“Should it look like that?” Mark shook as he pointed to the bank exposed by the melting snow.

I couldn’t see a problem, and told him so.

“It’s tessellated.”

Not knowing what the word meant, I nodded sagely, but the tremor in his voice worried me.

“Dirt should be crumbly,” he said. “Nor an array of parallelograms. That’s not natural. Someone, or something, wove it.”

Holding my hand up to placate him, a glance at my tessellated palm stalled me. Somewhere on the floodplains, marked out by those lifelines, tiny steamers plied the rivers. I plummeted into the weave.

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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

Thank you for that heel of bread—the first I’ve had in days. I have seen too much, and too little. Two kilometres up the road, there’s a checkpoint. What happens beyond that is a mystery. Maybe lovers walk the meadows, and cows graze the fields. Maybe there is only rubble, I don’t know. But I know what happened here. I could tell you stories. But I’d rather forget. I just want to feel something 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

Next to the shoe tree, the bush grew, and the story encoded in its DNA flowered. The newly fruited books hung heavy from the branches.

Daphne plucked one at random, opened it, and read.

“No,” she said, “Juliet is supposed to die.”

“Mutation,” Karl explained. “Random mistakes change the tale.”

For a long time, Daphne was silent. At last she said, “Then nothing is certain.”

Karl nodded. “But, in this universe, I love you.”

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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 stones were old, very old. Things had happened here. I laid my hand flat on a dressed block, and my palm tingled. The past spoke through me. There was smoke, and screams, and the clash of metal. A warrior king strode the battlements, looking out to sea, desperate to glimpse allied sails.

I possessed a gift.

Like anyone blessed with The Sight, I endured mockery.

My wife brandished the site guide. “Don, this was a granary, not a castle.”

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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 pores and pits on his cheek make a moonscape, as he leans in close. His breath smells of garlic and rotting flesh.

“Tell me,” he says.

Silence is the only power left to me—the choice to withhold communion, to remain locked tight. Of course, he will get angry. That, too, is a power I retain. There will be threats, even violence. I may scream.

But I won’t talk.

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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

Her face was a shuttered barn. No light gleamed through the windows, no cattle lowed within. Was she sad? Angry? Shattered into pieces? He couldn’t tell.

If only she would talk, cry, he might put a hand on her arm and say, “I know, I know. This is terrible”;  bridge the gulf of language, culture, experience.

A sudden anger flared and he took up the red stamp, printing Denied, on her paperwork.

“Next,” he called.

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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

Leon stood, hands on hips, gazing up. Movement atop the campanile—two soldiers and a glint of light on glass. Yes, the tower held an enemy observation post. And oh, it was exquisitely beautiful.

A trio of Nazi soldiers strolled by, cat-calling to passing signorinas. Leon restrained the impulse to pull the cap lower over his eyes, a gesture that might have drawn attention.

He turned, retracing his steps back to his unit. His duty was clear—to call-in an artillery strike. But the tower was history. It embodied Pisa.

“Nope,” Leon reported. “Nothing there.”

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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 say we must learn to live with covid, if we want to preserve our way of life. So, I am learning. Now we’re on a transition path from pandemic to endemic, I have girded my loins and borrowed a book from the library, How to Live With Covid. Tremulously, I go out and about to the office, shops, worship, and parties. At the beginning, they called this herd immunity, but that seemed callous. Learning to live with something, on the other hand, empowers me—it’s heroic.  

I am learning to die with covid. This will be glorious.

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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

He liked confined spaces. In all that vast mansion, his favourite spot was the understairs cupboard. When I asked why, he’d ruffle his tousled hair, grin a toothy grin, and say he was waiting for the owl from Hogwarts.

“But you’re not an abused boy,” I’d argue. “So you don’t have to live below stairs.”

“I’m a magic boy,” he’d reply, as if no more explanation were necessary.

That’s the trouble with books—they bring alarming possibilities into the world.

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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