Dinner for Twenty Two

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This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Ronda Del Boccio

You wonder why you torture yourself with the annual Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the same every year. Send out a distribution list to fifty like minded individuals and prepare yourself for the onslaught of replies. Limit the number of attendees to the first twenty that respond (always leaving room for a few extra exceptions for your “special friends” that didn’t make the deadline). You know from experience that fifteen of those people will volunteer to bring their favorite dishes which in all honesty not everyone likes. You will spend the next two weeks in a continuing state of anxiety. For what?

 

Family Found

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This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

photos-ted-strutz

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

You always told me you wanted to know your birth parents. There is no doubt that you have found them. The DNA test proved it.

Now for the first time in over fifty years you actually know what your family looks like.There’s your mother smiling from that photo. The mother that left you on a neighbors door step over 50 years ago. Those are pictures of the people in her life after she left you. She even started a new family on the west coast and actually named her first daughter after you.

And not a single picture of you.

Skins vs. Shirts

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This post is written for Friday Fictioneers. 

dales-field

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Skins vs. Shirts. That was always the game. We always had to wait until the older kids finished their games. Sometimes our games went well into the darkness of the night.

Rick was the tallest of our little gang. If I found myself on Rick’s side I knew we had a decent chance of winning.

I was short but quick. We made a great duo. Mutt and Jeff they called us.

Some nights we played until they turned off the court lights.

Rick was one of the first of our little group to experiment with performance enhancing medicines.

 

 

Julio

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This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

dales-restaurant-photo

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

“He told me $7,000 US dollars,” Rosetta whispered. “Seven thousand dollars and that’s just for Julio. He’s the strongest. He can make the trip. He can send back money. Juan says we have enough money if his useless brother will help what he has saved.”

“Julio has no future here, you know that. You have seen the violence that awaits him. He’s only seven years old and he has seen terrible things already. The coyote says it will be a long trip, but he will protect him.  We have made the decision. He will go!

“It’s his only hope.”

 

 

Some Assembly Required

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This post is submitted to Friday Fictioneers.

 

 

demolished-purple-tent

PHOTO PROMPT © Jan Wayne Fields

“It’s a bargain,” she said.

“I like the floor model” I replied.

“We have gone to five stores and looked at every model available. Let’s buy this one and be done with it. The kids can help and put it together. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to have it up.”

“We’ve been married twenty-eight years Marge and you should know that anything that requires putting part a into part b is a challenge for me. On my headstone I know what it will say.”

“ Some assembly required?”

“Yup!”

 

 

Thanks For Sharing

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This short piece of fiction is written for Friday Fictioneers. The challenge is to write a story based on the picture prompt of 100 words or less that is a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. You can read other participants stories by clicking HERE.

My story begins after the picture below.

trespass_randy_mazie-1

PHOTO PROMPT © Randy Mazie

 

The memories of the place still haunt him.

Robert was his roommate. An extremely obese black man who never once in six weeks got out of bed. They brought a contraption in to lift him up to change his sheets. He never once turned the television off despite desperate requests. He had moved what furniture he had from his apartment into the tiny room.

Chicken Lady was how he knew what time it was. She started crowing late in the afternoon and her  state of confusion would last well into his restless night.

“Thanks for sharing,” someone calls.