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

 

I’m going to my death. What am I doing?  Patricia wondered. I’m only an ordinary doctor. What do I know about treating refugees?

The passenger in front abruptly lowered his backrest, compressing Patricia’s knees.

My legs are too long to be doing this, she thought. Numb. Her legs were numb.

Numbness washed her mind.

“Beef or chicken?” The attendant’s banal question and the squeak of his trolley was numbing. On the move, cares melt away. There is neither past, nor future, just the speeding instant of the present.

Patricia relaxed, as Syria sped towards her at 800 kilometres per hour.

 

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

 

Young Jonathan loved his collection of bird eggs protected by the nest of cotton wool. Later he was allowed a scalpel, and laid bare the tracery of blood vessels, the continents of organs.

“He loves to explore how things work,” his Dad said,

As an adult, Jonathan won a research grant.

The breakthrough was accidental – the project intended to combat mice infestations. The introduced sterility gene revived the inert mouse-pox virus vector. Seventy per cent of the experimental mice died.

“If we tweak these base pairs,” Jonathan said, “we could create 100% lethality.”

The men from Defence were most interested.

 

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

Inside, the diver’s helmet is a head. Inside that, a dragon and a plan of a spaceship, and a shipwreck. Fronded seaweed curls lazy in the current, merfolk tumble and dance. A sunken treasure chest with bands of iron lies beside a starfish.  He reaches. From deep in the rocks an octopus tentacle, pink and sinuous, lashes out.

Outside, a hand lashes out, grabbing the slinky tentacle.

“How many times have I told you to leave my stuff alone,” a shrill voice cries. “For God’s sake, that’s my dil ….. igence.”

 

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

Reuven watched in horrified fascination as Tolbert’s white buttocks heaved between the girl’s legs. She struggled, and Tolbert slapped her face, then pinned her arms to the table. In moments it was over.

“Your turn, mate,” he said cheerfully, pulling up his breeches.

In an agony of shame, Reuven fumbled with his laces. He didn’t want the girl. And yet in war you could do anything, take anything. He wasn’t hard. But he didn’t want his friend to make fun of him.

“Come on, lads, gotta get this grub back to camp,” Carnvel called from the door.

 

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

 

Brighton shingle crunching beneath toes, ice cream melting, deckchairs flapping in a sudden wind. Seaside holidays populated Vince’s memory of childhood.

This holiday was different, illicit, thrilling. Away from her family, he would finally lie with Ayesha. The one bed in their apartment offered a shocking promise.

Her transformation created the real shock. She entered the bathroom wearing hijab and enveloping abaya, and emerged in a wraparound floral skirt, her nipples visible against the T-shirt. She was beautiful.

“Don’t you feel undressed, without your normal clothes?” he asked.

“Those aren’t my clothes,” she laughed. “That’s my sexual Chemical-Biological Warfare suit.”

 

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