“Heinous. So proud of our great military. Slam dunk. Goodbye slime ball.”
He clicked some missiles.
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 found Christophe’s little repair shop tucked away under the railway arches. There was nothing he couldn’t fix. Springs and gears cluttered his bench, bits of old toasters and gizmos whose purpose I couldn’t imagine.
“I need these words repurposed,” I said, dropping the Gladstone bag on his counter. Some tarnished verbs slipped out.
He picked one. “Flense,” he said, turning it over and examining it with a jeweller’s loupe. “Tricky”
While I waited, I leafed through an antique volume, became lost in the tale.
“Where was I?”
“Working a story,” he said. “I’m afraid I involved your body in slaying some dragons.”
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
An anthology of 32 stories about climate change. One of them is mine. Profits go to the Earth Day network.
A schoolboy inspired by a conservation hero to do his bit.
A mother trying to save her family and her farm from drought.
A world that doesn’t get dark anymore.
And a city that lives in a tower slowly being taken over by the sea.
These stories and many more make up a poignant collection that is sometimes bleak, sometimes lighthearted, but always hopeful that we can make a change.
Published on 22 April, 2018 you can order from Amazon
Yeah, I wasn’t surprised when they came. The truth is out there, you know. No, no. Don’t stand directly underneath – they can beam you up that way.
What do you mean they’re lamps? Don’t you get it? That’s what they want us to think. Well, if you’re so smart tell me what the message means.
The message for crissakes, the one they’re projecting on the window. Look, one bar, then two, then three. Arithmetic, right? But look at the first one. That, my friend, is their encyclopaedia, their gift, if you know how to read 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
The meeting broke up early. You’d think it would take days to reach such a decision, but only fifty-three minutes had passed, I walked with the President in the gardens. On the lawn a peacock called, the sound rasping and full of anguish.
“All of them?” I said. “Must they all die?”
The President brushed hair from her eyes. It was a weary gesture. “You know the answer. If even one survives, this will get out.”
Beyond the walls, I heard the rumble as the tanks moved off.
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
We called them the witch’s tits. On account of their shape, you know – sharp cones. Before we named the peaks, this was just an ordinary mountain track. Afterwards, well you could feel it, the cold I mean, a kind of chill in your heart as you rounded the corner.
I think it was Harry who named the force – Ishtar, an ancient Queen of Heaven, who destroyed her lovers. Anyhow it was Henry She took for her own that day. We heard a wail and he vanished. That’s why we made the warning sign. Nobody takes this road now.
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 lights arrived, Michael wasn’t there to see them. The radiance danced, coruscated, the night sky was incandescent. Reflections glimmered on the unblinking eye of Michael’s camera lens. No shutter click caught the secret for posterity.
Under the trees, Michael indulged a secret of his own, more furtive, less cosmic. He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Yes, yes. Don’t stop”
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
Perhaps it was because his parents called him Darius. Bearing the name of an ancient conqueror carries its own risks. At all events, Darry played a long game only he understood.
“Who does it harm?” he’d say when we questioned his project. For 25 years he quarried and shaped, assembled and carved. In secret, he overwrote the landscape of his extensive estates with temples and amphitheatres, statuary and canals.
“Darry,” I said to him one day, “this is a Disneyworld, a fantasy.”
“Now.” He nodded. “Sure. But in a thousand years, who’ll be certain?”
Darius was inventing a legend.
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.
It took the rescuers a month to dig their way to the mountain cabins through snowdrifts a metre high. Dagmar’s was the last they reached.
“Don’t reckon it’ll be pretty,” Sergeant Rasmussen warned the volunteers. That morning they’d found Sven and Inga’s frozen bodies wrapped together in a final embrace, each of the children neat and cold in their beds. All the children bar two. The dog had eaten them.
They forced their way into Dagmar’s house, crunching over the litter of small bones. The cleaver caught Rasmussen in the neck.
“Food,” the old lady croaked in relief.
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
Albert liked collecting. As a child it was stamps, as a young man, girlfriends. Nowadays, slackened by sin and faltering vitality, he became a lepidopterist. Five hundred glass cases, each packed with exotic chevrons of inert delight.
These delicate angels, dancing on the skewer of a pin, weren’t arranged as you might expect – blues in one case, swallowtails in another, metalmarks, and so on. Instead, Albert displayed them by markings, arranged side by side so the patterns spelled out words.
“The way we categorise things,” he said, “confronts us with our assumptions. To me, nature is a book.”
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
