100 Words: The Strange Beings

I woke up with strange beings standing over me.  Long bendy arms came from the top of long slender trunks, eyes wide and bright with curiosity and concern; and shocks of hair in wispy bursts.  Nothing more could I make out as the sun hovered right over, clothing them in shadow.  I saw only shapes in that brief time.  

After I awoke in the hospital no one believed me: “Just the trees you were found under.”  Yet no one could explain how I got from the burning train to the top of an almost vertical embankment.  

Or the other survivors.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

100 Words: Tsundoku

He had had every intention of reading every single one of the books acquired and placed ready to read on that desk.  He had had every intention of using that desk to write following the study of those books.  But now he was a tower builder.  Both in his silent study and the playroom full of the clicks and clacks of Duplo being built ever higher until the inevitable collapse.

“One day,” he would often say to the books as he had a look and adjusted the tower to make it safer, playing his endless game of tsundoku. 

One day…

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Presumably written for Friday Fictioneers from a picture prompt but not published at the time (April 2024). 

A man of few words

"I've never been a fan of talking," he said.

And then left the story.

100 Words: I should remember

I should remember the bar. I should remember the staff. I should remember the drinks on sale.

I remember nothing.

Yet I woke with a glass printed with its name in my hand.

They remember me. They ask me to leave. They say that I am barred. They say I must never return.

I place the glass on the bar, my hands and head empty.

And no one will tell me anything. And no one will look me in the eye. And no one will return my calls. And no one wants to know me.

So what the hell happened?

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

8/28/2003 - Creative Writing Corner

It’s like everyone is a shopkeeper. You sit in it, at the desk, having set up the window with all you have to offer. Then you wait for someone to come past and like what they see- they come in, you show them more.

Or you go out yourself and search the windows for what you like. Go out and walk the streets to sell yourself, your image, door-to-door.

If it works out, you each shut up shop at least temporarily before deciding whether or not to settle down in the flat above or move to a bigger place.

People forever setting up shop and people forever flowing freely from shop to shop on the task of a lifetime. To find the shopkeeper to go into business with.

But I’m stuck. Her shop window is amazing to me. Like Hamleys' window to a child. Or Thorntons when the ice cream bit is there.

And I’m stuck.

I need to be looking in other windows instead of only seeing those who pass, fleetingly; or minding my shop- a real mess, a tip. Clean, sparkling windows (I employ a window cleaner), but inside a mess. A thick film of dust covering all the tables, nothing there or what is there has gone off. In elsewhere, “Gone for 5 mins.” 5 minutes that last a lifetime.

I can only stand and stare. Others go in, come out. I stand and stare- unable to go in or walk away.

100 Words: Fast Track

The banks of flickering candles hold the prayers of the people, their warmth pushing the wishes high up to heaven.  Each holds a hope or a dream or a wish.  Something that has been asked for, wholeheartedly.

Sitting in a pew a small girl watches others as they pray and light candles, fixing in her mind exactly what she would say if she had a coin.

In her heart, though, she says the prayer.  

Unseen by anyone, an angel sits beside her and whispers that it shall be done.

Moments later, Oliver-style, she meets the couple who would adopt her.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

100 Words: Pessimistic

The banks of flickering candles hold the prayers of the people, their warmth pushing the wishes high up to heaven.  There the angels sift and sort, arrange thoughts and prayers, wants and desires, wishes and hopes, whether selfish or selfless.  

It is the prayer of a small child that catches the eye the day this story takes place.

But there is nothing they can do.  All the angels do these days is collect, record and file.

The child will have to wait and hope, pray that those in power on earth will change their minds and do something to help.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard