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!
The other passengers shrank back, in case my illness proved catching. If I could see that action, my sight was okay. So, it wasn’t me, it was the world. Something had happened to the world.
I felt the ferry’s engine as a bass vibration in my legs. But we weren’t receding from land. The moon hung motionless in the sky and the reflections from the old customs house on the wharf didn’t shimmer on the stilled waves.
A figure wrapped in a shawl bent close. “You needn’t leave. Go back to her.”
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.
This photo stumped me. So I’m going to repost a story I wrote a year and a half ago, also in response to a similar picture by Joshua.
Grandpa scratched his thin beard, the turkey wattle flapping on his neck. “Dammit, we used to make things, we were somebody.”
I didn’t know why he’d brought me to this derelict building, or what he wanted to teach me. Grandpa was just an old man, to be humoured.
“Can’t see how you’re ever going to amount to anything, Josh.” A sad shake of his head. “You can’t make a world out of selling each other insurance policies and burgers.”
Now, fifteen years on, with the DNA price crashing, Grandpa’s message makes sense. I stare bleakly at my own wasteland.
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 reveals.
You reckoned I’d spin you a sob-story with these shoes, didn’t you? Like Hemingway’s “baby shoes, brand new, never worn”. Or like the boy got his feet blown off in the war and never wore them again. I’d have thrashed him if he’d been that careless.
Liked to walk, my lad did, and he were a good strong walker. One day, he walked and walked, and walked right out of these shoes. Where did he go? Dunno. This story’s a mystery, not the tragedy you was expecting. The shoes live under his bed still, but the boy never came back.
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 reveals.
There’s an image of the Virgin Mary in my toast, picked out in darker browning. There is, really! I knew yesterday something special was going to happen when I saw that starling with the one milky eye.
On the bird’s sighted side there were empty plastic bags, daily commutes and nastygrams. But on the other side! Oh! On the other side, jewelled castles, miracles and daring quests.
And now, here in my breakfast, the annunciation of my very own miracle. I kneel, head bowed, and pray – for peace, healing and for Tara in Accounts to notice me.
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 reveals,.
I don’t exist. The track unravels empty across the moor – the physical world contains no first person singular. Though my spirit presses insistently on the arches of my eye socket, like a hawk trying to escape a cage, really the thing’s a ghost.
Fingers flutter and reach for yours. “Give me a hug,” I say.
Even if the outside domain has no room for an “I”, there is a “you”. I know that because I can see you. And through “we”, for a time, I can feel myself in the world.
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 reveals.
“There’s earth right under our feet,” he said. “Earth and roots and worms – it can break through any time.”
How could I have known the ruined castle would terrorise him so? Imagined tourneys and jousting and round tables was what I expected. Instead, he saw decay, a child’s first glimpse of our impermanent hold on eternity.
“Everything’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”
He seemed to recover until building began on the plot next-door.
Looking into the foundations’ depth he screamed, “dirt.”
For the next decade he wailed and fought whenever we took him outside.
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 plot and endings.
Lyra and Will enter the café. Waves lap the sweeping littoral, and colonnades shade abandoned terraces. I sense the heat. This West African seafront belongs to my memory, not the author’s script. But the children who people the scene, fearful and hopeful, are strangers to me.
The book takes root and sprouts in an alien soil. Together the author and I create new and unintended versions. Our stories escape and breed in the wild with other tales. Dark shapes move across the hills.
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 plot and endings.
