Friday Fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.
Click here to hear the author read his words:
Eye of Beholder
Beauty is a blessing and a curse.
Even as a mother, she turns heads, elicits advances from the wealthy and the practised.
These she dismisses with grace, a smile, and a gesture to the band on her finger.
Her adored husband has become oblivious to her charms, and almost contemptuously brushes aside her declarations of devotion.
Eventually, and almost inevitably, this leads to her downfall.
An easy laugh, an avowed interest in her mind rather than her delightful curves, and she is lost.
Her husband, on discovery, rejects her permanently.
Having achieved the conquest, I of course move happily on.
Unfeeling SOB. A messy situation.
The husband or the narrator, Nancy?
Wow! Demon lover indeed.
None of them are quite blameless, are they, Liz?
Gosh, how dreadful, that bad man. Tut tut.
The husband or the narrator, Chris?
Quite unfortunate… and realistic.
No argument from me…
even the most incredible dish loses its magic if it’s the only thing on the menu.
That’s rather cynical for you, isn’t it?
C.E., I’ve been one or another of those trios over time. Expertly written. Do you think they will find the gene responsible for it one day?
The cruelty, the adultery or the predation?
The ninja gene that incorporates all 3.
Oh my, that’s nasty. A hard-hitting hundred, CE.
I love the englishness of ‘Oh my’!
Bastard!
If a story gives rise to such an immediate response, I reckon it must be good one.
It is.
And that’s not a surprise.
Laughing. You should here what the folk who don’t like me say!
Savage nonchalance. You reap what you sow. Or at least I think you do, but I know several people who are getting a very long run for their money. Cool and cruel – in your inimitable style.
Thanks, Sandra. Yes, I’m not sure karma is alive and functioning too well, there are a few folk out there – not pointing at a big, white house – whose time is well overdue.
I like ‘cool and cruel’.
That’s messy.
Life sometimes is.
A compelling, classic tragedy relayed brilliantly through the lens of a unsympathetic, predatory narrator 👏
Pretty much spot on, Ange!
Dear C.E.
What a triangle of mistrust and a broken home. Nicely done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
I’m happy that you didn’t just point one finger, m’lady.
Nothing happens in isolation.
Brutal!
Then I hit my mark!