Is it not beautiful in death, this stump? Though no more rings will expand out from the hurled stone of its existence, so much history is still recorded here. So much life.
No? You don’t see? Sure, it’s misshapen, but that’s the talisman of age, stooped and gnarled.
Get the thing off your lawn? No sorry, my dear. I believe I will build a stumpery.
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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
“An emperor with many stout castles and cunning generals must needs be afraid.”
In silence he gazed at me, clear grey eyes twinkling in merriment. This was another test, of course—a paradox I had to solve. Over and over again, he’d impressed on me that a ruler has to think, not just act. Did he perhaps mean that cunning generals might rebel and usurp my throne? Trust no-one, eh?
When I offered this interpretation, he gave me his “try harder” look. I shrugged helplessly.
“An emperor so endowed,” he said at last, “must indeed have many enemies. “
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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 don’t like Erwin, though I’m not sure why. Okay, he’s charming enough, and unfailingly helpful. But my brain flags him in some way as dangerous. Probably, I once knew the reason for this judgement and have now forgotten this, leaving only the chafing suspicion. Or perhaps he reminds me of a bully back in the dim haze of the school playground. I remember remembering my dislike of Erwin, so it’s happened before, but I just can’t recall when.
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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
It started on 4 July. The number of reads on my site jumped five-fold. This continued through the next two days. Why, I wondered? Usually when this happens, it’s one person or a couple of people liking what they’ve found and reading around the site. Not this time. Each visitor read, on average, 1.03 articles. They were from 43 different countries, so it didn’t look like a network of friends who’d found my site. The top three countries were Brazil, the US, and India.
I put on my deer-stalker and settled-in for a three pipe problem.
These readers are interested in fiction, not non-fiction. With one or two exceptions (which are probably unrelated to this wave), the reads were the 100-short stories I post, rather than the literary commentaries. And the coverage of stories was not random: almost all were from a distinct three-year period One tale, in particular, stood out: Legend.
Perhaps it was because his parents called him Darius. Bearing the name of an ancient conqueror carries its own risks. At all events, Darry played a long game only he understood.
“Who does it harm?” he’d say when we questioned his project. For 25 years he quarried and shaped, assembled and carved. In secret, he overwrote the landscape of his extensive estates with temples and amphitheatres, statuary and canals.
“Darry,” I said to him one day, “this is a Disneyworld, a fantasy.”
“Now.” He nodded. “Sure. But in a thousand years, who’ll be certain?”
Darius was inventing a legend.
This story received almost the same number of reads as the combination of the next three most frequently hit stories. However, no story received a sufficient number of hits to be identified as a “landing page” from some referrer.
In all, between 4 July and 7 July, there 504 new reads (excluding those who don’t appear to be part of this group). Between them, they read 97 stories, all of them published between 13 April 2016 and 6 November 2019. The one story published later than this may not have been due to this group. These 97 stories comprised around half the stories I published over these three and a half years. But they only accounted for around a fifth of all the stories on the site,
A referrer does still seem the most likely explanation for this spike in reads. If someone with a considerable number of followers posted a reference to my site (though not to any particular story), this would partially explain the phenomenon. It would not, however, explain the distinct time focus of the reads. My own blog analysis tools offered no help in identifying possible referrers. I tried a Google search, but found no reference to my site from an internet celebrity.
Probably coincidentally, this strange new phenomenon has reversed a trend over the past three months of falling readership. I say coincidentally because I know what’s caused that fall: a decline in following of the site that drives most traffic to my site.
Some of you reading this will know the answer. If you’ve been attracted to my site for the first time recently, please leave me a comment on this article, telling me what it was sent you here. Particularly if you’re from Brazil or India.
Update
Looking in more detail at the referrers, one stands out: ed2go. This is an online provider of adult education (including writing courses), part of the Cengage group. It has made 164 references to my site since the start of the year. It is consistently the fourth most common referrer to my site after search engines, the WordPress reader, and inklinkz, the service that supports Friday Fictioneers.
So, I was being a Chicken Little, huh? “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” you mocked me. Well, who’s laughing now? Sure, asteroid 2024 YR4 won’t hit the Earth. But that won’t keep you safe, smartasses. It’ll smash into the moon in the biggest strike for 5,000 years.
And do you know what’ll happen then? A shower of impact debris, that’s what. Oh, it will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, you think? Yes, likely it will. But not before taking out a lot of satellites. Bye-bye, GPS. Bye-bye civilisation.
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
It is not at all like in story books. Not knights riding out to slay dragons and rescue maidens, we are savage marauders, reeking and unkempt. Only our weapons are meticulously clean. The villagers share their paltry rations with us, not out of gratitude, but from fear.
I arrived here dreaming of noble deeds and just reward. But chivalry is a myth. The fair maidens scream and endure while we rut and laugh, glutting on lewd revenge. Someone will die at my hands. Whether it will be the enemy, my comrades or my commander, I’m still unsure.
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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 watch my sons playing, adventuring identities. A spyglass and cutlass make them explorers and corsairs. Finding the scimitar, they bicker scrupulously over which should be Salahadin and which the infidel crusader.
For a child, it’s so easy. For my husband, less so—the gentle ophthalmologist recalled from London to fill his father’s bloody shoes. The Presidential identity fastened on him, like a terrible mask, with fear and reluctance. We dreamed of bringing change, hope, modernity. Some denied our vision. Traitors cannot be allowed to block progress. So I told my beloved.
Me? I am becoming Lady Macbeth.
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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
A corvid cawed boisterously. And that was fine. But a flight of ducks went over, oddly calling “toc-a-toc”. I knew I couldn’t be in Kansas anymore. There was a man, naked but for a loincloth and a feathered headdress. He said something in a language I did not understand, though I sensed the question to be gentle.
So, I shrugged, not knowing the words in his language for “I don’t speak your language.” But I felt I’d landed somewhere safe.
He repeated the question, with more insistence, and I shrugged again. That was when he clubbed 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
It was the last day, the very last. And my heart was breaking. Tomorrow, I’d be off for a new life. Today, was for Carol. Down by the riverside we followed our favourite walk.
“I’ll never forget you,” she said.
The idea of being forgotten slashed my stomach with fine surgical strokes.
“Come with.”
Down on one knee in the park I went. A shard of glass cut my knee, but the pain seemed a relief.
Carol’s face assumed a mask of grief. “I can’t. I’m promised to another.
A tearful embrace as goodbye.
Such things hurt when you’re eight.
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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
Swirls of pipe smoke hung low in the air, occasionally stirred by gusts of boisterous laughter. The barmaid eased between the tables, lithely avoiding over-friendly hands. The fleet was in. Ale flowed easy and copious, and the hubbub rose, so folk had to lean in to hear each other’s quips and insults.
A chair scraped back. A flash of steel. An angry shout. “Oi! You be trying to scry my cards.”
The accused shook his head, vigorous and aggrieved, but drew his knife too.
The innkeep sighed and started towards them. Sailors were good drinkers, but terrible brawlers.
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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
Neil MacDonald Author 