This on-going collection of stories has been and are being written in my current home on the Côte d’Azur.
Many of the tales are based in and around the town I call Medville, others are situated in Scotland, and the remainder take place in less exceptional parts of this and other worlds.
Mysterious and enigmatic, served with a splash of humour, nothing here is ever quite what it seems.
Expect the unexpected.
There is always a twist in the tail.
Nearly.
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:
Under the Bridge
The last time I saw her was in what we called ‘our tunnel’.
It was hidden under the road bridge where the river runs into the sea.
We used to sneak down here after school, just the two of us, and I’d try to be romantic, and read poetry I wrote for her.
She’d bring her guitar and sing to me.
She stopped coming so often when she started hanging out with that older crowd.
They weren’t nice people.
I’d still come and sit for a while, hoping she’d appear.
And one day, she did.
She floated by, face down.
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:
Castles and Kings
In Scotland, every castle has a ghost, a flimsy phantom who flits, with or without a head, through dimly-lit corridors of stone and, if not too cliché-averse, rattles the occasional chain in dead of night.
Additionally, every heather-clad glen has haggis foraging for thistles, their staple diet, every loch has its own monster loitering in the dark and dismal depths, and every mist-shrouded ben has a unicorn frolicking free on the slopes.
Some of you may not believe this, but place your trust in only one of the myriad gods worshipped on our planet.
And others, astonishingly, still believe Trump.
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:
sunrise eyes
sunrise eyes
shine at the prospect the promise
of another day of love and adventure
I admire I envy
your capacity for life
your ability to embrace each moment
as though it may be the last you ever live
but it terrifies me too
because I see
my lack of imagination of vision of spirit
and I worry
that it threatens to suffocate your joie de vivre
and I know that all too soon
the time will come
when you have to leave me
before the light in your
sunrise eyes dies
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.
Due to circumstances on the dangerous edge of my control, this week’s offering is a rerun from six and a half years ago.
Click here to hear the author read his words:
Some Days
Some days I exist.
Some days I pass in a fog.
I stumble uncertainly down the broken roads in my mind with only a vague wish that no serious harm befall me.
And yet unaware of my direction or destination and uncaring of my actual arrival.
Some days I just sit, watching the world stumble futilely around me.
Have I always been this way?
I seem to have an indifference to things I should care about.
Like love, pain, family, friends.
Even life itself.
Is there something wrong with me?
Or with everyone else?
Some days I really couldn’t care less.
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.
My apologies for my recent lengthy absence, and lack of response to previous comments.
I was on my annual visit to Scotland, with other priorities,
Click here to hear the author read his words:
Colonisation
As I lift the hand-towel from the washing-machine, I’m annoyed to see it still bears traces of blood.
My blood.
I smile ruefully as I recall that, just a few weeks ago, Sandra Crook, my favourite Fictioneer, laughingly agreed that recently her body count has been higher than mine.
Although there was one undeserving pooch…
But last night’s death was well-merited.
When I saw the intruder’s shadow, my reaction was swift and deadly.
I killed without hesitation or remorse.
I await the usual outcry about needless slaughter from my readers.
I don’t care.
Drink my blood and die, Madame Mosquito.
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.
My apologies for the complete irrelevance of my story to your splendid photo, m’lady.
I’m pressed for time, but had already written this in the clearly forlorn hope that it might somehow fit.
But at least my intro and outro are cool. And relevant.
Click here to hear the author read his words:
Homage to Catalonia
Sometimes I ponder the meaning of life.
I’m in an aeroplane which has been driving around northern Spain, or Catalonia as the locals call it, for about 90 minutes.
I’m reminded of pigeons, who often scurry on foot away from perceived danger, seemingly forgetting that they have the gift of flight.
I should, in a perfect world, be high over France by now, en route – gasp, horror! – to Englandshire, to undertake missionary work.
Well, someone has to civilise the Sassenachs, today it’s my turn.
So, is this delay due to some higher power who actually likes them as they are?
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:
Fences
Fences intrigue me.
Some fences are designed to keep people in, and some are designed to keep people out.
Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on which side of the fence you are.
If you’re trapped on the inside, not good, but if there are bad things outside, very good.
If the bad things are inside, also good, but if you want what’s inside, not so good.
So fences are a lot like people, I think.
Some trap you and won’t let you go.
But others never let you near the good stuff inside them.
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.
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:
The Corridor
Well, this isn’t what I expected.
Although, if I’m being honest, I’ve never really given it much thought.
Hah, being honest, that’s a good one, something else I don’t think about too often.
I’m not what you’d call a model citizen, done some dodgy things in my time.
Anyway, I’m now ambling along this kinda featureless corridor, not sure where I’m heading.
Getting warmer now, I should’ve expected that.
Oh, seems like I’ve arrived.
Guess what, Satan’s here to meet me.
And he’s got horns and a tail.
Man, this is just too clichéd!
Uh oh, he doesn’t like criticism.
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:
La Libellule
From the bridge I gaze wistfully down at la libellule, the dragonfly, and marvel at its beauty as it skims across the surface of the still water.
So vibrant, with its great wings propelling that slender, electric-blue, almost other-worldly form at astonishing speed, it’s nonetheless vulnerable to the swooping hirondelles, or swallows, that frequent this calm pool between the high reeds.
The libellule, like the water, seems to shimmer, graceful, almost invisible, in the morning heat, as though it might just disappear.
And I remember the promise I made you, the one I didn’t, I couldn’t keep.
Before you disappeared.
