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

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