“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”
― John Lennon
mystery
Friday Fictioneers 3-26-2021
“Do you really think it is?” she asked in an awed whisper.
“Maybe.”
“Where is the wardrobe?”
“You can’t see it from here,” I told her. “It’s to the left of the lamppost.”
Eyes wide, curls dusted with snow, she started into the empty space.
“Do you think we can find it?”
“The wardrobe?”
A firm nod.
“One day,” I said.
She nodded again as I took her hand.
“One day,” she agreed. “I am going to find it.”
I glanced right, at the faun peeking around the tree.
“You will,” I said. “I know it.”
Friday Fictioneers 3/19/2021
PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young
“It’s a tree!” His friends stood back, looking at lines and angles, but seeing only a huge tree.
He said nothing, captured by the spirit before him, breathing age.
“Hey, you want to go get some snacks?” Jason asked.
Always hungry, that one, but for the wrong things.
He stepped forward, drawn by the inexplicable radiance before him.
“Let’s go. I’m starved.”
“It’s a tree. Big whoop.”
He stepped inside the doorway into darkness. Dizziness. A rush of lightening across his spine.
A rustle of people starting up the path. A pause.
“Hey, where’s Dave?”
“Dave?”
Response – JSW 3-15-2021
The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 200 words and post to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
“What’s this?” he asked, peering beyond the board which had broken under the weight of his painting. Not that he believed the board had broken due to painting – he wasn’t that heavy a hand – but he wasn’t sure what else to attribute the breakage to.
“Looks like a hole we now have to patch,” replied Julie angrily. She’d agreed to this fix-her-up project only because Josh had promised it wouldn’t entail more than fixing a little plumbing and painting. So far he’d been wrong on all accounts.
“No, look,” he said, pulling at the board. It came off in his hands. “There is something behind there.”
“It better be a million dollars,” she huffed, tossing down her paint brush. She stormed out.
He almost called after her, but didn’t. If this was just a bigger hole she’d only be angrier.
Instead, he grabbed a flashlight and squeezed himself through the wall and into the narrow opening beyond. Once inside, he saw the space wasn’t a small opening like he’d thought, but the start of a corridor heading off into the darkness. Curious, he followed, stepping over refuse and shining his flashlight all around. The corridor was narrow, just wide enough for his lanky frame, just tall enough for his to walk upright.
What could be at the end? Had this house been used in the Underground Railway? Just then a spider’s web hit him in the face and he sneezed.
A long way away, somewhere in the distance, he heard a returning sneeze.
He froze. Had it been an echo? Or had he just been hearing things? Forcing himself to move, he continued on, trying to be quiet, The corridor started to descend, gradually at first, then steeper as he went along, until he was clinging to the wall studs to keep his feet.
Should he turn around? He’d always thought of himself as brave but if he turned around now…..
He kept going, slipping and sliding over the floor as it changed from wooden planks to dirt and then to stone. Just then the floor ended and he fell down about five feet, landing awkwardly in front of a barred door. Hands shaking, he unbarred the door and pushed it over a crack.
Beyond lay a huge cave. In the distance, he heard a thunder-sneeze and had to grab onto the door to keep from behind blow backwards. Heard sound like rocks thudding onto the floor. As the sounds got louder, he managed to peek out the door again, realizing what had looked like a wooden pillar was actually the leg of a table looming high over his head. He caught a whiff of tobacco.
“Fi Fi FO Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” Boomed so loud above him, he could barely make out the words.
Slamming the door, he fumbled at the bar and scrambled back up out of the hole, scrambling and climbing back up the corridor as fast as possible. As he reached where the floor slanted upwards at a gentler slope, the voice behind him had faded away even as the words echoed in his brain.
Reaching the narrow opening behind the room, he slid through, grabbed the board and shoved it into the hole, nailing it firmly into the wall.
“Honey! Honey!” he shouted, stumbling out of the room. “Honey….. you’re right…..”
Friday Fictioneers 1-3-2020
Copyright-Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
The house was dark, empty of the long forgotten sounds of life. Had it been dark when the family lived there or had it been filled with light and love and laughter?
He touched the yellow crayon with a finger-tip; lifted up the fragile photograph of the man. Had he ever seen him before? Face all angles; body skin over bones; the living dead?
What if the phone rang, calling for somebody who no longer existed?
Outside the thump of boots, the “Alles Klar?”
He let go of the picture. It fluttered to the floor, a bird with broken wings.
“Alles Klar.”
Please excuse my translated German if it is grammatically incorrect. The phrase is “All Clear?”
It’s Never Too Early For Halloween.
Linus: [writing] Dear Great Pumpkin, I am looking forward to your arrival on Halloween night. I hope you will bring me lots of presents.
Linus: Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.
It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is my favorite Halloween book of all times. Having kids meant we got all sorts of Halloween books – Pumpkin books, ghost books, witches book, monster books. All cute and funny, but not the Great Pumpkin. If you have never read the book or seen the TV show, you needs to attend to that loss right now.
You wouldn’t want to miss the Great Pumpkin now, would you?
Linus is my favorite Charlie Brown character. Most times, he is a wise man in a child’s body. Other times, as with the Great Pumpkin, he is a little boy clinging to his belief even in the face of his friends laughter and teasing. That, after all, is what faith is, right? The inner knowledge which allows one to believe in something magical or religious even in the face of laughter and/or guns. Or both.
I know the Great Pumpkin isn’t real. We all know that. I think even Linus knows that truth but he still keeps the faith each year, sitting in the Pumpkin Patch waiting – believing – this time the Great Pumpkin will come.
I like the thought that somewhere a little boy is waiting in a dark pumpkin patch every Halloween, waiting for this miracle to rise up before him and reward his faith. How many of us could do that year after year when the miracle never arrives?
If, by chance, in your holiday travels, you come across a small boy with a blanket sitting in a pumpkin patch on Halloween, say hello for me. Tell him, if he keeps the faith, – if we all keep the faith – something magical just might happen.
And who’s to say there isn’t a Great Pumpkin after all?
Friday Fictioneers 5-7-2019
PHOTO by Roger Bultot
“We’re going to be late for the funeral,” Susan nagged, pulling her coat tighter around her body.
His forebrain heard ‘blah,blah, blah, blah,’ but somewhere in the back of his mind, in the small primitive reptile brain, she was heard.
“I don’t know if that is how they do it,” it said because the primitive brain knew how to protect.
‘Who?”
“Do Jews have funerals?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“Wouldn’t it be Allah’s sake?”
Rolling her eyes, she stormed away.
“What,” he asked, bewildered.
Friday Fictioneers 4-17-2019
PHOTO PROMPT Dale Rogerson
He approached the black garbage bag. Police officers weren’t supposed to be afraid, but the recent murders went beyond his understanding.
It was a small bag, so a child.
Stepping across the street and into the snow bank beyond, he slit the plastic, turning his eyes away from the gore bound to spill across his sturdy black shoes. Please, please, please don’t let the child be disemboweled, but he didn’t believe in God, not after all these years.
He looked back, plastic plates and cups scattered around his feet.
He began to cry.
Friday Fictioneers 4-17-2019
PHOTO PROMPT Ronda Del Boccio
The fires were burning now, popping up in various places in the valley below. Soon her prey would be flushed and it would be over. And yet, nothing came and nothing came and nothing came.
She moved into the valley, determined for this to end. The fires, no longer hers, flashed to life, surrounding her in an instant. And beyond, nothing’s eyes, and nothing’s eyes and nothing’s eyes.
Friday Fictioneers 3-29-2019
PHOTO PROMPT ©Sandra Crook
Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly…..and an interesting parlor it was, thick with the smells of machines and dyes, the loud clacking of a thousand and one spools running in synchronicity.
“I was sad to hear of your father’s troubles with the law.”
“See the intricate way the threads interweave,” said the son, motioning the man closer.
“Yes….”
Closer.
“Hummmm…”
With one touch, Mr King fell into the machine, spun into a web of a thousand and one spools.
A Writer's Life 
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