Friday Fictioneers

#FF — The Best Kind of Rap

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields The Best Kind of Rap On the couch, snuggled in a throw, sipping a mug of Bailey-splashed hot rooibos tea, I listen to Roy Orbison sing, “Only the Lonely.” I feel abandoned by the present and sense no future. Snowflakes drift by outside, a flurry of past memories reminding me…

#FF — My Mother and I

PHOTO PROMPT © Lori Wilson My Mother and I In 1975, my father spent his junior school year in Cuba* as an Argentinian exchange student. He worked as a dishwasher at Shelly’s, named after the owner’s daughter, my mother. A year later I was born – in the laundry**. Grandpa kept us there until I…

#FF — “Help Me”

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart “Help Me” “Help me.” The faint muffled plea came from Rea’s left. While perusing the tall concrete fence, iron bars, and barbed wire, a tiny ::plop:: led her eyes to a plastic-wrapped packet resting in a drainage tube near the grass. Rea pretended to lose direction while reading her phone,…

#FF — Between 54 ½ and 71 ½

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast Between 54 ½ and 71 ½ I tell each adventurer: You won’t find it on any paper map or gps. You can reach it when conditions are just-so. You must dress in a particular way to be acknowledged. You must step in the right place on the right step. You…

#FF — Flower Child

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields Flower Child Why doesn’t Ellen understand she is an introvert? Is she so inscrutable? How does Ellen expect her to survive the private home she will share with eight other residents? She’d met the husband-wife caregivers and her soon-to-be roommate last week. Why were they smiling all of the time?…

#FF — Ta-da!

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson Ta-da! “Honey, I have a surprise for you.” Laney notes an excitement in Jones’ voice she hasn’t heard since they’d seen a white buffalo in Montana. “Can you give me a hint?” “A teensy one. Remember you told me I’d better have something to fill the vacuum with when I…

#FF — The Wheel

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast The Wheel Rolling along green in a golf cart with boot-licking lackeys, cracking crude jokes about wives, he can’t figure out which he disdains more, weak twitterings of lackeys or how uncomfortably tight his pants are after lunch. He lets out an onion-garlic belch, feels bile erupt, as sharp pain…