Jerry was always … different. Once when we were kids at the swimming baths he came up for air, pushed the black hair from his brow, and said “wouldn’t it be cool to grow gills?”
Now he’s proposing to do it.
“Jerry, you can’t,” I say. “It’s not right.”
The syringe is poised in his hand. “How so? It’s my body. I can tattoo it, pierce it, so why can’t I modify my DNA? I can cure my colour blindness and add vision into the ultra violet.”
“You won’t be you any more, not fully human.”
He just laughed.
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
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
You have to love any sentence that starts that way, don’t you? It conjures up delightful fairy tales and the deepest philosophy.
“… the whole universe is a story?” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “So who’s telling it?”
“Nobody. There’s no narrator or listeners. Only the story.”
That’s why I adored her. She lived in a different world; more magical, more complicated.
“Once I open the box, I know whether the cat is dead or alive. But you don’t know until I tell you,” she said
“Ha! So the observer exists and creates the tale.”
“Damn!”
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fieldsto write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
She lay beside him, sleeping. The respirator of her chest rattled as it rose and fell, the breath rasping alien through sunken tubes. In terror, he believed he heard a mechanical hum and then a click at the end of every in-breath.
Beyond the fevered bedroom, the church clock struck thirteen.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fieldsto write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
He said the usual silly things men say – What? How? Why? Are you sure?
‘It will be all right, won’t it?’ she asked. ‘You must marry me.’
‘Your brothers will never allow it,” he temporised.
“My brothers and father will kill me if I have a baby and I am unmarried.”
The moment of betrayal is always agonising. You recite for yourself all the reasons that make it right. There’s duty. There’s the uncomfortable truth that you already have a wife and two vaguely C of E kids. And those are good justifications. But you can only betray what you first love.
He walked away. He looked back once, and shed a tear.
…………………………………………………………………..
Ayesha tracked him down.
“Zami, I’m pregnant.”
She searched his eyes as he stammered and asked all the stupid, obvious, irrelevant questions. She wanted to see love there, concern, and maybe even joy. She saw fear.
‘It will be all right, won’t it?’ she asked. ‘You must marry me.’
‘Your brothers will never allow it,’
How could he not understand? “My brothers and father will kill me if I have a baby and I am unmarried.”
The sound of her voice came to her through the numb bone of her skull flat, factual, unemotional. But her body shook.
She saw it in his eyes before he said anything. She saw his need for her, perhaps even caring. But his love was insufficient. Or maybe his duty was misplaced. Either way, she understood this was going to be her problem, not theirs. Men were animals, just like Mama said. Her arm lashed out, intending to slap him.
He flinched but didn’t draw away. She stopped her hand, an inch from his face, caressed his cheek and then spat in his face.
Whaddaya mean I can’t be here? Whodyathink you are? Oh, you’re the doorman? Well, whoopiedoo, I’m a street-sweeper! You ain’t no better than me. Whodyathink keeps the pavement clean for the lovely ladies ‘n’ genelmen?
What? Of course I’m dirty, you eejit. Muck does that to a bloke. I’m good enough to keep your customers from stepping in poop, but not good enough to be one? Get you!
Silly hat but nice coat, by the way. We’ll see how pretty the jacket looks when you have to clean up your own crap because I ain’t gonna ever again.
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
They were drawn up like an army on the heights, standing tall in silent challenge. Mist swaddled them and a pale moon shone through their ranks.
My opponent’s bishop rushed me, and the daring caused the watchers to gasp.
A shake of my head to clear it, and a hand run over tired eyes. These were only vases, a collection on my sideboard. Just ornaments.
The bishop’s mitre scythed over my head and I saw moonlight glint on keen steel.
Confronting mortal threat makes philosophical speculations about reality fade. I hefted the broadsword that formed in my hands.
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look atthis month’s exercise on point of view.
“When you know how it’s done, it takes away the magic,” Petran says.
The vaulted roof soars almost all the way to heaven. Petran painted yellow stars on the high blue ceiling. And I, of course, chamfered the columns, tapering them at the top. This trompe l’oeil makes the viewer see the chamber as taller than it really is. Long flights of stairs force the petitioner to look up towards the majesty of the dais and throne. Together, we artisans manufactured awe.
Truly, it don’t destroy the magic. Ordinary folk made this with brains and hands. That’s awe too.
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
Tom has halted beside the woodcutter’s cottage, a stand of burly oaks patrolling the fence line. He can’t make his feet go on.
You picture dread and think of a sudden shape in the underbrush, a howl in the night. If only it were so simple. How little separates us from what we fear!
To count as brave you must first be afraid of death. Tom’s fear runs much deeper. He can see the weave that connects the worlds. The fools tried to make us go away, but what use is that when we’re always a part of him?
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fieldsto write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look atthis month’s exercise on point of view.
Nothing. Whiteness. And the hum of a motor. I can see and hear, but when I try to move, nothing. Not restrained, just no muscles. Not even to call out. Without larynx and tongue, the shout remains trapped within me. Am I dead?
Shadows move across the ceiling. People in the room.
Helen’s voice. “How is he doctor?”
“A vegetative state. He may come out of it, he may not.”
The scream inside me has nowhere to go. It may live in me for ever.
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
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view
The boy was bad, clean bad, all the way through. Everybody knew it. Take the three bears, for example. He’d broken into their house, scarfed their porridge, and smashed up their furniture. Officer Krupke had called in Jack’s mother to give her a final warning – one more incident and the lad was headed for prison.
Bears, of course, are cuddly. Who doesn’t love a bear? It’s not the same with giants. When folk see me coming, they run and hide. And yeah, I can understand – I’m ugly and, if I don’t look where I’m going, I crush little creatures underfoot and topple small trees.
So it wasn’t really a surprise when Officer Krupke didn’t even bother turn up when I phoned in the complaint about Jack. Just said he’d file a report. So much for one more incident! The little bugger had sold his mother’s only cow for a handful of magic beans. Was out of his skull on them, otherwise he wouldn’t have dared worm and squirm his way into a giant’s home.
I guessed someone had broken in when my hoard of gold coins went missing. Yeah, I suspected Jack but I couldn’t prove it. So I got no help from the cops.
“Dust for prints, you can at least do that” I shouted into the tin can, making the string vibrate.
“You’ve been watching too much TV,” Krupke said. I could tell he was wondering where I’d got the gold coins from in the first place. Things have never been cool between me and the cops since I beat the crap out of that kid David for coming after me with a slingshot. Once you have a record, you never get a fair shake.
Anyhow, I sat guard after that. And sure enough, two days later there was Jack squeezing his scrawny little shoulders in through the burglar bars. I kept mum to see what he’d do. He was hopped up on magic beans, eyes big, like one of those creatures, wombats or tasers or something. The kid knew what he was looking for, made straight for the hen house. Which is where I keep the goose.
Twelve years of experiments that goose cost me until I perfected a breed that deposited gold in the shell of her eggs. And Jack had her under his arm. That’s when I jumped out.
Well, the rest you’ve heard already. When the boy disappeared, his mother called the police. And they came straight to me because I’d made threats, so they said, found Jack locked in my basement. Suddenly I was the villain!
So that’s how come I’m in the slammer. And Jack? They say he and his ma moved to an executive home in that new development by the river. Like I don’t understand where they got the money for that! He steals my golden goose and I’m doing time? Yeah, right!
Neil MacDonald Author 