Tag: Friday Fictioneers

Friday Fictioneers — Blank

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“You’ve no idea what mortal sin we committed, have you?”

Who’s that stranger shouting in my ear?

“I’m your husband, John, for God’s sake. How dare you leave me to shoulder all the guilt.”

Why can’t that horrid man go away?    

“I’ll see you in purgatory.”

Is he the priest? I don’t know him. “Think only of the past, as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

“What, the hell?”

“Elizabeth … in ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Mama likes to read to me. …My Harry, as handsome as Mr Darcy. I married him yesterday, you know.”

“He’s been dead forty years. We buried him.”

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: copyright © Dale Rogerson

Friday Fictioneers — Whiskers

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They called me Whiskers, but in my head I was The Terminator, rat and mouse zapper extraordinaire.

Master had always paid me my dues with gourmet cat food, until his employees at the flour mill went on strike on health and safety grounds, after the death of a worker from respiratory disease.

Following a fortnight’s standoff, Master downgraded my dinners to the supermarket’s own brand. Fine punishment, considering my workload had increased. So I went on strike, too.

The last I saw of Master, he was a skeleton, the rodents had trebled in size, and I took instant early retirement.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: copyright ©  Sandra Crook

Friday Fictioneers — Uncle Bogeyman

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“If you don’t behave yourself, the bogeyman will come and get you.”

Toby sat up in his bed hugging his knees, his back pressed to the headboard. The only comfort was his old bear, pressed against his belly, out of sight behind his legs’ defensive drawbridge. “Bogeyman? No.”

“He’s outside, lurking in the shadows, hungry for you. Move over now. Let your uncle in for a hug.”

Uncle Rob’s ragged breath stinks of old rugs and tobacco. He tugs at the drawbridge with pudgy hot hands. “Shush! Stop blubbering. This is our secret. I’ll call the bogeyman if you tell.”

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: copyright © Shaktiki Sharma

Friday Fictioneers — You, Before and After

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

At first light, we hear a howling yowling dogcat hullabaloo coming from the horses’ paddock. Through my binoculars (cowardly husband me), I watch you stride through the snow in wellies, into silence deep as a subterranean cavern.

The horses stand freeze-framed and mid-chomp at their trough. There’s a trail of green on the snow’s surface, accompanied by the footprints of a three-legged creature. You follow the trail into the bushes.

Inside, over a cup of tea, you say nothing. There’s a mute look to your eyes, too. Later, I find a discarded plaster in the bathroom, soaked in green blood.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Friday Fictioneers — What to believe?

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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.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Lucy Fridkin