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

Waiting is the mother of change.  Zami reached to scratch his beard but touched new-shaven flesh. Change, he nodded. No longer bearded – no longer Zami, in fact. After testifying against Rashid, he could return to being Vince. At least until he was re-assigned. He shifted in the seat, the wood aching his buttocks. These benches asserted the court’s grandeur, offering little comfort.

The swing doors opened and Zami’s heart lurched. Ayesha was here to support her brother. Darling Ayesha. Her glare poisonous, she pointedly sat on the other end of the room. Never again!  Zami slumped and resumed waiting.

 

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

Blue is the colour of fear. That’s how it’s been ever since I saw the turquoise mother ship hovering over the city. I hid my face against Mum’s breast, not comforted by reassurance it was a concert hall. I’d seen the dark blue anti-grav beams, and I knew not to look into the light.

Red is the colour of greed. Well, of greed and anger. But the two go together, don’t they?

At twenty-seven I met you, haloed in forest glow. Green is the colour of safety. We lived green and happy until our son’s birth.  He was ultramarine.

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

 

A grey day, cloud lowering, lines of pigeons brooding on the wires above the blank eyes of empty windows. A glum prospect Harve had viewed a thousand times as a child. Yet something was missing, something not right about the photo.

“What is it? What’s different?” he asked Peter, but Peter couldn’t answer, He had never visited Harve’s home town.

Perhaps it was simply that the picture didn’t capture the bicycles, the laughter, the hopscotch, and Mrs. Brown’s washing hanging from her window. Images and memories are different.

But you know what’s missing, don’t you? Will you ever tell Harve?

 

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