He had a white beard, a red suit, and a twinkle in his eye. Yeah, that was my first thought too. And, of course, his name was Kris.
“Look,” he said, beginning the consultation, “the more statins you take, the less likely is cardiovascular crisis, but the greater the chance of cancer.”
Well, that was a kick in the head! I told him to repair the cancer genes. It transpired that meant I’d get dementia instead.
He wound up for the pitch. “Personalised medicine today offers a good death. A massive coronary half way up an Alp is very popular.”
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
Well, it was an easy mistake—I’d said a crystal ball, and he’d bought me a crystal bowl. But it made me angry anyhow, perhaps just needing someone to yell at.
“I can’t hardly tell the punters’ fortunes in a sugar bowl, can I?”
“Could you read tea leaves instead, spread them on the bottom?” His lowered head and moist eyes almost broke my heart.
The thing hefted heavy in my hand. He cowered. The rim flared blue, reflecting the sky. Yellows of the pine table lurked in the facets. And green. And red.
There’s magic everywhere when you look.
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
When the first pair of shoes turned up, well, I were delighted. I put them on and walked. Them ten league boots took me all the way from John O’Groats to Lands End. I walked clear out of them and settled on the promontory overlooking the bean green Atlantic. Waiting
Today, a second pair of boots on my moss-gnawed doorstep. Sinister derelict things. With a note tucked into the right shoe. I couldn’t pull it out, and anyway I can’t read. But I know what it says.
Pebbles crunching. I walk into the ocean. It’s so very cold.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields, who has given us boots before, to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.
My story is a companion piece to Walker, written in response to the first pair of boots.
Something weird was happening. I just didn’t know what. Since we left Dad, life was odd. We moved three times in twelve years. And each time, Harold was there too.
Mum promised to explain, now I was old enough. She met me in a motorway services, with Harold in tow.
“We’re on the run from the Mafia,” she said. “Your father crossed them.”
Harold gave me a bracelet. A transmitter, so he and other agents could always locate me. He told me to be wary of doubles, people who looked like friends but were really bad guys.
I mean, what would you do? This was my mother.
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 am writing a magic realist novel. So I thought I’d better clarify for myself what the genre is. How does it differ from fantasy and surrealism, for example? Is it another name for fabulism? Where does science fiction fit?
M.C. Escher
Magic Realist writing emerged in Latin America. An example is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. The genre integrates, into the everyday world, elements whose logic and rules of causality are different. In magic realism, the fantastic has to be plausible, the impossible is reframed as real. Characters do extraordinary things without realising it or knowing why. Its magic is ordinary and very firmly located in reality.
In this sense it is different from fantasy, whose purpose is to create magical alternate worlds. An example is Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Perhaps more importantly, the purpose of the two groups of writers is different. Whereas fantasy authors are generally offering escapism, magic realist authors are often advancing a critique of the real world. In Latin America it has roots in the critique of neo-colonialism.
Marquez, one of the originators of the genre, expressed this in his speech on accepting the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982: “our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable.”
In this, magic realism also differs from surrealism. Both genres explore illogical or non-realist aspects of existence, but surrealism invites us to look inwards to the subconscious machinery of imagination, while magic realism’s focus tends to be on society.
I have written several stories that I describe as fabulism. Some people see fabulism as a branch of magic realism. And that makes sense, if you consider the purpose. Like magic realism, fabulist writing tends to offer social commentary. But the technique is different, Fabulism need not be realist. It draws on tropes of myth and fable, often combining them in unusual ways to create a new, hybrid story.
Finally, all of these genres are different from science fiction, which requires a plausible extrapolation of existing scientific knowledge to explain the extraordinary. A goose that lays golden eggs is fairy tale. A goose, genetically engineered so that it metabolises gold and deposits the metal in its shell, is science fiction.
Do you think genre descriptions matter? Do you have different definitions? Leave a comment and join the debate.
We call it The Event. The moment when everything changed, when we lost writing. Ink refused to lock onto paper, and just drifted in the air like dark fog. Neither quill nor printing press could force the binding. Every time we opened a book, the letters sprang from the page and roosted in the rafters. Servers were wiped clean
I believe I’ve found the solution. Listen.
“Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary….”
We will remember and recite.
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 old man is panting as he reaches the summit. The small of his back twists with ache, bending him forward as if into a wind. He stumbles, legs barely able to support him.
Hell of a place to choose for a meeting, he mutters.
An eagle soars effortless on thermals, and a breeze carries the scent of lemons. A bush bursts into flame. The prophet selects a chisel from his satchel and prepares to take dictation.
I know what you’re thinking, but you are mistaken. Just because something didn’t happen doesn’t make it untrue.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fieldsto write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
I’m having major connectivty problems, so please forgive me if I’m not able to comment on your post
“Heinous. So proud of our great military. Slam dunk. Goodbye slime ball.”
He clicked some missiles.
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 found Christophe’s little repair shop tucked away under the railway arches. There was nothing he couldn’t fix. Springs and gears cluttered his bench, bits of old toasters and gizmos whose purpose I couldn’t imagine.
“I need these words repurposed,” I said, dropping the Gladstone bag on his counter. Some tarnished verbs slipped out.
He picked one. “Flense,” he said, turning it over and examining it with a jeweller’s loupe. “Tricky”
While I waited, I leafed through an antique volume, became lost in the tale.
“Where was I?”
“Working a story,” he said. “I’m afraid I involved your body in slaying some dragons.”
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 anthology of 32 stories about climate change. One of them is mine. Profits go to the Earth Day network.
A schoolboy inspired by a conservation hero to do his bit.
A mother trying to save her family and her farm from drought.
A world that doesn’t get dark anymore.
And a city that lives in a tower slowly being taken over by the sea.
These stories and many more make up a poignant collection that is sometimes bleak, sometimes lighthearted, but always hopeful that we can make a change.
Published on 22 April, 2018 you can order from Amazon
Neil MacDonald Author 