Friday Fictioneers — Beyond Comprehension

Oooo, how exciting! I’ve just discovered that the photo prompt for Friday Fictioneers this week is one of my pictures 🙂 That being the case, I had better get cracking with posting my 100-word contribution to the weekly blog challenge hosted by the grand lady in purple, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

The shoes, by the way, were discovered lurking under my son’s bed during a recent tidy-up, but it was with his agreement that I photographed these cobweb-strewn antiquities and sent Rochelle a copy of the picture.

For my literary contribution, I’ve adapted an excerpt from my 1960’s crossover young-adult science fantasy novel Desiccation, the first draft of which I wrote a couple of decades ago but indie-published in 2015. As you will see from the excerpt, the creatures in question are not arachnids but crustaceans, although doubtless there are some husks of the latter hidden among those spiderwebs in my son’s old shoes.           

BEYOND COMPREHENSION

The polished black crustaceans retreated. They crawled out of the door into the night or scuttled up the walls and out through the broken windows, leaving behind a tangle of humans, many of whom had been out of sight inside the minds of other humans for various lengths of time. Some were limp, bedraggled, and lifeless as rag dolls; others were crazy as demon-possessed Jack o’-lanterns. It was science turned on its head a million times over: a total impossibility akin to squeezing size fourteen feet into size two shoes, succeeding, and then returning them to non-mangled size fourteens again.

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To read other Friday Fictioneers’ stories for this week, or to add a 100-word story of your own, please click on the blue frog below.

 

Author: Sarah Potter Writes

Sarah is a British eccentric who writes offbeat fiction, haiku and tanka poetry. When stuck for words, she sketches or paints instead. She's into nature conservation, sustainability, gardening, dogs, natural health, and reading. Her sociability is something that happens in short bursts with long breathing spaces in between.

63 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers — Beyond Comprehension”

      2. As a child, I used to be really scared about what might be lurking under my bed. My fault, I guess, for reading Amazing Stories Magazine at too young an age. Plus, I’ve always had an over-active imagination.

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      1. Listen darling you preach to the converted. I have just had a horrific TBR pile with one thing and another but have no feaers and I will review too xxxx

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    1. Lol, I’m sure there are many museums that would love those shoes, although I was wondering if the Tate Modern gallery would like them as a standalone art installation (no apologies for the pun!).

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  11. I was trying to read this, pretending I knew nothing of the story…
    I can understand the comments above 😉
    Love how you adapted your excerpt!

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      2. I guess we’ve fed them too well! I blame it on the large amounts of extra mature cheddar cheese my son eats, which has made his bones grow exceptionally well, but thank goodness his feet don’t smell the same as his favourite food.

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      3. Well that is not the case with mine. Picky on the veg, loves all meats and fish and junk food and sadly the odour from those puppies is killer…. though less now than a few years ago !

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      4. Smelly feet can be linked to Zinc deficiency, a mineral that men are more likely to lack, especially young men (I’ll not go into the medical reasons here, but I’m sure you can guess why, if you don’t know already!).

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      5. There you go. And the other one wears construction boots and has become one with feet so foul. Refuses to use any product such as “odor eaters”… so gross

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    1. Thank you, Kelvin. My son loves this particular novel of mine, so the least I could do was adapt an excerpt from it, in response to the cobwebby “artifacts” under his bed. He writes, too, so perhaps those shoes will trigger an idea for his next piece of dark fantasy!

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    1. Thank you. I’m glad to have got that first line right, as it’s the bit that needed altering from the original version in the novel, where the reader already knew what the creatures looked like and had a name for them.

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    1. Apart from lurking creatures, I should imagine that laboratory cultures would reveal rich pickings of microscopic bacteria etc!
      …More creepiness planned on the literary front, Andrea, when I attempt to slam out my next novel in November for NaNoWriMo. Usually I can’t write that fast, but I need something to kickstart my creativity bigtime just now, so let’s see if it works.

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    1. I like to describe the novel, from which this story excerpt comes, as “St Trinian’s meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. It’s my take on 1960’s style B-movies! I’m glad you thought the excerpt really good, despite your Agggh!

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    1. Thanks, Cybele, for appreciating my eccentricity! As for catching up with blog-reading, I’ve just accepted that I’m always behind, will never catch up, and will just do what I can do …so, yes, I understand x

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