Friday Fictioneers -The Consolation Prize

Photo Credit – Dale Rogerson

This is a 100 word story for Friday Fictioneers. Please follow the link to find the rules and to look at other 100 word stories. 

Candy pink sky fades to indigo. You knock on my door at exactly six.

I can’t help but see us, shadow backlit by fairground lights, reflected in the abundant chrome, in the eyes of the vendor who implores you to take one more chance to win me a prize.

No luck for you, and no stuffed creature for me. Consolation comes from following the scent of onions and doughnuts to purveyors of deep-fried delights.

You offer to share.

Lips coated in oily cinnamon-sugar, we kiss for the first time.

At home, I blame red cheeks on chill October air.

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Friday Fictioneers – In Hiding

This image belongs to Anshu Bhojnagarwala.

 

This is a submission for Friday Fictioneers, a challenge to write a 100 word story based on the photo prompt. It’s a lot harder than I remembered, but I got there eventually.

“May? Are you in here?”

After a pause, the music classroom door closed.

Nestled under the piano, she tucked her costume skirt over her feet. The show would go on without her. She didn’t care if they were angry. The last exam was finished, and she wouldn’t see her fellow students again.

There was no mum or dad waiting in the audience to watch her.

A folded flyer for A Midsummer’s Night Dream propped up a stool leg.

She thought of Alice, proudly waving the flyer, proclaiming her big sister was a fairy.

May reluctantly left her hiding place.

Unwanted Gifts

Roberta hurried out of the front door in her husband’s slippers and shawl. Neither were adequate protection for the occurring downpour, but she marched down the street anyway. One of Roberta’s elderly neighbours was hobbling along the pavement some distance away.  Roberta always forgets her name; the street she lives on is friendly but not that friendly. The old lady started to cross the road, but her foot skidded on a stray piece of gravel as she stepped off the pavement. Roberta, however, was ready to save the day, and roughly grasped Bridget (The name dislodged itself from somewhere in Roberta’s memory) by her upper arm and pulled her up before she could fall onto the road.

Some five seconds later, a silver Toyota dashed around the corner, narrowly missing the kerb.

“Oh!” exclaimed Bridget. She stood for a second in silence, clearly contemplating what could have happened if Roberta had not been there. “How lucky you were here, R-“

“Bridget, we should get you out of the rain!” interrupted Roberta, through gritted teeth. Her slippers are already sodden.

After escorting Bridget to her front door, Roberta returned home and dried off. She made a milky cup of tea and began to confide in Fudge, her placid tabby cat.

“Oh, so lucky you were here, Roberta!” she imitated, with a dollop of sarcasm. “Yeah, lucky for you, you old bint. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday, and if Dave’s slippers don’t come out of the tumble dryer alright, I’m done for.”

Roberta’s in depth chats with Fudge only started when she started having the visions. The cat wouldn’t think she was crazy, and most importantly, the cat couldn’t tell anyone else that Roberta had gone off her rocker and thought she could see the future. Fudge yawned and stretched across the settee on the opposite side of the living room to the Roberta.

“Okay, Fudge, I know. Dave deserves to have his slippers ruined, the cheating bastard. Though, he might not have cheated on me yet, and we know that we can change what’s in the visions or Bridget would have met her maker this afternoon. So maybe he won’t cheat on me. The vision of him and his ex-wife could be completely out of context?”

In response to this, Fudge stared glassily out of the window.

“Or maybe I’m in complete denial,” Roberta sighed.

 

Friday Fictioneers – Closure

Copyright – Peter Abbey

Another Friday Fictioneers Submission. Please follow the link to take part of read other 100 word stories. The big question for me today, as someone who never studied English after 16, was “That or Which?” Feel free to educate me. 

There was a neglected snicket behind George Street which squeamish locals avoided.

Louis stood at one end, feeling strangely cheered as he realised how grotty this path had become in a decade. He regarded the glass settled in the cracks of degrading asphalt, the abandoned chip cartons, and the pair of stray knickers which lay pathetically across the ground.

How could this place ever have been romantic?

He fixed his gaze on the mouldering fence. He counted the slats, until he reached the 27^th on his right.

Louis hearts Hannah

A squirt of spray paint, and the names were gone.

Friday Fictioneers – Keeping it For a Reason

Copyright – Claire Fuller

Welcome to another wonderful Friday Fictioneers. This picture really called out fantasy to me, but I’ve written a few of those lately and wanted to do something different. Not sure it really worked, but I’m on limited time today. If you want to take part and read other stories, please follow the link.

James looked up from his phone, and his daughter was nowhere to be seen.

“Elise?” His voice filtered through the trees either side of the cycleway. A faltering heartbeat later, she tumbled out from between the foliage, recklessly spinning her schoolbag around her wrist.

“Dad, can you keep this safe for me?” She pressed a thumb sized stone into his palm.

“What do you want this for?” he asked, annoyed.

She shrugged before turning and running ahead to the cycleway exit.

“I’m not keeping it for no reason!”

He looked at the stone, sighed, and slipped it in his pocket.

Sunday Photo Fiction – Photography

Sunday Photo Fiction: 200 words based on the picture prompt, and click the link if you’d like to take part or want to read other submissions. It’s a been a while since I last submitted something. I’m very glad this challenge is reliably here to give me direction when I do feel like doing some writing!

Adam stood in the middle of his late grandad’s living room. Looking to the left, he saw bare walls and bin bags. He’d spent the past hour systematically stripping the place down, unsentimentally doing the job his mother didn’t feel capable of doing. Adam himself hadn’t known his grandad that well, but needles of guilt were bothering him. His cavalier approach to clearing the house was beginning to feel irreverent.

Looking right, the room was still preserved as grandad had left it, identical to Adam’s memories of the rare childhood visits, even down to the stacks of photography magazines on the coffee table. The magazines must have been sat untouched for years, which inspired some curiosity in Adam as he picked one up. They were still in their plastic jackets. Had grandad been intending to read them for the past decade?

Hours later, Adam pulled a digital camera out of the wardrobe, still attached to a USB cable. In the evening, he plugged the thing into his computer to see how grandad’s photography skills had fared despite neglecting the magazines.

A single photo loaded, partially obscured by Grandad’s thumb, of an A4 page filled with handwriting. It began:

“Dear Adam…”

Sunday Photo Fiction – Lunar Promises

Copyright – Al Forbes

Click here to submit your own flash fiction based on the photograph, and to read other stories.

In the village where Sian was born, a small housing estate was being built to the west. The area had previously been an unremarkable, empty field. It had also been the spot where, every month, Sian’s mother had greeted the full moon at midnight. The moon gave her gifts of rare herbs and dispensed words of advice in reward for her diligence.

Sian’s mother had been dead for five years, and Sian had not dared to meet the moon herself in that time. She left the hospital where her brother was being treated, knowing that she had to do something. The skies were cloudless and the timing was perfect.

Walking through the empty construction site, she had no idea whether her presence here would be acknowledged. The moon had every right to refuse her, and this place was perhaps no longer as sacred as it once was.

Sian paused. The moonlight filtered through the giant metal frames, and then solidified in front of her.

She kneeled, sobbed for forgiveness, and pleaded until a deal was struck.

The Library Book Project – 23 February 2013

To read more about this project, click here.

It’s funny how some words on a little screen can cause pain like real punches. I have to sit down, winded, and fight the instinct to cry. Yet, I invite these words in, I carry around my phone in my pocket, a little portal through which people can injure me at any time. Of course, only a few weeks ago, it was our connection. The tone it played when it received a message gave me thrills, and I’d leap across my bedroom so I could read the message you’d sent.

In those first few days, the communication was incessant. There were messages from you well into the night, and your words were the first I would read in the morning. You’d continually joke about my clumsiness. That was how we met, after all. When those books spilled to the floor, my face turned crimson with mortification. You were the only one around who didn’t give me a filthy stare. Instead, you smiled sympathetically and waited around for me to check my book out. We started talking, and couldn’t stop, so we exchanged numbers.

After a week or so, I’d be anxiously checking my phone every half an hour to see if you’d responded to my texts. Your responses were slow, half-hearted, sluggish and with none of your previous wit, like you weren’t paying attention anymore. I wondered what I’d done wrong, and fought the desire to text you back straight away when you did eventually send me something, ashamed of my eagerness.

You added me on Facebook at one point, and my heart rose, thinking this was a sign your interest in me was picking up again. There were a few good conversations, and you suggested we meet up. I laughed at myself then, about how worried I’d been about some stupid text messages. I remember how I felt when you kissed me. I smiled for the entire afternoon, and I really thought this would last.

I was surprised, hurt, and maybe a little angry when you didn’t reply to any of my messages after that. I couldn’t figure out what you wanted. If you weren’t interested then you shouldn’t pretend that you are. I told myself that was it, that it was the end of our small whatever-it-was, emphasis on the word small. I was a person, I had a life, and you didn’t just mess someone around like that.

It didn’t prepare me for when I was browsing Facebook on my phone, and I saw that you were in a relationship with someone else. Hurt, confusion and depression weigh me down as I walk back to the library. I post the borrowed book through the return point. I do it hurriedly, because it upsets me to think that the book has been in my life for longer than you.

The Library Book

So, I’m wanting work on a project that’s a little different from my normal work. I’m taking a bit of a break from To Be A Pawn and I really wanted to get away from the fantasy genre. However, with the current mood I’ve been in, it’s sometimes difficult to come up with ideas that don’t simply reflect how I feel right now.

I was reading a book that I got from the library yesterday, called Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris. It’s quite unusual, and well written, but there isn’t really an overarching plot that I can see yet and so I’m finding it hard to get into. Anyway, I looked at the front of the book, where all the return dates were stamped.

It made me wonder who all these people were, the ones who had taken out this particular book before me? Where had this book been, what had it seen?

And, I’ll never know who these people were, but I guess it’s fun to imagine.

So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a short story for each date stamped in the book. I’m really looking forward to this project, and I hope you’ll stick around to see me complete it. 😀

Links to all the stories can be found in the comments below.