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

I don’t even recognise the handwriting. So much has changed since I wrote those words in my journal. Can I believe them? Searching my memory offers no answers. I have no recollection of those woods, the cottage, the break-in. Did it really happen?

A story slots into place in my narrative. Comfortable.

That would explain my fear of dark tree stands. But I’m an imposter in my own life. There is now an uncertainty at the core of my life, a swampy place where the footing is unsteady. It threatens to swallow everything.

 

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 unmistakeable sound of young men behaving badly drifting across the water. Robert was drawn to investigate, and wandered round the bay.

He accepted a can of tasteless fizzy warm beer, declined a spliff, and answered questions about his trip and how he liked the island.

“What do you do?” he enquired of one man.

“I drink,” The reply came with a grin. “In my spare time I’m a policeman.”

The others, all of whom seemed to speak some English, chuckled, exposing teeth and gums stained bright red by betel nut.

 

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 sun-swept fjord has been constructed with real flair. Geirfinnur Vidarsson admires the build as only an engineer can.  Steeply sloping snow-capped walls and a firth perfectly aligned with the rising fireball, bathing the glaucous waves orange.

He steps with care through the lava field, wary of the razor-edged cinder cones lurking beneath the soft green moss.  Geirfinnur is alone in this landscape. He utters a cloud, and it drifts fluffy across the dome of the sky.

Next, he tries to forge a man and a woman, but fails. Head bowed, he turns back towards town.

 

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