Nothing

Nothing—I’m doing nothing, resting from my researches. Beyond the window, two swifts skywrite, and trees fitfully shake their green pompoms in the light breeze. Halyards strum masts in the harbour. Dappled sunshine through the leaves warm my closed eyelids and fire-up pictures. Images, red and flickering, dance in the darkness, making shapes that twist and curl. A bear cavorts with a polyhedron for a moment and then disassembles into a torrent. I see the answer to the puzzle—it’s simple and I reach out to grasp it. The solution prances away in a shower of fireflies.

I have nothing.

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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 plain scorching is and sweat from my brow drips. On the way from being to becoming I am. Aurochs horns we will trade and then feasting and dancing there will be, when Aşıklı Höyük we reach,. Glorious!

The horns to my back strapped carrying, difficult it is to walk. But only with obsidian laden, easier the return way will be.

If she will have me, at Aşıklı a gwain I will seek. Under the floor of the domo, my pichtehr interred is, and my gwain and I the unbroken line will continue. Oh pourer, successful let me be!

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Note

This is a test piece to see whether this is too annoying for a reader. Please let me know. The odd syntax and unfamiliar words are deliberate. It’s an attempt to follow that of the first language spoken throughout the Indo-European land mass. Verbs followed objects rather than preceding them, as they do in English. Pichtehr means father, becoming eventually pater in Latin, and gwain, from which the English word queen descends, means woman or wife. Aşıklı Höyük was a stone age settlement in what is now Turkey. It was an important centre for obsidian between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago.

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

“Why is his hair on top of his head like that?”

I don’t remember the child’s name. Chrissy? Carol? But, more importantly, what does she mean? Where else would my hair be?

There is a sense of wrongness, like what happens in a car crash. Time slows down. Not that I’m offended. Rather, I’m fascinated by the rudeness. I suppose this is how children are: direct.

Her father looks at me in panic. I offer no help, unsure whether the question deserves an answer or a reprimand.

Glaring at me, he answers, “That’s his brains, darling, because he’s so clever.”

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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

They were here, and then they were gone—the couple at the next table. Sure, you tell yourself, it’s a restaurant. People sit, they eat, and go, in a constant carousel. But her laughter had been a coded message, unique to you, and the one glance across, unmistakable. That’s why they’d  removed those diners, consumed in a single bite like an amuse bouche. Next, they will come for you. How to mount a defence? The fish knife? If only you’d ordered the steak!

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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

Harry, they say, is a keen plantsman. But is that the same as a horticulturalist? He knows the Latin names, so perhaps. Or do I want, maybe, a nurseryman? It’s confusing to have so many words for gardener.

“What exactly do you want?” he asks.

I wave my hands in what I hope is visionary gesture.

Harry suggests, “Something formal? Cottage garden? Zen meditative space? Wildlife haven?”

I see he’s trying to be helpful, but choice paralyses me.

“Umm, you know, a trim and a tidy up.” That sounds ridiculous, as if I was at the barbers.  “Maybe another day?”

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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

Distant furnaces wink through rips in night’s curtain—an army camped on the horizon. I love the dark skies of this remote place—stars, moon, the … The Milky Way’s gone!

I take a pull on my beer, tamp my pipe, and consider explanations. Our galaxy can’t vanish, I know that. Don’t I?

A space-time warp has ripped our planet from its moorings? Improbable. A cloud precisely obscuring that wash of a hundred-billion stars? A mote in my eye?

By shifting my gaze, I could test that last possibility. Yet I can’t make my head move. The whole Milky Way can’t be gone.

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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 ached with tiredness and the desperation of being lost. A stone in my left shoe rubbed my heel painfully. The stone was the sun—a whole solar system in my trainer. Vladimir Putin appeared in my reverie, riding in a big black limousine and he stopped to give me a lift. The sun was green and thrashed the car’s tin roof with death-white trailing roots.

Should I have killed Putin when I had the chance? Maybe. But I mean, you know, he showed me kindness.

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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

Never let your dog eat dragon meat. The reason is the high phosphorous content. Dogs can receive up to 22.25 mg of phosphorous per kilogram of body weight per day. Exceed this, and spontaneous combustion may ensue. Though dragon is intensively-farmed in the lowland plains and, consequently, is cheap at your local butchers, it is much safer to stick to standard cuts of basilisk or gorgon. To enhance energy and playfulness, nine vets out of ten recommend a supplement of powdered mandrake.

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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

Hah! Think I’m trapped in this labyrinth, just waiting to be hunted-down by a bloke with a ball of thread and a stabby thing? Nah, I’ve got tricks, me. How do you escape a maze? Simply turn left at every choice point (or right if that’s your political inclination).

It would work, except this puzzle isn’t two-dimensional. There’s up-and-down as well, stairs ending blind, and abyssal falls.

And that’s not all. The walls move around—the place operates in four dimensions, changing over time. The nifty wheeze will be ensuring that when Theseus is, I am not. 

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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 probe took 148,000 years to reach the star, and the return signals need over 4 years. You might think, in all that time, we’d master quicker space travel. Wormholes, maybe; but no—we’re saddled with the ancient probe’s capabilities. 

My avatar can roam anywhere around planet Proxima B: almost as good as being there, though without sensuous contact. And that is a big problem. The specific issue is Kr’Kara. First contact turned to scientific collaboration, and collaboration to intimacy. I love Kr’Kara, and they love me. Or did. Turns out they dumped me two years ago.

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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