Darryl stared me straight in the eye. “He swam off with a mermaid on Christmas Day.”
I jotted two words on my pad — Deluded? Denial? — and drew a circle around them both. “Wasn’t it rather cold?”
“His heart was frozen anyway. No job. Mum didn’t want him anymore.”
“So what did the mermaid have to offer?”
“A new life.”
If that’s what you want to call “suicide”, I thought.
Darryl slid a photograph across the table. It was of some clothes neatly folded at the end of a jetty and a silver tailfin sticking up out of the water nearby.
<><><>
Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Lucy Fridkin
Fanciful…creative….totally enjoyable!
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Thank you, Billy 🙂
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the wonderful thing about writing is that if you invent mermaids you’re creative, not deluded
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lol 😀 Too right, you are!
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Love it!
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Thank you 🙂
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This was most enjoyable indeed! And I have to agree with Neal!
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Glad you enjoyed it, Dale 🙂 And yes, I agree with Neal, too!
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love it!! of course anything with a mermaid!!
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Thank you, Cybele 🙂 I know all too well how beautifully you write about mermaids.
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🙂
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Dear Sarah,
This will give the therapist much to consider, won’t it? I echo Neil, we writers live in a fanciful world of our own creation. Personally, I do whatever the voices tell me. 😉
Imaginatively clever story. You had me in the scene.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle,
Thank you. It’s good to keep therapists busy, lest they go mad themselves and throw in their day jobs to take up writing instead 😉
All best wishes
Sarah
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I most definitely believe🙂
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I have a very open mind, although I did meet someone once who was seeing pink fairies! I wasn’t so convinced about that one…
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Haha, nice ending. I bet that have them pause for thought and re-evaluation. Nice take.
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Glad you enjoyed it, Iain:-) I like to imagine the words “delusion”, “denial”, “suicide”, and “mermaid” (all with question marks) spinning around in their heads for a long time without resolution!
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Mermaids! I love the idea.
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Thank you, Alicia 🙂
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Amazing, Sarah. It seems to tread the fine line between “did it really happen?” and the “it’s only made-up” type of story. Works well.
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Thank you so much, Kent, for your kind comment 🙂
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Great story, I love this dearest Sarah…I believe, I believe! 🙂 xxxx
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Thank you, dearest Sherri. It seems there are a number of believers in mermaids around here! 🙂 xxxx
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🙂 😉 🙂 xxxx
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Ah. I hope it was a mermaid, though I think it could still be delusion… a trick of light and believing the best maybe.
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The beauty and fun of 100-word stories is that you can leave readers guessing without also leaving them feeling short-changed. I’m not so sure about novels that are too open-ended, though.
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