Microfiction: Grail

A 100 word story for Rochelle Wisoff’s Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

 

 

He looked down with distaste on the crowds milling around the souvenirs.

You’d never think this place had been a church once.

Of far more value than the artworks on display and guarded with the most elaborate security systems was what was hidden in the crypt.

The cretins don’t even know there is a crypt.

Well, he did, and he knew how to get in. He slipped into the shadows of the gallery and waited, dreaming of the Grand Master’s gratitude when he handed over his prize, how the world would change, and how it would be thanks to him.

Microfiction: Trouble

A 92 word bit of fun for the Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT ©Jill Wisoff

The contraption seemed to have stopped, so I picked myself up off the floor and fiddled with the stupid door handle. With a final wrench, the door flew open and I was hit by a deafening cacophony of traffic, car horns blaring and the screaming of a huge crowd. The sky was black, but there was no mistaking them. Wherever I’d landed, however many light years through space I’d travelled, the three demons had followed me. For the first time, I regretted dumping the Doctor in that fun fair on Alpha Centauri.

Microfiction: Laying ghosts

100 words for Rochelle Wisoff’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt

PHOTO PROMPT © Karen Rawson

Paula squeezed Joe’s hand tight, as tight as her closed eyes.

“You should look,” he said. “You’d see then that there’s nothing left.”

With an effort she opened her eyes, took in the remains of the house on the hill, the broken steps down to the jetty.

“There isn’t even any water,” Joe said. “They damned the creek after they torched the house.”

He was still there though, her little brother. She closed her eyes and squeezed out the tears. He would always be there. It would always be that nightmare morning when she found his body in the water.

 

Once upon a time

A 100 word story for the Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Jan Wayne Fields

“That’s where the farm was.” Tim waved a hand across the plain.

“Down there?” Evie’s face expressed incredulity.

Her grandfather smiled. “That’s what my granddad told me, and he remembers seeing it, the grass and the cows.”

“Cows?”

“They ate the grass. It was green then, he said.”

“Central Eastern Region isn’t green,” she said, a touch of suspicion in her voice.

Tim’s gaze brushed the barren hills and the dry stalks that had once been trees.

“Ah well, it wasn’t called that then. When it was green, and cows and horses grazed on it, that plain was County Meath.”

Microfiction: Nothing

This 98 word story is for Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt.

PHOTO PROMPT © Fatima Fakier Deria

It was Mitch’s fiftieth birthday, a quiet celebration, just himself, Mary and the neighbours. The children couldn’t make it, something about traffic problems, congested roads. Too many people getting out of the city for the weekend, he expected. One reason he was glad they’d left. They’d drunk champagne, eaten cake sitting beneath the cedar tree, watching the sunset.

A niggling worry sent Mary inside to check her phone. Nothing. She had always been a worrier. She flipped on the news. Nothing.

“Mitch!” she called from the kitchen.

Nothing. She hurried to the door, peered across the lawn. Nothing.

 

Microfiction: The ruse

A 99 word story for Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Björn Rudberg

The mountain road ended in a meadow with our house right in the middle of it. It was an idyllic setting to grow up in, but it hadn’t always been that way—the constant stream of tourists looking for a picturesque camp site, the camping cars that used to park in our field and leave their rubbish behind, people who were lost, looking for water, petrol, the right road. They used to bother us even in the middle of the night. Then dad put up the road sign back before the final bend. It was peaceful after that. Idyllic.

Friday Fictioneers: The activist

This short story (105 words) is for the Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

Before the Revolution, it had been the home of the local ruling family. Now the main building housed the town hall and a hospital, and the private chapel was now the municipal library. Marianne looked down from a niche, that had once held the bust of some archbishop, on the steady stream of ordinary people on their way to register a birth, get a doctor’s appointment, visit a hospital patient or change their library books.

Time to put a stop to all that, thought the terrorist who called himself a traditional values activist, as he pulled on his balaclava and loaded a clip of ammunition.

Microfiction: Waiting

This 97 word story is for the Friday Fictioneers prompt.

PHOTO PROMPT © Marie Gail Stratford

 

She sat by the door though the wind had risen, tearing the leaves, yellow and dry, from the trees. She had waited since the first crocuses flowered in spring, and the air turned mild and warm. He had said he would be back with the roses, so she waited through the summer while the blackbirds sang and the trees spread shady branches. She waited as the first berries grew red in the hedge and the geese flew south. She waited until the last petals fell on the last rose, and she closed the door to her heart.

Microfiction: Checking up

This 99 word story is for the Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

 

She pulled into the driveway, wishing her parents weren’t so inconsiderate. The land line was down, the telephone company confirmed, and they had never grasped the idea of cell phones, so there was nothing for it but to drive fifty miles through the snow when little Mikey had a temperature and Jeff was in a foul mood over some incident at work.

At least they’d had the good sense to put the porch lights on, she muttered to herself.

The curtains twitched opposite. Old Matt Peters knew those porch lights had been on for five days and nights now.

Microfiction: Promises

This 97 word story is for the Friday Fictioneers photo prompt.

PHOTO PROMPT © JS Brand

She had never been abroad before. She didn’t count a week in Ibiza with the girls from work. This was going to be special—Dan had promised. She knew the holiday was to smooth things over. More than once she had been on the point of saying they were finished, but Dan had always sweet-talked his way back into her heart.

The hotel Bellavista on an unspoilt island in the Indian Ocean sounded magical. From what Dan said. Before the ferry even reached the ramshackle jetty, she knew she’d been led up the garden path yet again.