100 Words: Welcome to the War

It gave me the heebie jeebies.

From the landing craft we could see smoke blocking the sky.  “Thank God the beaches have been won,” I thought.

Then, as the ramp dropped into the surf, I saw Vesuvius fully for the first time and it looked angry as heck, spewing red hot lava down its flanks and it hit us all in the stomach, made us think of the fire waiting for us.  

For now, though, we hopped to it, marched neatly away.  “Just follow orders, do as you are told, avoid the lava,” I thought.  Right up to VE Day.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Ken Arnopole

100 Words: Sea Fog

It was twisting, rolling up the beach like a live beast.  At the castle it blew across the lawns and over hedges like a ghost horse.  We came for Easter, spring sunshine, lambs and so on.  Instead we got cold and a creepy fog following us around.

It felt like we were stuck in a Victorian period drama, like a seaside Jack the Ripper was waiting at the end of the pier, hiding within the fog, waiting for victims to enter his trap.  We stayed away from the pier.

All in all you could say it was a disappointing trip.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

100 Words: Searching for the Exit

Everything was glass.  Rooms that went on so far that whatever was outside was just a distant blur.  Its existence was only an idea, though, as all I could see was through and that there was no way to leave.

I walked one way, feeling out ahead, met a wall, followed it one direction, then another, and another going on and on and nowhere.  Never travelling far enough to unblur the distant blur.

It was some time before I saw the light.  A flash from an old film.  I screamed as high as I could, shattered everything and woke up.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Nancy Richy

100 Words: The Chips Cupboard

Our classroom was next to the cafeteria so we were nearly fooled.  For that’s how Miss always passed it off.  “It’s the chips, they’re frying the chips for lunch,” she would say when we asked about the bubbling sounds and smells.

Then one day we saw her.  We held back just enough on the way to lunch, and we looked through the window in the classroom door to see her open a cupboard, remove a fryer basket of chips and pour them onto a plate.  

Away we walked.  Astonished, but not surprised.

That’s when I decided to become a teacher.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

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