Friday Fictioneers 5-7-2021

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

“How’s that for moving houses?” Van asked.

He shrugged. It wasn’t a house, it was a trailer. Extra wide maybe, but still a trailer.

“I can’t wait to stand on our front porch,” Emmy said with a clap of hands.

It wasn’t a porch…. it was a extended door.

“Yeah.”

“What? Honey aren’t you excited?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you could act like it!”

Well, he could, but what was he excited about? Not a trailer no matter how pretty inside. Not a bolted together house….

Walking away was what he was excited about and he did.

Friday Fictioneers 4-30-2021

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

They sat amid the devastation, oblivious. If not oblivious, at least resigned. The flood waters lay flat, motionless. Behind them, well, there used to be a house.

“Funny,” the first said, “how these daman chairs are bout the only thing to survive.”

“Yeah, funny,” agreed the second, dead-pan.

“Indestructible less you sit in them wrong.”

“Ah huh.”

“Think FEMA will get their tails in gear this time?”

“Nope.”

“You’re right. Probably not. Still……” And he was silent for a long moment. “There is always tomorrow.”

Friday Fictioneers 4-16-2021

PHOTO PROMPT © Anne Higa  

“It’s where they get the water for the guests,” Dad said with a smile, settling Dorrie down at the table.

“Naught-ah,” she shot back, wiggling down into her chair. “Cause I didn’t see anybody go there while we waited.”

“They are sneaky. Full up a bucket in a second and then gone.”

“Nope!”

“Yep.”

“Nope.”

“All right, it’s for punishing little girls who talk back to their elders and don’t eat their dinner.”

“Naught-ah.”

“Ah–huh.”

“Nope.”

“Yep.”

“Really?”

Dad smiled again. “Of course not. It’s only a decoration, Dorrie. Isn’t it pretty.”

Friday Fictioneers 4-2-2021

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

“Chris, your brother has something for you!”

Chris slammed the door. Just what he did not need right now. His mother. Just another fight waiting to happen.

Davies swung around when he entered the kitchen.

“It’s us,” he said in his strangely high voice, his way of responding to the fight.

“Who’s the one without pants or a shirt?”

“Susan.”

He laughed. “Yeah, figures. Which one is me?”

Davies pointed to the cookie with the green sweater and necklace.

“Why?”

“You going to be Rock Star!”

His eyes met his mother’s. She smiled.

Friday Fictioneers 3-26-2021

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

“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?”

Friday Fictioneers 1-8-2021

PHOTO PROMPT @ Jan Wayne Fields

Not much left from a life of ink-stained fingers and bad food. He’d been a reporter for the Washington Times, but he could have been on the Centerville Herald. The remains were the same.

Tommy looked at the items on John’s desk, taking in the bits and bobs along with memories of his mentor.

“Take what you want,” the editor said. “A new body will be there Monday.”

He should quit less this be his remains as well.

With one hand, he slid the items into the trashcan and walked out of the office.

Friday Fictioneers 12-25-2020

PHOTO PROMPT © Trish Nankivell

Gone

This was a fine fettle. Like “Croatoan” if one wanted to think of it that way. He didn’t really, but he could tell the road to the ranch hadn’t been used in years. Had she left this message here for him?

She’d said she’d wait, but that obviously went out the window once he was locked up. His cellmates had warned him, but he had stupidly believed her.

Tossing his cigarette away into the dust, he turned and started hiking back towards the main road. One day he would find her. One day.

Words – 99

“Croatoan” – One of the only clues left to the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in 1590.

Friday Fictioneers 1-3-2020

Copyright-Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Click to read more

---

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?”

Friday Fictioneers 5-7-2019

PHOTO by Roger Bultot

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

“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.