Tag: 100 word stories

Friday Fictioneers — Old Thingamybob

Lauren Moscato

You lived in terror of rats gnawing  through to your bones with their tombstone teeth as you slept.

One day, a man clattered down the street on stilts and cast some pennies into your hat. You said to him, “Seeing as you’re a giant, do us a favour, mate. Paint us a door and two windows high up on that wall over there.”

“I agree it’s unsightly.”  (he meant you, not the wall)

That night, your rheumy eyes deceived you. Above, you saw your doorway leading to salvation away from the meths bottle and rats, if only you had stilts.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100-word stories
Photo Prompt: image © Lauren Moscato

Friday Fictioneers — The Concert That Never Was

PHOTO PROMPT ©David Stewart

Every Sunday at dawn, March through to September, the Balderton Brass Band met up for a musical jamboree in a residential area. Their tone-deaf conductor, Jimmy ‘Spring Chicken’ Gilbert, delighted in aggravating his neighbours.

The instrumentalists — all octogenarians or nonagenarians — preferred to exercise their lungs from a sitting position, to put less stress on their knees.

“We will have a concert soon,” said Jimmy, just to keep the pensioners sweet until he’d stolen their souls.

On the bandstand, his tail twitched in time to the music and his retractable horns zizzed beneath his toupee. Off to the next town soon.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100-word stories
Photo prompt: image ©David Stewart

Friday Fictioneers — Wish No More

© Copyright - Rachel Bjerke

Consumed by slime and locked in haze, the forest wore a visage of enchantment. A once-loved spot in dank despair.

The odd array of outbuildings stared, open-mouthed and blank-eyed like a creature forever stunned. Not a peep from the birds, not an animal brave enough to show its whiskers. Even those of lightest claw or paw feared how the waterlogged leaves squidged underfoot and threatened to drag them under.

Then there was the wishing well, its waters a phosphorescent green, unmoving but for the coins tinkling in its depths; or was it the shifting of tiny bones? A child lost.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 words stories
Photo Prompt: image © – Rachel Bjerke

Friday Fictioneers — Troll

Frost on a stump. Sandra Crook.

The girl stepped out from behind a beech tree, her hair a crest of gold. ‘Over that bridge lies forever-winter.’ Icy breath twirled out of her mouth, although she stood in the sunshine. She pointed towards a frosted glade full of broken stalks, clumped grass, and bedraggled seed-heads, all glazed with frost.

‘It’s in the shade, that’s all,’ I said.

‘I dare you to touch that stump in the middle.’

I crossed the stream and crunched over the white, sure I was heading towards the gnarled remains of an ancient alder tree, until it winked, yawned, and swallowed me whole.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 words stories
Photo Prompt: image (c) Sandra Crook

Friday Fictioneers: Crusher

PHOTO PROMPT - Copyright - Jean L. Hays

“You are a naughty, broken car and I’m going to tip you in the rubbish.”

“Ben, for heaven’s sake stop chucking things at the bin. You’re giving me a headache.”

“Come on, digger-crane-Cadillac, let’s scoop this old rust-bucket into the crusher. Wham-bang, wham-bang.”

“Lunch is ready.”

“Oh, but Mu-u-u-um, I’m playing with my cars.”

“Your soup will get cold.”

“In a minute. I’m just–“

“It’s petrol soup with tyre crôutons, followed by car-wax pudding.”

“Yummy stuff. Broom, broom, br-oo-oo-m. On my way up the motorway. Overtaking a police car–“

Skid. Crash. Silence.

Boy-racer in head-on collision with wall. Dial Emergency Services.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt image (c) Jean L. Hays