In the whole village, only I still remember Dan Grimes. He lived, carried to the fields the scythe he called Excalibur, drank ale, married Bess, and died, all before living memory.

The young uns don’t credit it when I say Dan would walk half way across the county for work.

“Why didn’t he get the bus?” they ask.

“Weren’t no buses then,” I say, and they ponder this in silence.

When folk say Joseph Grimes has his mother’s crabbiness, I tell ‘em the viciousness is purely Dan’s. And they respect my lore.

But Dan weren’t vicious when he were young. He were sweet. Just not sweet on me. He comes to me in my dreams.

 

 

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

“My father is late,” she says as if this would somehow explain why she hadn’t turned up for work.

“I see,” I say. But I don’t see. “Where has he gone?”

The only answer is a shrug. How can she tell? Nobody knows. Her eyes, russet flecked with gold like sunspots on two stars, are filled with sadness and with resolve.

“Perhaps he’ll come back soon,” I suggest helpfully.

But she looks like I might be a little crazy.

“He’s late,” she repeats slow, as you might to a child.

I’m still not giving her the response she clearly expects.

“Late. Dead,” she says

I am overwhelmed by embarrassment.

 

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, in the top right corner, that blur. See it? No, it’s not a smudge, it’s real. This is a special kind of camera. No holiday snaps of laughing kids here. The device strips away the flesh, to reveal … see? Your ribs, your radius, humerus and ulna. The miraculous complexity of the wrist. The radium camera reveals what you’re made of. But the blur isn’t a bone – it’s your spirit.

No, you can’t keep the image, sorry. We hold them in safe keeping. Sometimes we spread them all out on the floor and compare souls, judge who’s most worthy.

 

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 ask what I meant, and I tell you frankly that I cannot say. When it lived inside me, I knew its shape and smell. But, speaking, I expelled it for you.

I gave it legs to travel, though, inside me, it had no limbs. Wealth it carries in its pockets to pay its way. And I gave it voices to speak, though the language is one not known to me. All of this I did so you might know it. Life becomes something else when spoken.

So, instead, I ask you to tell me what I meant.

 

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 are marks on the pages, made by people long, long ago. They trigger electrical discharges in his brain. Not like a seizure, but precise tiny currents. These fluxes form things that cannot exist: a fish breathing air, a wicked witch, snow in the desert. On these little sparks, rising from the bonfire of his mind, he escapes.

Much later he watches a documentary. “They exist,” he cries, “fish with lungs”.

He sells up, and treks the scalding Sahara, searching for snow. Eventually he reaches the white-capped Atlas Mountains and stumbles on to Marrakech, sure he will find the witch.

 

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 are spitfires over my garden. Mrs Christie next door cheers.

“Hello,” I say. And then I add “Magnificent aren’t they?”

There’s a pause as she eyes me. “Kept us safe in the War. The Few.”

I sing “There’ll be blue birds over, the white cliffs of Dover.”

That seems to do it. She grudgingly invites me in for a nice cup of tea.

Spitfires don’t bother me. But when the helicopter comes over, I again see the barrel bomb falling and taste the choking gas.

“It must be hard for you people,” she says, and I feel utterly alone.

 

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 didn’t plan to steal your dog, it just happened. A watery sun was rising, the morning still largely made of shadows. Slipping between the shadow of an acacia and the one lapping your house, I tried to walk right up without setting him barking. And he came to me, tail going like a metronome.

You must be musical because I saw the Steinway through your window. Perhaps you loved that piano more than your dog, or why was he locked out in the garden? I scratched his ear. He nuzzled my hand.

I left your music, but you didn’t deserve that dog. I call him Beethoven.

 

 

 

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

 

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