Category: Flash Fiction

Friday Fictioneers: A Tale for Halloween

three_chairs

Come nightfall, I’ll slip into one of those three chairs.

At first, people will think I’m a pretend vampire, outdoors enjoying Halloween. Then some youth dressed as a ghost will say, ‘Hey, cool outfit.’

And his lithe girlfriend, kitted out like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, will compliment me further. ‘Spooky makeup and classy fangs.’

These hot-blooded revellers will fit the two empty coffins back at my crypt to perfection.

‘Would you care to join me?’

In life, I was a gambler; so too, am I in death. The street light. The window. Will they notice too late that I’ve no reflection?

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Photo Prompt: Melanie Greenwood
Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories

Friday Fictioneers: Cooked

PHOTO PROMPT Copyright- The Reclining Gentleman

When the grey first came, people said, “Not to worry. It will pass.” But the greenhouse gases built up, temperate climates hit 43˚C midwinter, and the sea-levels rose, gobbling up all the coastal resorts.

Those people who survived, congregated on high ground and walked around naked, gasping and wheezing.

It had all started with microscopic weather manipulation devices placed inside the lids of waste-disposal bins around the world: so much more effective than pumping silver oxide into the atmosphere from above. The aliens were time-travellers, which meant they could wipe us out and colonise our planet in under five minutes.

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Photo Prompt: The Reclining Gentleman
Friday Fictioneers — 100-word stories

Friday Fictioneers: Two Voices, One Head

How many more times must I tell you? I’m a reincarnation of Michelangelo, so stop pumping Risperdal into me and interrupting a genius at work. I intend to hatch a nautilus out of my living stone display. Yes, I said “living”. Of course, stones are alive. What are you blathering on about? They’re not inanimate, you idiot. Just give me space to communicate with them, otherwise they’ll keep giving birth to snail shells instead of a creature of divine proportions. What? You say I’m mistaken about the nautilus: the golden ratio is formed from a rectangle? Now who’s gone bonkers?

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Photo Prompt: courtesy of Douglas McIlroy
Friday Fictioneers — 100 word stories

Friday Fictioneers: Scaling Down

Copyright-Rochelle Fields

‘Sorry, Mr Horden. We’ve bought an electronic keyboard instead.’

Every time the piano tuner heard these words, he wanted to howl abuse down the phone at the traitor.

Once he’d terminated their conversation, he would hammer out scales and arpeggios on his grand piano for a couple of hours, putting all eighty-eight notes through their paces. The session always ended with a funeral march to accompany a vision of his ex-customer’s coffin on the shoulders of pallbearers.

With murder too extreme an act of vengeance, the lesser crime of burglary would suffice.

But what to do with the stolen keyboards?

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 Photo prompt: copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Friday Fictioneers — 100 word stories

 

October’s Guest Storyteller, Andrea Stephenson

Andrea StephensonAndrea Stephenson writes fiction, including short stories and The skin of a selkie, her first (as yet unpublished) novel. She finds inspiration in nature, the coastline and the turn of the seasons. During the day, Andrea is a libraries manager, but by night she is a writer, artist and witch. 

Her story below is inspired by the activities of the Order of the White Feather, an organisation active in World War One, with the purpose of shaming men into enlisting by encouraging women to present them with a white feather.

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WHITE FEATHER

Her friends giggled as they nudged her forward so that she could present him with the feather.  He accepted it as if it were a gift, blushing and looking at the ground.  Her friends couldn’t know about the balmy days that they’d shared as children.  They couldn’t know that as a young woman she’d cherished his gentle soul.  The girls moved on and she stayed for a moment, watching the feather outlined starkly against his overcoat.  Neither of them said a word.

She received just one letter, a crumpled missive from the Front.  His words were relentlessly cheerful and still seeking her approval.  Her reply was swift and steeped in the things she couldn’t say.  She wanted to seek forgiveness in person, to tell him that it was she who was shamed by her action, not him.  It was returned unopened with his effects.  She kept it in her bottom drawer with all the things she’d collected but would never use.

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Sarah says: Thank you so much, Andrea, for your most poignant contribution this month that says so much in so few words. I had no idea about this appalling practice of shaming men into enlisting until you told me about it, and sincerely hope nothing like it will happen again, although I suspect its equivalent might still occur in some parts of the world: probably with the shaming done by “tweet” rather than by white feather.

Everyone, do visit Andrea’s awesome blog Harvesting Hecate, which is about life, writing, creativity, and magic.

You might also like to check out previous guest storyteller posts via sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/