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.
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?
Oh my, that’s nasty. A hard-hitting hundred, CE.
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.
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.
That’s messy.
A compelling, classic tragedy relayed brilliantly through the lens of a unsympathetic, predatory narrator 👏
Dear C.E.
What a triangle of mistrust and a broken home. Nicely done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Brutal!