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

If I could buy a kit to make a dog or a cat, how many parts would it contain? That question had obsessed him since he was a kid.

“Simon’s always taking things apart and putting them back together again,” his Dad liked to tell anyone who’d listen.

The boy’s interest in the family jalopy soon palled. You could disassemble a bike or a car and rebuild it. But, he soon discovered, that wasn’t possible with a frog. Why not, he wondered?

And so he came to an unusual fork in the road of his life. Surgeon or serial killer?

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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 parlour is crammed to overflowing. I perch uneasily on the threadbare chaise-longue, avoiding the broken spring. Charity-shop portraits, of people who are not her ancestors, glare at me from the flocked wall. Outside, a storm brews.

“Another cuppa, vicar?” she asks.

My eyes sweep the brocaded lampshades, the carved giraffes, and a set of faux-leather-bound books entitled “Great Novels of the Twentieth Century.”

I shake my head and can’t stop. The chiming of a clock, playing Edelweiss, wrenches my neck round, as if gripped by an assailant.

I stand.

“Do stay, vicar. It’s so nice to have company.”

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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’s a song, an old and now-unfashionable ditty. But, hearing it again, the memories flood him like a drain backing-up. All those days and all those secrets! Secrets he has never shared. The skylight’s great eye glares down. And he stares at her across the ballroom, his eyes full of love and despair.

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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 tried. Really tried.

When he tried to thumb the base, I explained that this was a book and showed him how to open it, that swiping didn’t change the screen and how to turn the pages.

Everything became too much when I found him holding the cat by the tail and looking suspiciously at its bottom.

“Where do the batteries go?” he asked.

So, you can understand why I had to take him back to the droid store and swap my robo-child for a hoover.

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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

“Got a trout for you,” he said brusquely.

He shuffled at the door and coughed.

I took the glistening silver fish from him. “That’s kind.”

The man seemed to be waiting for something. Did he want payment?

“Will you come back this evening and share with me?” I suggested.

“Demasiado pequeno. Too small for both.”

“I’ll make roast tatties, lots of them.”

“Alright, entonces,” he said, almost grudgingly.

There was no telling what was in the man’s mind. Still isn’t, and we’ve been married now these twelve years.

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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 has grown old at this marketplace table. One day, we were young and easy, running in the narrow allies; the next, he was shackled to his brush.

“Chrysanthemums sell best,” he says, a flick of his hand tracing the stem of his eighth gaudy flower. “And waves, Hokusai waves.”

I notice the slightness of his wrist. As if all the meat has boiled away, leaving only a skeleton that paints and paints.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” a woman says to her beau. “Let’s buy it.”

And my old friend’s face brightens in a smile, skin stretched parchment thin.

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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

One is not enough—not to carry the load. Two can share it, but we bend under the strain. Happy voices ring out in song and laughter but, when we turn the corner, they have vanished.

Two is not enough. Nor even a single family—parents, little ones, and grandies.

It takes a whole community.

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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