Friday Fictioneers: Fire

At first it’s yellow and almost comforting, lizard tongues flickering into the night. Then it’s bright orange, the colour of butterflies’ wings. The fire roars in fury, hungry perhaps. Thomas waits, he can do nothing else. Rope twists his skin at wrists and ankles and he can smell the sweat of the man who holds him like a wild horse. Sparks furl upwards, dancing and twirling through the air with its winter bite. Thomas sighs softly then stumbles as he’s pushed forward. He hopes his comrade has hidden the powder well: he prefers to explode rather than burn.

Friday Fictioneers

Photo credit: J Hardy Carroll

Friday Fictioneers: Annie

Annie smiles, nods out of the window. Outside, a small rabble of children gather with balloons and brightly coloured, badly spelt signs. The adults look on nervously, wanting everything to go just right so they can virtue-signal on social media later. Annie laughs, wipes a tear at the sight of the children’s determined faces. The beautifully out of tune sound of ‘Happy Birthday’ rings out across the trees, echoing through the house and resonating in Annie’s bones, she thinks. The children put their masks back on, let the balloons go and walk away, waving. 

Photo credit: Ted Strutz

Friday Fictioneers

Friday Fictioneers: Wedding

I never wanted to marry you. It was simply the absence of alternatives. No career, only a job I hated. Nobody else that was likely to ask me either, the other men had moved out and moved on. There was  just you. My parents made it clear that if I stayed I would be nothing more than an unpaid cook, cleaner and carer. No thank you. And so there was the quickie wedding, the shiny nylon dress and warm fizz, one glass only.  Cheap motel, thin walls and police sirens all night.

She cries as she looks at the grave.

Friday Fictioneers

Photo credit: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Friday Fictioneers: Train

Jack gazes at the train as it crouches black on the rails, like a bear ready to spring. He imagines how the carriage will reek of boys like him, packed tight like matches end to end in the seats, smelling of fear and newly laundered uniforms. He does not want to go. He repeats the phrase desperately to himself, as if it will catch him up and swoop him off through the gap in the carriages and out to sea. Brakes scream like gulls and the train shivers, ready to leave. Jack stares straight ahead as he climbs on.

Friday Fictioneers

Photo credit: Jennifer Pendergast

Friday Fictioneers: Dolphin

She remembers the shiny bow of its back, curving like a kiss from the waves. They’d been walking the cliff path, salt wind stinging their cheeks as they looked across the water to the long blue horizon. This was the last day – tomorrow was the six hour drive back, with suitcases full of dirty clothes and heads full of ocean, sand dunes and the cat-cries of gulls. She hung the glass dolphin in the kitchen window, where it blurred the bleak edges of her reality, a bittersweet talisman of escape and regret.

Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: Jean L.Hays

Friday Fictioneers: Story

I’m the story, sitting under the palms and dreaming of home. I came here looking for absences, margins, the floes of experience isolated from the buzz of reality.  The cool pink of dawn warmed with cries of birds I don’t recognise, the long slow blue of a sea without waves, searching the shoreline for a peace that I can’t find inside my own head. I came not to escape but to discover the next beginning so I can start writing the last end. It’s my first solo trip out of England and the red lights are shining my way home.

Friday Fictioneers is a 100 word flash fiction challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Photo credit: C.E. Ayr

Friday Fictioneers: Beginning

She’s had her hair cut short, doesn’t like it. Thinks it makes her look old and grey. But she is both of these things so figures she may as well learn to live with it, if not love it. She’s not sure who she wants to be this year: brave, bold and inspirational or maybe serene, tranquil and calming. Doesn’t think it’s possible to be both. She wants to travel too – Croatia, Macedonia, Italy, nowhere far-flung to be honest. And she wants to write, with conviction and courage and creativity. She doesn’t want to be a shadow. Happy New Year.

Friday Fictioneers

Photo credit: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (also the host of Friday Fictioneers, a 100 word flash fiction writing challenge).

Friday Fictioneers: Aftershock

James sighs, a long slow outbreath that hangs in the air like smog. He picks up the rain-spattered newspaper but can’t bear to look at it, shakes his head and stares away from her, out to the snowy garden. Ruth considers trying to cheer him up with a few well-chosen and witty words but dries up even as she thinks of what to say, knowing how he feels isn’t to be made a joke of. The week before seems like a different age – at least they had something to hope for. Now, post-election, there’s nothing. This is Boris’s world now.

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and it’s a flash fiction challenge – 100 words in response to the photo prompt. This week’s piece is in response to the recent UK general election results.

Photo credit: Dale Rogerson

Friday Fictioneers: House

I knew I needed a different approach, that using your rules would never work. So I planned secretly, in those long hours when you forbade me freedom. You thought the isolation would break me, make me need you more, but in that cold silence you set me free. I hid my face from you while smiling sweetly and sorrowfully and it didn’t matter because you didn’t look at me anyway. I used my body to bear your hatred, cushioning myself against your rage, and all the time I spun spiders webs of deceit that trapped you as I left.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” – Audre Lord

Friday Fictioneers is a weekly flash fiction writing challenge – 100 words in response to a photo prompt. I’m writing a lot of “I” pieces at the moment which I’m trying to move away from but not this week, apparently. Word count = 99.

Photo credit: Mikhael Sublett.

Friday Fictioneers: Falling

I’m free-falling, diving deep and down, down the rabbit hole with the red pill stinging my tongue. I’m Alice trying to find my way home, Dean Moriarty searching desperately for oblivion, Ahab obsessed to the death with his whale. I am every character I’ve ever read, my self dissipating into the long slow blue that lies before me, trails of who I used to be drifting across country like wildfire. I’m every fear and loathing you’ve ever had, the warning raven at your window, the silent wolf behind that door. I’m melting into water, crying for my red shoes.

This week’s genre was non-fiction out of mind experience – the bus reminded me of nightmares I had after having an anaesthetic. Word count = 99 words.

Friday Fictioneers is a weekly flash fiction writing challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.