Friday Fictionaeers – This Jolly Beggar

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.”

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 © Ted Strutz. Click on the frog and join in!

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!

Curtain Fall

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!

Curtain Fall

He was a wandering musician, traversing continents, twanging on his banjo, a wordless witness to a universal language.

No one knew his origins.

Still the story is told that he came from another world. And one came seeking him whose betrayal had left him mute. Powerless to make him return, she took with her the memory of his youthful fingers dancing on strings, his eyes expressive of no other purpose than seeking nameless tunes of faithless love.

Raindrops fall like tears on tree-trunk curtains, ethereal remnants of her departure from this world.

In a midnight café, a tuneful banjo plays.

The Old Man and the Sea

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!

The Old Man and the Sea

“Bleu, bleu, l’amour est bleu,” crooned the old man beneath his cap
Remembering the promise he had failed to keep as a lad of nineteen
He stood before the sea, and his heart surged piteously
Remembering the promise he had failed to keep as a man of thirty-two
“Comme l’eau, comme l’eau qui court,” sang he, wading into surf
Remembering the promise he had failed to keep as a cavalier of fifty-four
His blood ran cold as a sea-voice joined in
“Fou comme toi et fou comme moi,”
then down he went
in a sea-embrace
till he sang
no
more.

Continue reading “The Old Man and the Sea”

Love’s Ballad

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!

Love’s Ballad

Roses he gave her, she took them in her hand
The petals silk warm, still harboring his touch
She knew not where to look, his face was a beacon
A desire of yearning, too bright to stare upon,
So she stared at the roses, their rosy tinge her own.

The years they raced by full of home, hearth, and heaven
Their love knew no bounds and their eyes saw no other
Until the day came when a lone grave boasted roses
One standing alone to see light like a beacon, eclipsed,
And roses ice crusted by death’s wintry dew.

The DaDa Vinci Code

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!

It was the first meeting of the Dadaist Society of New York’s Upper Downside. Mistrel McGarte chewed her lower lip mechanically. Rrrose IV had yet to show with the coveted clue to the Mona Lisa’s jilted lover’s true descendant: none other than Danette Brown, capitalist author of the DaDa Vinci Code. Mistrel sighed. There was a time for absurdity but not now. The capitalist clock was ticking alongside the urinal in the art gallery. A postman handed her an envelope. Mistrel tore it open. Fine particles of detritus, paint, bone floated free. A note inside read, “DNA here final clue.”

Fallen

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; likewise, dVerse’s Sarah prompts us towards “Poetics,” the watchword this time being fungi.

Fallen

No longer there the Edenic tree
though long I linger near its breathing traces
like a dreamer awakening after a song-vision,
aware only of her pounding heart
as witness to the night’s transactions
when what once was a maiden day eternal
or a thousand years, where golden bridges lighted woods
aflame with love so deep betrayal seemed impossible
until a serpent came with clever tongue
sowing seeds of deception,
sly in its jealous conceptions,
and I, plunging into deadly deceits,
unstrung the heart-cords that made us whole,
left instead with the decaying remnants,
and vernal roots now dotted with fungus.