Three Line Tales: Caged

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales photo prompt.

photo by Ben Williams vis Unsplash

The big house has railings around it like the park, and big gates that never open.

There used to be a sign on gate that said: Beware, vicious dog, until the dog pulled it down.

Not vicious, he shouts at whoever stops to look into his sad eyes, just lonely.

Stone tears

Rebel response to the dverse prompt. Rather than including a whole chunk of Maya Angelou’s words, which are hers and hers alone,  I have just borrowed three of the words that could be anybody’s words, including mine—the rock cries.

 

There was a forest here and rivers and lush green. There were birds and deer, and owls and foxes in the night. There were flocks of finches and skylarks in the day sky, and summer nights were full of stars. There were.

Instead we preferred our meat twice a day, our cruises round the world and phones and a new car every two years, a new kitchen when the fashions changed and monochrome went out. We wanted novelty and new and more than we needed because it was comforting to be able to throw things away.

It killed the earth and now it is just a rock and the rock cries.

Tactics

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales prompt.

photo by Michal Vrba via Unsplash

 

There is something about the sight of children absorbed in a tactical game of skill, wits and intelligence that gives me the creeps.

I imagine them later, older, sitting together again, but this time around a conference table in a boardroom.

Older, the tactics refined and put to other uses, children who never acted the maggot at school plot with cold, dispassionate moves the fate of millions.

#Three line tales: Queen’s speech

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales photo prompt.

photo by Frenjamin Benklin via Unsplash

 

From within the folds of her green plush apartments

the hamster queen gives her message of peace and understanding

Urbi et Orbi.

 

#Three Line Tales: First timer

For Sonya’s Three Line Talesprompt. A topical one this week.

photo by Josh Hild via Unsplash

He had been walking all night, set off from his village at sunset and hit the outskirts of the city just after midnight.

The rain had been falling steadily for hours as he walked like a zombie along silent streets where only foxes were about, going through the bins, and by daybreak, he was dropping with weariness.

He found the signpost, slumped in a tired heap outside the door—just had to wait now for the polling station to open.

#Three Line Tales: Gothic

Microfiction for Sonya’s weekly photo prompt.

photo by Watari via Unsplash

 

Inspired by the stories of Walter Scott, he built the house, mimicking the Gothic he never really appreciated or understood, believing vaulted ceilings and cloisters created a ‘sophisticated’ atmosphere.

When his cruelty to the womenfolk of his household shaped Gothic horrors that haunted the nights of the mock-up castle, his line dried up, faded, and he died screaming in a straitjacket.

Now junkies haunt the lonely rooms and fake cloister, weaving their own horrors, painting the walls with their own madness.

Never Never

Exactly 150 words. For Crispina Kemp’s creative challenge, inspired by this photo.

 

She had always thought it was a magical place, the slow stream that babbled if you listened hard enough, and the wood that had somehow escaped the developers, where blackbirds sang and jays and woodpeckers chattered. The stream disappeared into a culvert, carrying its leaf-boats into the dark, and she had walked the length of the wood countless times but never discovered where it came out.

The town grew, estates sprawled, but the wood remained untouched. Pastureland formed one boundary, a lane another, and a low wall bounded the rest. Something drew her back to the wood that end of summer day, drew her along the stream that entered the domain from the farmland, to the culvert where birds sang and the leaf-boats disappeared.

Without hesitation, she stepped into the stream and followed it into the dark to find out where it came out. It didn’t, and nor did she.