Tag: 100 word stories

Friday Fictioneers — Dark Aria

Thanks to Piya Singh for this week's photo prompt.

Come, hide behind this tree and wait for nightfall. Only then, as silent owls glide, bats flit and the brook burbles unseen, will you hear her sing.

The wheel of fortune has locked solid into the wheel of misfortune. She’s alone with a voice so beautiful and heart-rending, even the moon hides from her for fear she’ll disrupt the tides with her melancholy.

Once a renowned operatic mezzo-soprano with the world at her feet, madam is reduced to living in a hovel with crawling creatures her only companions.

You see, she loved the wrong man. It’s as simple as that.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Piya Singh

Friday Fictioneers — Swallowed by a Maze

PHOTO PROMPT - © Sandra Crook

He placed an hour-glass clock adjacent to the maze. His idea of a joke. The hedge appeared not of threatening height from outside — no taller than the average man — so people were happy to take up the challenge.

The owner of the garden would set up his deckchair opposite the clock, pour himself a glass of champagne, and toast participants before they disappeared through an entrance that immediately closed behind them.

On the inside, the hedge reached to the sky and was full of thorns. Not an exit in sight.

Poor souls. Mere skeletons. The maze had a monstrous appetite.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Sandra Crook

Friday Fictioneers — The Sailor’s Wife

Kitchen Window

Grey and damp, damp and grey, she spends hours propped up against the sink, staring out of the window. The turbulent swell beyond her garden is an ocean grown from her tears.

Her beloved spouse built this house with his bare hands: barnacled seafarer’s hands accustomed to scrubbing decks and pulling ropes. In the kitchen, the windows stretch from one wall to another, so she can watch the horizon for his ship’s return and race along the beach to the harbour to greet him.

She has waited so many years, she’s a wreck and her legs have turned to flotsam.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Friday Fictioneers — Discarded Vegetable

wired

You’ve agreed with each other, five years is long enough. Your voices  tunnel through my ears into my bruised brain.

The doctor says, “If by some miracle your mother regains consciousness, she’ll be a vegetable.”

What sort? A carrot, cabbage, or potato? Fried, roasted, half-baked, perhaps? Indeed, you’ve decided to uproot me from this life and cast me into the earth like a shriveled pod.

Foolish you, discussing your inheritances while standing at my bedside.

When you leave, I’m going to perform a double miracle and you won’t see me for the dust, my discarded  life-support tubes your constant reminder.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Prompt: image (c) Connie Gayer (Mrs Russell)

Friday Fictioneers — In Deep Water

PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman

Where have you gone? Your suits and ties are hanging in your wardrobe. Your toothbrush and shaver are in the bathroom.

On the kitchen counter are ten neatly folded chocolate wrappers, all empty, and a dose of insulin untouched. Beside these, sits your mobile phone and a silver coin.

Your phone rings. It’s my number calling.

‘Hello?’

‘Alice?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Nobody of consequence.’

‘Is that you, Charles? You sound strange.’

‘I’ve read your text messages.’

‘I can explain.’

‘Heads … I die. Tails … your lover dies.’

‘It was nothing serious.’

‘Car’s sinking fast. No signal soon. Then you lose us both.’

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Prompt: image (c) The Reclining Gentleman