The Machine’s skin was hard, harder than any crocodile’s, tougher even than stone. Irgul stared at it. Today, after reaching manhood, he would become one of the four Bearers. After the feasting, they would parade the Machine round the village, like their fathers before them.

Irgul reached out and caressed the Wheel. It turned. An idea glimmered just beyond his grasp.

Sp’andor, the old shaman, watched the boy and smiled, remembering when he also had that seductive idea for transportation. Irgul would discover for himself, he thought indulgently, how easily clay pots smashed when jolted along the forest paths.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

I don’t usually do sequels, but so many people asked about what happened next in last week’s story. So here it is. Sorry to those of you who didn’t like the story. I promise not to turn this into a trilogy.

“If this DNA sequence is a signature, whose signature is it?” Joel hated the implications of Emily’s discovery about the Alpha gene, the gene they’d found in everything from humans to amoebae.

Emily ticked off possibilities on her fingers. “One, a Creator.”

“A deity who spoke Greek?” Joel shook his head, but in confusion, rather than with his characteristic sarcasm.

“If you think that’s weird,” Emily continued, “how about number two? We’re running inside a computer simulation.”

She reckoned this wouldn’t be the best time to tell Joel she lacked the Alpha gene.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

Joel wasn’t a believer. Not in spirits, faeries or deities. But neither did he believe in coincidence. Two samples containing the strange DNA sequence he could dismiss, but not 500.

“It’s crazy,” he told Emily. “the gene’s present in humans, mice, fruit flies, and amoebae. It’s ancient. But does nothing.”

“Oh, it does something,” Emily said digging her hands into the pocket of her lab coat. “But you’re not going to like this.”

She spelled out the amino acids the gene coded for – Alanine, Lysine, Phenylalanine, Histidine, Arginine.

Joel didn’t follow. “So?”

“It spells Alpha. This is a signature.”

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

 

“I mean, what’s their point? What do they do for us?” Calum is emphatic in his opinions. He has similar views of football hooligans and foreigners.

“Pollination” I suggest.

A wisp of smoke curls from the pest gun as he advances on the filo-pastry wasp nest.

Calum shakes his great grizzled head. “The beggars stung me for no reason. Bees don’t do that. Bees are useful.”

“Maybe they don’t need to be useful. Perhaps it’s enough that they exist?”

Like an activist protecting a mangrove swamp from a marina developer, I step forward and seize his wrist.

 

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

The causeway extended across the fen into the mist.

“You can see how Alfred the Great escaped the Romans here,” Jane said.

“Vikings,” I said

“What?”

“Alfred escaped Vikings, not Romans.”

A gust of wind lifted the fog’s cowl. At the exact vanishing point of the causeway, the afternoon sun kindled fire in a pyramid.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I said. “We should go back, Jane. Now. Or we’ll miss tea.”

She raised her ray gun. “That’s okay. Phasers on stun.”

Hand in hand, we marched forward into the white pre-world of possibility.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Marnie disappeared slowly. So slowly, I didn’t notice her going. Like any good barkeep, she listened – absorbing tales of sorrow, protestations of innocence, and howls of outrage. Listened and never commented – just faded until she vanished into the mahogany bar top, the racked bottles, and nicotine-yellowed walls.

There was theatre to it. She bent emotion around her until she became invisible. Theatre and magic make us see stuff that’s not there. And not see what is. I miss Marnie.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

I watch. The brush is poised. And then he moves. From the shoulder, leaving a row of lines on the parchment that summon feeling before my mind understands. I smell the stone ichor of rain, and sense the blunt endurance of a gaunt herd. Beneath his brush, a world begins to breathe.

“Though I saw, I don’t understand. How do you do it, maestro?” I ask.

He smiles that infuriating smile of his. “Rather, ask how you did it. I only made a few squiggles. Your mind made the meaning.”

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

 

Cranes march across the horizon like a slur of notes, ending in a deformed quaver. The last note might be somehow iconic, but the sun-dancing waves create a mask of light and Pascal is unable to recognise the piece. He clutches the scuffed violin case to him, lest it and his fortunes tumble into the pitching water. The ocean is very big. Yet he is also very big.

Chattering passengers crowd the rails, counting down their time to arrival. Pascal’s clock continues forward, the days elongating since leaving Elise.

His heart breaking, he shuffles forward to be processed.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

The car jolted on a pothole, and the Ambassador feared he might lose his excellent lunch. The trouble with the poor, he thought, is they have such bad roads.  He made a note to work the conversation over dinner.

Hernan, riding shotgun in the front, fretted. “Why aren’t you taking the expressway?”

“Calm yourself,” said Simon. “We’ll return that way, so the Ambassador gets to his cocktail party. The route out offers sensuous contact with poverty. If he doesn’t get shit on his shoe, he won’t feel the adventure. And without that, he won’t fund the project.”

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

The afternoon sprawled like a lazy dog in the little town. Sweat trickled down my back as I raced from the sun-scoured piazzas to the shade of the whitewashed alleys. She was not there. Had I imagined her, loping tall and bronzed into the taverna, swinging a leg over the chair beside me? Was our perfect closeness a dream?

At the harbourside, the taverna keeper passed me a message scrawled on a scrap of paper.

Some moments are so perfect they deserve to be protected from life’s corrosion.

Love

Philippa.

The ferry hooted as the mooring ropes fell away.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here