Friday Fictionaeers – This Jolly Beggar

Afternoon Bobcats

Afternoon Bobcats

The scirocco blew in our second day in Trieste. We sheltered from the blood rain in an old church.
How long? Joan asked.
‘The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind.’
Not my favorite. Hurrah for May 17th, 1966!
‘Judas!’ a voice yelled from the crowd that day when Bob switched from folk songs to electric guitar.
But that year, he wrote my favorite, today anyway.
I watched her cradle her sleeping baby. He wrote it when his eldest son was born. It was released on June 22, 1979.
A single.
“Forever Young.”
We looked out. The rain had stopped.

“Forever Young” echoes the priestly blessing from the book of Numbers:
“May the LORD bless and keep you . . . .”

Genre: Fiction; Word count: 100
Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt © Brenda Cox and limit our words to 100 or less. 
Click on the frog to read more stories.

Fear

Genre: Fiction
Word Count: 100

Fear

I’ve heard it said that a woman should never be afraid of her own life. Yet I am. Every day the crowd multiplies. I grow old. The room grows smaller. Am I to be buried alive? Not with grave dirt, but with ghosts. The more confined I, the more rampant they. What diabolical art is this, that the dead suck life out of those they abhor? My nights are theirs to engorge upon in hopeless pain, my days spit out remnants of their celebration. For as vines strangle and overgrown briars encroach, my ghosts encircle me. And I am afraid.

Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers and Eugi’s Weekly Prompt. Eugi asks us to use any variation on the word prompt (“celebration”).

Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (above, © Alicia Jamtaas) and limit our words to 100 or less. Click on the frog to read more stories and participate.

Lightfoot’s Last Testament

If
one day
you are told
this was an accident,
caused by your increasing crescendo
of scorn, my darling,

don’t
spill

precious ink

tracking why?
in (what your sort) calls poetry.

Poetry is simply

breaking through walls.

[Addendum for Friday Fictioneers:]

United World Chronicle, 6/5/2100: Missing Woman.

Christina Lightfoot left this note and photograph for her fiancé, Lord Ettlesworth. After multiple crashes, she successfully flew her automobile into outer space. The vehicle reportedly runs on a nuclear-powered, zero-gravity generator. The World Authorities Commission Force (WACF) is requesting information in return for zero lifetime taxes on sales, income, property, and travel.

For Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers (100 words or less; click frog for more) 
and Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt, 37 words, "Crescendo."

Buggy Annals

Nothing in you, nothing in me,
Nothing as far as eye can see
Nothing to say who made me,
Nothing makes itself plain to me
Nothing will be my guide and creed
No absolutes but what my thoughts decree
Ruler of my own destiny
Master of sky, land and sea
No limit to whatever desires mingle, set free
It’s all about me, from A to Z
I’m free to decide what’s best for me
What’s wrong for you may be right for me
Ask Mother Nature, what’s cruelty?
Evolution’s progress, look at me!
[SPLAT!]
– Last sounds of Nobigbug Butméé

Genre: Poetry
Word Count: 100

I’ve been rather under the weather lately but roused myself to participate in Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers and Eugi’s Weekly Prompt. I’ve read many of the entries already and am inspired. Eugi asks us to use any variation on the top photo or the word prompt (“mingle”). Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (above) and limit our words to 100 or less. Check them out!

Hot Pursuit

Somewhere on this busy street the culprit Janus was hiding. The time of the assignation was near. If he didn’t show up with Janus in tow, he knew he was finished.

Suddenly a flash of orange streaked past the fish vendor. Diving through torsos and between legs, arms outstretched, crawling painfully on his knees, he caught the miscreant. The job was done.

****

He knocked on her door. When it opened, Janus leapt into her arms.

“Oh you darling!” She buried her face in the tabby’s fur. “He wasn’t any trouble, was he?”

“Oh no!” he said, handing her the roses.

genre: fiction; word count: 100; Rochelle Wisoff-Fields kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less. Photo prompt © Roger Bultot. Click on the frog and join in!

All I Need is the Air

Andrea watched as the trailer rig pulled into their lot. This was a new beginning, for them and their children.

She turned to look for George who was standing by a small creek looking lost.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re wondering why we lived like kings for so long when we could have been happy as paupers like now.”

“I never meant you to have to start over like this.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey! We’re bankrupt, not dead. And all I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.”

Jeeves Clairovoyant

Even before these events transpired, my barrista, the summum bonum of my life, divined them in the grinds.

She summoned me (“Bertie”), supplied my ususal combustible concoction, and intoned, “Enjoy.”

It wasn’t what she said but the way she said it.

“Rad, Jeeves, what ho!” said I.

As I blew out the door, winds exceeding 90 mph blew through the Savannah café. I landed down the road on Aunt Agatha’s bulldog, Horatio, who was as pleased to see me as a vulture on resurrection day.

My espresso, as predicted, survived. Extricating myself from Horatio, I took a sip. I enjoyed.

genre: fan fiction; word count: 100; Rochelle Wisoff-Fields kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less. Photo prompt © Dale Rogerson Click on the frog and join in!

Doldrums of Diku

The Doldrums of Diku had arrived at the museum
Silently they stood as we gazed open-mouthed at them.
Gifts from advanced space aliens shouldn’t be met with rebuff
So we studied each stony structure with all the right stuff.
From blue to pink they’d change and then back again
Interstellar modern art of singularly useless distraction.
Then came the day the eggs cracked down the middle
But excitement had waned and no one cared a fiddle
As if the Doldrums of Diku had weighed down our spirits
Till what once would have thrilled, now just bored us to pieces.

genre: fantasy; word count: 99; Rochelle Wisoff-Fields very kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less prompted by a photo. Click on the frog and join in!

The Only Way

Word Count: 100; Genre: Realism

The Only Way

“You’re in my world now. What do you think of it?”
“Like a fish out of water. Like I stand out in an unpleasant way, like I don’t belong.”
“Does that offend you? Want out?”
“Not really. I mean, it’s not your world I want. It’s you.”
“To know me is to know the world I came from. You understand?”
“I do. But you’re still missing the point. It’s you that makes my idiotic world and yours worth knowing. I couldn’t care less otherwise.”
“So our ‘love covers a multitude of sins’, in both our worlds?”
“It’s the only way.”

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields very kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less prompted by a photo.

Click on the frog to join the party!

The Ancient Warner

The Ancient Warner

Listen!
it was a night like this
I walked out of Mariner-Labs
the night of my birth
my skin clothing perfection
flawless, selfless, programmed
an AI born into a world
seemingly decipherable
aged the moment I awoke
to look into coveting eyes
human eyes
and I walked out
while they yelled behind me
because this was wrong
this world bent
this people a mistake
surely, a mistake,
and in the diaphanous fog
I touched the Narnian lamppost
I saw the end of time
the Maker
and I worshipped
and returned as a warning
on a night like this

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields invites us weekly to join the Friday Fictioneers in their creative quests of a hundred words or less, prompted by a photo. Click on the frog to join in!