There are some games it is unwise to play. Especially with those you love. Probably best I don’t name the game we played, all seven of us. Suffice it to say that the rules involve a lot of backstabbing.

Tom and Angie fell out in a big way. We had tears and raised voices. Ruthie preserved an icy calm until all our guests were gone. Then, when the last car departed, she got into her runabout.

“Goodbye,” she said. “I’m going to Mum’s and I may be some time.”

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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

There are engines under the floor. They thrum in constant labour, heating my house, cooling it, transporting us remorselessly into tomorrow. The floorboards vibrate with a subtlety I’ve stopped noticing.

Below the machines, I saw once, terrifying earth, as if we were just a thin cultivated film on the crust of the planet.

But below the soil, great furnaces burn, stirring molten rock into magnetic force. Beneath the machines are older engines. All the way down.

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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

I fell in love. Not so strange, you may say—people fall in love all the time. But my lover and I are separated by all the vastness of space and time.

From an ancient book, he reached out and spoke to me, and I was captivated. These were the words he spoke: “I am only the house of your beloved, not the beloved herself: true love is for the treasure, not for the coffer that contains it.”

Now I stretch out, strain back, all the way to him. Truly, to be in love is a terrible thing.

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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

There is another world beyond our own. I know, for I’ve seen it—wriggling animacules, tiny armoured beasts, a multitude of hairy legs.

What? You doubt this? Only gaze through my micro-seer and verify the facts for yourself.

Yes, the glasses are curved. What of it? Distortions, you say? Fantasies of bending light? Just look. Why would I endeavour to trick a noble and esteemed patron?

Please, won’t you just look?

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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

You can tell a lot about a man from his library, they say. Well, let me tell you, there’s a damn sight more to learn from a person’s leavings. You can live off those. Once, I found a diamond ring. See what I mean? The garbage tells a story if you know how to read it.  

So, was the ring just lost or tossed out in rage? There were other things which suggested anger—a shredded dress, for one. After that, the contents of the bin changed at this house. Lots of ready meal wrappers. She’d left him!  

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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

Every hour, on the hour, the door opens and a host troop out—knights, saints, bishops, kings. The thing is a marvel. All around me, folk great and small in the cobbled square, crane up, waiting.

The hands of the clock move slow towards midday. I know it’s midday because both hands point straight up.

The first bong reverberates and the door grinds open. What’s this? A gnarled gnome and a dusky maiden? She bends; he … oh, but I can’t tell you. Disgraceful! I conceal my smile. Those damn prentice boys have been up to their tricks again.

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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

Don’t bother yourself with all that book-learning nonsense, lad. I left school at fifteen and never done me any harm. Straight into the Works and learned a proper trade.

I mean, what’s this supposed to be? Makes no sense. Oh, Greek, is it? I’ll give you Greek, filthy foreign tongue rasping under your dentures like a raspberry pip.

Get a trade, that’s the thing. Electrician maybe—you’re clever,. Not that I hold with it. Mum always said when she changed the gas stove for electric, you could taste the electric. But it’s all going to be electric now, they say.

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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. If you want to read my original April 2016 story for this prompt, it’s here

There was nothing remarkable about the settlement—a handful of cottages and a duckpond. Not even a station. The place flashed past outside the train window and then was gone.

Unremarkable except for one thing. One corner of the pond had reflected a sky that appeared to be—I can only say—elsewhere. It seems nobody else in the carriage saw it, though I made a nuisance of myself asking.

No sooner had I arrived at my destination than I offered my excuses and took the return train. For twenty years, I have tried unsuccessfully to find that settlement again.

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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

Sliding behind the bar, my fingers caressed the bottles. His mouth gaped like a slot machine—you know, one of those old-time ones where you put a coin in its hand and it swallows.

“What’re you doing?” his voice emerged in a strangled rasp.

“Name your poison, big boy.”

“You can’t drink that. Château Margaux, 2018. £536 a bottle.”

“Whisky, then. Water of life.” I reached across.

Mouth working soundlessly, finally he gasped, “Laphroaig, 27-year-old. £6,500.”

Well, what can you do with a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing? He never forgave me.

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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

The sea pours endlessly, bean green over blue. Must go down to the sea again. Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, and a stately Spanish galleon to prize.

In truth, I don’t walk with a seaman’s roll, nor stump on a peg leg. My hair is mousy brown and my eyes a watery blue, but dear Jeanie finds me comely enough.

Dreams diverge ever from the map, and I rage against the dying of the light. Yet, when the lobster pots are mended, I can only trudge out once more on the Spanish main.

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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