Friday Fictionaeers – This Jolly Beggar

Love Stronger than Death

Join us at Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
and limit our words to 100 or less. 
Click on the frog to read more stories.Word count: 100

Everyone had left for home. Vikram remained standing by the freshly turned earth until high above the stars lit one by one.

He could no more make his legs stir than make the stars fall with his tears.

“A wedding for a first miracle. Ever wonder why?”

Aanya’s voice. Vikram closed his eyes. “No.”

“That day! That wine! Imagine! Rich, savory, fiery with a love stronger than death. You believe that?”

“I do.” His voice shook. “But ….”

“I’m not where you’re standing. The God that turns water into wine, turns mourning into dancing. Vikram, our dance has barely begun.”

Psalm 30: 11-12
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

Song of Songs 8:6
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the LORD.

John 2:1-11
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.
When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”
And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.
And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it.
When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

The Smuggler of Rainbows

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Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt © Claire Fuller
and limit our words to 100 or less. 
Click on the frog to read more stories.Word count: 100

The Smuggler of Rainbows

“It’s just a tire shop, Dad! This can’t be where we’re meeting the rainbow-smuggler!”
Inside, a cheerful woman in a colorful sari stood out of the rain, waiting.
“I’d like a rainbow,” Retnam said from her wheelchair. “Where are they?”
“They’re hiding in plain sight, my dear!” the rainbow-smuggler said, shrugging. “Just reach into a tire.”
Retnam did, pulling out a huge rainbow-colored taffy.
She laughed, then frowned.
“But it’s not REAL!” she cried.
“Look up, Retnam!” the woman said, pointing to the rain-cleared sky. “There will always be a rainbow over your head, even when you can’t see it.”

Dante Bill and Mark Twain Take A Walk

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Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt © LIsa Fox
and limit our words to 100 or less. 
Click on the frog to read more stories.

Note on the players: Dante Bill is an allusion to his namesake from the Inferno; Mark Twain acts as Virgil, his writer-guide through hell. Neither has been consigned there.

Genre: Partial Epic
Word Count: 99

Dante Bill (colorful rapper): Dude, where’s the fire and brimstone? It’s freezing cold here.

Mark Twain (dead white male): Hell’s different from place to place.

What’s with the shrines there?

Shrines? Oh, toilets. That’s for . . . .

Yeah, why the big deal?

They’re the only ones in this area.

That stinks, man! Crowds of woke politicians and their virtue-signaling kool-aid drinkers jumping up and down like yo-yo’s. They could just go in the woods.

Problem is, it’s against the rules. Their punishment is that they have to follow the sign.

Where does it point?

To Satan’s toilet.

A Venn Diagram Play

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Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (©Jennifer Pendergrast)
and limit our words to 100 or less. 
Click on the frog to read more stories.

Genre: Realism
Word Count: 100

A Venn Diagram Play

Mommy plays Lego with me
I’m four and she’s thirty-three
But I make up the games we play
And she does exactly what I say.

We share the firetruck and the fireman
He’s my Daddy and he’s her husband
I get Santa for a party favor on my birthday
She gets a candy for baking a cake so gay.

I get a funny-shaped red Lego piece
And save two for Daddy when he says, “Please.”
The red truck is outside my diagram
It’s for the children killed in Afghanistan
By an unmanned drone, they’re in no one’s Venn.

Don’t cry.

The Pentagon confirmed on November 3, 2021, that after the disastrously chaotic withdrawal of American troops which resulted in billions of dollars of military weaponry, hardware, and aircraft left behind as well as the suicide bombing of thirteen young American soldiers, three days later, it carried out a deadly drone strike that mistakenly killed ten innocent civilians on August 29: three Afghan adults and seven children.

The Adviser

Rochelle, Happy 9th Anniversary of hosting FFs!

Genre: Science 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.

The violent shuddering of masonry and the collapse of the great cathedral had left a thick cloud of dust like a shroud over the city. It settled like particles of mist coating every moving creature, turning everything a sinister gray. Here, the dead had numbered 750,000.

We eyed them from the Adviser, the multi-dimensional-intergalactic space lab, Commander Fauci. His otherwise pristine white lab coat was covered with beagle hair as he emerged from his I-CNN studio. He looked unconcerned. The interview had gone well.

Had we made the right choices? Only time would tell. Meanwhile, we needed to cover our tracks.

The Bus – Friday Fictioneers

Genre: Realism 
Word count: 99
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.

The Bus

Honey Humberg had waited for this day all her life.

She’d worked and saved to build the “Humberg Bus” from scratch, designing, commissioning and assembling it, part by part. She painted it in homage to the DIY hippies that were her inspiration, free thinkers and dreamers all. She would tour Europe showcasing her singing talent and the world would fall at her feet.

In the square, the crowd cheered when the Humberg Bus arrived.

They left when she began singing.

“How much you want for the bus?” a man asked.

“One billion pounds,” she said bitterly, turning away.

“Done.”

The Load

Genre: Fiction; Word count: 100
Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (© Sandra Crook) 
and limit our words to 100 or less.

I counted them too, you know: every turn, every curve, every meter. Every pothole, aggravation, near disaster.

For what it’s worth, the load was never the point.

It was where I was going.

My only regret is you were stuck with me for every millimeter of it, and you hated it.

Life was too slow for you.

It was too fast for me.

I had a load to carry: responsibility to those who depended on me.

You were looking for an escape.

I was looking at the journey’s end.

I wish you could know now it was worth it.

Letter from the Past

Dear Rochelle and fellow Friday Fictioneers, This is my second stab at writing for this week’s prompt. I guess I must be out of practice: instead of fictioneering I ranted for a hundred words, posted then banished from inlinkz when I realized a piece of fiction it was not. Back to the photo prompt and finding my muse again. :>)

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

Andrea gripped her husband’s hand tightly as Grace ripped open the letter. It was from her birth mother. The fifteen-year-old had made them promise to give it to Grace when she too reached fifteen.

You were loved every moment I carried you. Just wanted you to know that. There won’t be a moment when I don’t love you.

Sighing, Grace looked up from the blunt, childish scrawl, a smile on her face.

“I believe her. She could have thrown me away like a piece of garbage. Speaking of which, Dad, can we get back to fixing up my motorcycle?”

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.