Category: Uncategorized

The Essence of Her

Photo Credit === Danny James

The counter space reflects her busy life even as we emerge from this devastating pandemic. The two purses are used for specific purposes which I have never understood. I cringe when she ask me to bring her purse. I invariably choose the wrong one.


The two medical cards with our medications are placed where emergency personnel can find them. I have asked myself a few times if the paramedics will even take the time to look, much less read, them.


There’s the business card from the landscape company she is trying to reach because there are brown patches in the yard. I hate to tell her that the brown spots were probably the result of her using way too much Roundup. But I stay quiet.


The colorful luggage tags are for our upcoming trip to Alaska. No international travel for us this year. She has purchased two new sets of luggage to go along with the six suitcases in the garage. I only need one.


There is a picture of me with my beret sitting in the airport in Dublin. It’s her favorite photo of me. I don’t argue with her.

Some day I will have to clean off that counter.

It Hurts to Laugh

This post is written for Friday Fictioneers. The challenge is to write a story with a beginning, middle and end in 100 words of less. My story follows the picture prompt below.

I am disturbed at being alone. That wasn’t always the case. Today, as I look upon the devastation before me, I feel like laughing. There’s not much left of this little piece of paradise. The flooding will start in a few hours. A man rarely feels like laughing alone. When people observe you laughing alone they tend to think you are crazy.

There was advanced warning. Hours before I hear, from the TV under the thatched roof of the Tiki bar, the Governor asking us to leave the area and seek shelter.

I laughed at the possibility.

Leon’s Farm Market

This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

The challenge is to write a story with a beginning, middle and end in 100 words or less using the picture prompt below.

He spent his teenage summers working at his father’s farm market: “Leon’s Farm Market.” He worked seven days a week while his buddies enjoyed their summers just hanging around the neighborhood. He was responsible for rolling up the chain link fence that surrounded the market at 9 a.m. He was giving exactly $40 (one ten-dollar bill, three five-dollar bills and fifteen one-dollar bills) to open the old crank style National cash register.

He knew his first customer today. Mrs. Rosenburg was always looking for anything on sale. Looking over his shoulder she said, “How much are those garlics today Danny Boy?”

Children laugh, children play, it’s supposed to be this way

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Photo Credit — Danny James

Children laugh, children play, it’s supposed to be this way. Children love, children hug, children have the sweetest face. Children are supposed to laugh, and race, no evilness should touch this face. Children face the hardest times, when love, and life become unkind. Children are supposed to smile, and race, and not see tragedy all over this place. A child’s life should be a playground, where hurt, and pain are rarely found. This is not alway’s the path, but hope that they will learn to laugh.

John Hambrock

Quarantined

This post is submitted to Friday Fictioneers.

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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, 

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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.