by the window, half illuminated by the restaurant’s discreet lamps, but already silvered by the moon outside. She is becoming one with the night. On the beach beyond, some creature cries, stitching the present to a timeless past.

“Did you bring her here?” she asks. “Your ex, Louise. Before she …”

Everything is the same. Now I will ask her the question. By her answer she will merge with Louise.

 

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

Long after his death, a digitally remastered Ol’ Green Eyes was wowing audiences again with gyrating hips and glorious guitar riffs.  Girls born decades after the original performances screamed and tried to rush the stage. The star, haloed in blue light, paid them no mind.

The tours were a sell-out nationwide. But Ol’ Green Eyes weren’t very interactive. Not until Frank Gainsborough had the idea of adding a connectome. It weren’t the original one, of course. That were long gone. But a great nephew made a reasonable match, right?

Now, when the girls scream, he leers and hauls them to his dressing room.

 

 

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