Category: Friday Fictioneers

Why Can’t We Talk About This

This post is submitted to Friday Fictioneers.

The rules are simple. Write a COMPLETE STORY in 100 words or less with a beginning, middle and end.

anonymous-kitchen-photo
PHOTO PROMPT @ A. Noni Mouse

“I beginning to hate these people,” said Helen. “I just about lost my temper at dinner. Are we so afraid of Erick that we can’t talk about current events without the fear of offending him? How long can we talk about ocean cruises?  Neighborhood gossip? I would like to talk about the necessity of wearing masks. Vote by mail? Racial equality? Black Lives Matter? The feeling that this nation is being divided by the very one who should be uniting us? Let’s not have another Civil War!”

“So that’s why you spent the final thirty minutes doing dishes?” said Tom.

 

Quarantined

This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

delayed-green-naama-yehuda
PHOTO PROMPT © Na’ama Yehuda

They had been quarantined for so long they had ceased to remember it. It started out slow with the leader of their nation promising that it would magically go away once the warm season began. It didn’t. A night out on the town with a fine meal at a fancy restaurant was a distant memory. The mere fact of wearing a mask was now a polarizing political statement. Are you red or are you blue? The deaths began to rise at an alarming rate. The elderly clogged the emergency rooms. The young thought they were immune. They weren’t.

Never Make It To Market

This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

eggcelent-from-todd-foltz
PHOTO PROMPT © Todd Foltz

Panic was starting to form a cloud of fear over the farm. The migrants that worked these fields were nowhere to be seen. The farms precious fruits were going to rot in the fields.

At first the owners were in denial. The crops would be harvested! The use of facial masks were soon required to repel the invisible invader. Once established the virus began to spread. Workers who had previously never been sick suddenly disappeared.  Co-workers soon followed.

The owners anger began to ferment. The invader did not distinguish who it infected. The owners slowly began to disappear.

Quarantined

This post is submitted to Friday Fictioneers.

the-view
PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

 

It wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out. The promise of having friends and family visit was one of the main selling points in moving into assisted living. The ability to maintain contacts would keep him from going insane.

Now it’s just the staff. The same old staff now wearing masks. What the hell has happened. They say the most terrible legal sentence to impose on someone was solitary confinement.

Far beyond the window, at the edge of some tall willows and behind the gate, he can see his granddaughter. Even from here he can see her crying.

 

UP Early

This post is written for Friday Fictioneers, 

ronda-pov

PHOTO PROMPT © Ronda Del Boccio

The alarm on my iPhone sounded the Sherwood Forest theme at exactly 4:30 a.m. I could not afford to hit the snooze button today.

Breakfast from the hotel buffet was going to suffice this morning.

The tour company jeep arrived precisely at 5:00 a.m. We rode silently through the desert floor to our destination. The though that we would be alone on this adventure quickly vanished as a large number of vehicles were already in the staging area.  Balloons were already being filled with liquid propane and the flames were casting their yellow flames skyward. Our fateful journey was about to begin.

 

A Night Out

This post is submitted to Friday Fictioneers. 

Total word count 100.

I purchased the storage unit as a temporary place to put my belongings while I moved into my future wife’s house. What I liked most was that it had a lightbulb inside.

It took a week to move everything I had. For the following few weeks I visited for an hour or two just to be myself. My own little furnished room.

It was a little over two months after the wedding I began to spend more time there.

This evening I am reading todays New York Times. I turn the light out at 10 wondering how things could have been.

 

Dinner for Twenty Two

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

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

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

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.”