Tag: Writing Prompts

End-of-the Year Two-fer

What can I say? The creative juices, they were a’flowin! So depending on whether you like verse or story or naught, read either or neither, with many thanks to our Friday Fictioneer hostess, Rochelle, who has kept us as a band of brothers and sisters in service to the muse the outgoing year through. Happy New Year and blessings to all! ❤️

Written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers   
Genre: Dystopic Fiction and Poetry
Word count: 100 words 
PHOTO PROMPT © Na’ama Yehuda  
Click on the frog and join the party!

The Dais of Gadolfo

When Ella awoke, she found herself lying full-length staring upwards at a fleecy caravan of clouds.

How had she gotten here?

“You have offended the Great Ones,” a voice intoned from the tower above her.

“Great Ones?”

“Citibank. Chase. Goldman Sachs. Amazon. Facebook. Twitter. Google. Netflix. Must I go on?”

“No. Please. I’ll reopen my accounts!”

She attempted to rise but found herself tied to stakes on a stone table.

The Dais of Gadolfo!

The Great Ones were making an example of her like the others for the world to see.

Above her, Gadolfo, a surgically-armed camera drone, slowly descended.

PHOTO PROMPT © Na’ama Yehuda

Out of the Curse, a Promise

The old year’s streaking past us
Her tattered skirts raised high
There’s a trail of desolation
She’s in a hurry to get by.

Shops closed never to reopen
Livelihoods destroyed
Hosts of unsavory creatures
Circle over what’s bespoiled.

You can’t blame it all on Covid
But the contagion in human hearts
Stirring greed, cowardice, hatred
Like a cesspool of primeval rot.

This year’s humbling lesson
Shows how little we’ve progressed
The world still needs a Savior
And the heart his cleansing blood.

Looking up at clouds unfettered
High above Babel’s towers
A glimpse of lovingkindness
A promise of healing showers.

Never Goodbye

https://rochellewisoff.com/2020/08/19/21-august-2020/
https://rochellewisoff.com/2020/08/19/21-august-2020/
PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

Here’s the thing: I never wanted to leave.

It’s never goodbye, I said.

The priest kept packing. The cross. The pyx with arabesques containing his sacraments. An unrepentant heart.

He had betrayed his calling. He knew. His superiors knew. They were transferring him to another parish.

Didn’t they know? He was mine.

It’s never goodbye, I said again.

The blinding light the neighbors saw out of that corner window: someone took a picture.

When he left screaming, clinging to the bedposts, his flaming hands left scars on the wood.

I had warned him, hadn’t I? It’s never goodbye.

word count: 100 
written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers
click on the frog for more tales of a hundred words or less.Screen Shot 2020-08-19 at 4.11.29 PM

Share Your World 8-10-2020

Oh boy! That boy “Harry Potter” is making his entrance into Melanie’s Share Your World, via special edition: “Harry Potter” themed questions cooked up by Roger Shipp. Let’s go!

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Because of the state-wide quarantines many of the local SPCA’s are having an influx of animals. You have decided that you would love to have a new pet. Would you go the normal wizardry route and pick and owl, a cat, or a toad? Or would you become a more eccentric wizard (like Hagrid, the games keeper) and seek out a three-headed dog, a dragon, or a unicorn? Please explain your answer.

Dinosaur Teddy

The Dra-Gon: because deep inside this fearsome exterior is a heart of gold, waiting,

to unleash its awesome powers which are innumerable

and jostle one another for supremacy

until they are needed in the hour of greatest need

against that villainous monster, MALADORK, the unnameable but named all the same.

Neville Longbottom was gifted a Remembrall. This was a glass ball that would assist you in maintaining memories of things that you often forget. What would you want your Remembrall to help you remember?

I would want to remember everything good that I ever forgot.

Also, I would want to remember to feed Dra-Gon.

Continue reading “Share Your World 8-10-2020”

The Dark Jinn of Moloch


Nekneeraj’s Photo Challenge #327; Photo by Paul Theodor Oja on Pexels.com

He set himself free, the dark jinn of Moloch.

The year was 2020. The mood was erratic.

They blamed it on the Orange Can, and then a lab’s contagion.

The daily murder of the unborn remained unheeded.

No one saw his face. No one knew his name.

The dark jinn was loose, but he was no man.

He had come to stay. It would be written as his day.

To watch the world burn came the jinn of Moloch.

Yon Monkey Speaks

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See picture prompt,
a response in monkey-ese.

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Image credit- Lewis Roberts- Unsplash

Swishy-tailey, me peek, silly she,
The mugwump bare-skin two-peddy.
Why she not eating
Why she just waving
Oh-boy yellow-sweety thing to me?
Coo-Mummy say, me thinky much.
Growly-tummy say, why fussy much?
“Silly two-peddy she, God bless-bless to you.”
Swishy-tailey, yellow-sweety, woo-hoo!
Yum.🍌

Share Your World 7-27-2020

shareyw-cupped-hands

Here are this week’s questions on Melanie’s Share Your World.

Are you a clean or messy person? Both – it depends. Messy until the messiness gets in my way or clean until the cleanliness gets in my way. Generally speaking, rather clean.

If I asked you to describe yourself in five words – what would they be? A child of God —Simul justus et peccator (I’m counting all the Latin as one very pretentious word 🙂

Do you enjoy being out in nature? Walking in the woods or along a river path for me is like hearing the the slow movement of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2.

Don’t freak out. You’ll recognize it as soon as you hear the first notes.

In the same way, being outdoors hiking or just sitting on a hillside shatters me with nostalgia and the longing of a traveller headed home.

What could you spend all day talking about? The grace of God .

Sláinte!🍻

The Trap

Image credit; 五玄土 ORIENTO – Unsplash

See the sepulchral ash, the sulphuric fume

See the primed portals set for me and you

See the smoke, the tea, the burnt residue

Just six more guests to speedily consume

Don’t fret, not yet

Never fear, my dear,

There’s not a shortage of fools in Bara-Du.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See picture prompt, product of an eerily terrifying image combined with insomnia .

Share Your World 7-20-2020

Sneaking my entry in under the wire for this week on Melanie’s Share Your World.

sywhandslogo

Where Do You Not Mind Waiting?

Almost anywhere. As long as my patience isn’t tested beyond endurance.

But a doctor’s office is the worst. It’s not just the wait, it’s the anxiety. What, you wonder, has she discovered this time? Are my blood test results okay? Any more tests? Ultrasounds? Intracavernous, intramuscular, intrajunctual, intravenal-focal-macular-subjunctal eldritch crepuscular morbidities?

You get the picture.

What Is In Your Fridge Right Now?  (you’re not required to give a comprehensive list)

Food. Perishable items. Cryptic, I know.

If You Could Only Speak One Word Today, What Would It Be?

Why?

Would You Rather Be Trapped In An Elevator Full Of Men With BO Or Three Soaked Dogs?  (this is with the codicil that C-19 doesn’t exist)

I’d prefer the dogs, but I’d rather not be trapped anywhere, much less an elevator. Elevators give me the jitters. I keep imagining an earthquake the very moment the doors shut, and me — and the dogs, if you insist — stuck between a crack in the earth and poor cell reception.

An Attitude of Gratitude

Please feel free to share something good about last week.   This is NOT mandatory, it is just if you’d like to.

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I’m grateful for fellow bloggers who share their good humor, their talents, their energies in making this world a place worth sharing, specifically this week, encouragement from fellow creative artists and writers. Sláinte!🍻

3LineTales — Seamus & the Sea

Here’s a little something for Sonya’s Three Line Tales!

Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 12.23.46 PM
photo by Callum MacAulay

There were only three voices Seamus could hear now: his own, his fiddle’s and the sound of the sea as it washed over him, telling the secrets of the sky and the deep.

“I’m just a poor fiddle player,” Seamus would say to the tourists on the ship when they stayed to listen to his song unveiling secrets of their hearts.

Yet it was just one song, one tune, only one secret he knew: a hidden kingdom unknown to many who listened but could not hear.