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

PHOTO PROMPT © Mary Shipman

The dresses hung pale from the trading post ceiling like angels descending, frozen in mid-fall. That fascinated and scared Padraig. The boy would lie, staring up at the reverse heaven of tables and chairs suspended from the roof. Until Ulrich found him in some fragrant corner, and shooed him back to work.

Padraig served. “Wire and nails, Mr. Johannsen.”

“Yes, Mrs. Franklin, one rolling pin.”

Ulrich had whatever you wanted. Until the whiskered stranger arrived.

“A diving compressor,” he demanded.

The shop seemed to shudder, and an angel fluttered to earth. Padraig hiked out the door into bright sunlight.

 

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Madison Woods

 

It’s raining again as I leave the chateau. Bloody rain! It’s been raining since late July, halting our advance on Passchendaele.  Nothing can move through this mud. Before reaching the line, I’m already rehearsing my report.

But the battlefield vanquishes me. A bog, pocked by oozing shell craters, which sunk and drowned a quarter of a million men. Sticking from the mud, an arm that had once belonged to a living man, that had raised a pint with mates or caressed a sweetheart’s cheek.

God! What have we done?  I put my service revolver to my temple, squeezing the trigger.

 

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

Photo Prompt: (C) Kent Bonham

 

“But how do we build it?”

Zack scratched his tousled head and smiled his goofy grin, spreading the vellum over the rock table.

“That’s not the question, Zack,” said Sparky. “The question is what will it do?”

Etched on the ancient parchment were arches and wheels, columns and sprockets.

Zack passed the plan under the scanner –a battered dustbin lid suspended on the bare ribs of an old umbrella – but the readout remained blank.

“I dunno,” Zack said, “is this a building or a machine?”

“Maybe both,” said Sparky. “Don’t matter. It’s the making that counts.”

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

 

Photo Prompt: (C) J Hardy Carroll

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 to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find It here.

 

Viewing the blossom in cherry season is a Japanese tradition, as is writing haiku in response. Here’s my take on the cherry blossom haiku.

Blossom

The cherry came early this year

The world and I keep different time