They say we are never so much ourselves as when we’re wearing a mask. But what do you do when your mask is inside? I feel him slowly filling my skull, peeking out through my eye sockets, wriggling white in the pupal case that once was me.

He started innocently as a pen name. Then he became a younger, more active, version of me. He frequented trendy bars, and sprang lithe across the fells with his Borzoi hounds. Last night, he fucked my wife, and she screamed in pleasure.

I may have to take drastic measures.

 

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

Spuggy had run out of time. I don’t mean he was dying. At twenty-four-years-old he had decades ahead. But the age into which he went to war was dead, and his story had ended, leaving him nothing but trekking stubborn through the years, dragging the prosthetic leg behind him.

Once, in the pub, Spuggy spoke about how that hurt. “The only time they ever talk about ‘our brave soldiers’ is the sodding dead ones.”

As he spoke, he drank, like he was firing and reloading a number 8 rifle, technically, methodically. His was a journal of blank pages on which no more words will ever be written for as long as he lives.

 

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 drumming starts. A chant rises. I’ve come home.

Almost a lifetime ago, big men drew a line on a map. This, they said, is ours and that is yours. The line cut through our family. With great sympathy they told us uncles were enemies, and sisters became strangers.

And now, at last, we meet again. We no longer share any spoken language, but I recognise you by the weave of your robe and I hear the way you dance. My body speaks in the same rhythms.

 

 

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

Oily water slaps glaucous against the barge’s flank. A dead rat floats past. I unload crates of strawberries, already sweet-scented in the early morning sun. By lunch-time, ladies and gentleman in the piazza will remark on the fruit’s succulence as they lean conspiratorial towards each other across starched linen tablecloths.

I was not born to labour. Perhaps my father was a Duke. They tore me from my mother’s arms and gave me to Mabel and Henry, good honest people who pretend to be my parents. This is not my past, but it’s the only one available.

 

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

Inside every head there’s a world. Simon’s skull was like that–when he looked at you, he wasn’t seeing what you did in the mirror

“Why don’t I raise the blind?” Natalie would always say when her brother stared out the kitchen window, “so you can see better.”

With weary patience, he’d explain the screening pattern of the fabric revealed how things are.

“There goes Mrs Abercrombie,” he said. “She’s one of the lizard people. Her eggs are blowing behind her like leaves.”

Natalie realised just because a thing doesn’t exist this doesn’t make it untrue

 

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 remarkable thing about the space was its spaciousness. Hall after colonnaded hall receded into the far distance.  Clouds obscured the vaulted ceiling. Even Marcus, safe big Marcus holding my hand, was diminished.

The second remarkable thing–the Capitol refracted identity. Mirrors on every wall reflected mirrors, and I saw myself seeing.

The third thing, well, everyone knows that –the mortality of gods. They killed the Emperor that day, right in front of me. And the mirrors multiplied his dying into a massacre of thousands, one death for each of his crimes.

Now we must learn to worship ourselves.

 

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

Russ started in the southeast corner. By year-end, he’d reached the far side of the field, which looked like a Somme battlefield.

Eventually curiosity got the better of me “Whatya doin’, Russ?”

He didn’t even stop digging. “What’s it look like?”

That seemed a trick question, so I didn’t say. I tried a different tack. “What for ya diggin’ holes in the ground, Russ?”

“I’m not.”

He was knee deep in the pit so that seemed a stupid answer.

“It ain’t the holes, idiot, it’s the rims,” he said. Snow began to fall.

“Like lace,” he said.

 

I’m afraid Russell’s picture tickled me so much I had another go at it. 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

 

He had a white beard, a red suit, and a twinkle in his eye. Yeah, that was my first thought too. And, of course, his name was Kris.

“Look,” he said, beginning the consultation, “the more statins you take, the less likely is cardiovascular crisis, but the greater the chance of cancer.”

Well, that was a kick in the head! I told him to repair the cancer genes. It transpired that meant I’d get dementia instead.

He wound up for the pitch. “Personalised medicine today offers a good death. A massive coronary half way up an Alp is very popular.”

 

 

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

Well, it was an easy mistake—I’d said a crystal ball, and he’d bought me a crystal bowl. But it made me angry anyhow, perhaps just needing someone to yell at.

“I can’t hardly tell the punters’ fortunes in a sugar bowl, can I?”

“Could you read tea leaves instead, spread them on the bottom?” His lowered head and moist eyes almost broke my heart.

The thing hefted heavy in my hand. He cowered. The rim flared blue, reflecting the sky. Yellows of the pine table lurked in the facets. And green. And red.

There’s magic everywhere when you look.

 

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 the first pair of shoes turned up, well, I were delighted. I put them on and walked. Them ten league boots took me all the way from John O’Groats to Lands End. I walked clear out of them and settled on the promontory overlooking the bean green Atlantic. Waiting

Today, a second pair of boots on my moss-gnawed doorstep. Sinister derelict things. With a note tucked into the right shoe. I couldn’t pull it out, and anyway I can’t read. But I know what it says.

Pebbles crunching. I walk into the ocean. It’s so very cold.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields, who has given us boots before, to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

My story is a companion piece to Walker, written in response to the first pair of boots.