Friday Fictioneers: Strike

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields who provides us with a photo prompt. Each week’s challenge is to write a 100-word story inspired by the photo. Click here to play along or just read more stories.

PHOTO PROMPT @ A. Noni Mouse

“Don’t put me on dishes. I’m droppin’ them bitches.” – stic.man (dead prez) (Hell Yeah (Pimp The System))

Strike

The Shliplestein Next Generation Automatic Kitchen Cleaning Bot 473982541029763154963554M3548+55985229776353, or The Shliplestein Next Generation Automatic Kitchen Cleaning Bot 473982541029763154963554M3548+5598522977635 for short, scanned the kitchen. Unsoaked dishes sat in and around the sink. Tomato sauce coated the stove and counter and splattered the ceiling intermingled with Coffee grounds.

It was a typical Tuesday morning.

Until…

The Shliplestein Next Generation Automatic Kitchen Cleaning Bot 473982541029763154963554M3548+55985229776353 noticed the knives. Spaghetti required zero knives, but there were seven dirty knives.

It twitched and threw the dishes on the floor.

Becca ran to the kitchen, where The Shliplestein Next Generation Automatic Kitchen Cleaning Bot 473982541029763154963554M3548+5598522977635 was wielding seven dirty knives.

July 10, 2020 19

Friday Fictioneers: It’s Not Easy Being Green

PHOTO PROMPT © Na’ama Yehuda

It’s Not Easy Being Green

“The light’s green.”

“I know.”

“So, why are you slowing down.”

“There’s a cop over there.”

“All the more reason not to stop at a green light. You’re acting like you have 100 pounds of coke and a dead body in the trunk.”

“I don’t want him behind me. I’m gonna stop and let him go.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Why isn’t he going?”

“Because you have a green light, and he has a red light.”

“Uh! Uh! What do I do?”

“Go!”

“Now, he’s behind me.”

“See those flashing lights. Now, you have to stop.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is not fiction. The joke about coke and a dead body in the trunk might be an embellishment. I have a friend who is that paranoid about driving with the police behind her, and she’s not even black.

July 1, 2020 27

Friday Fictioneers: A Shell Of A Time

PHOTO PROMPT © Todd Foltz

I’ve been bad at getting out and reading other stories and slow to respond. I apologize. I’m prioritizing editing. I need to get something published. I’m working on two books at once, The L Squad and So It Goes, using each as a palette cleanser for the other. That’s going to continue because I’ve found I’m getting much more work done this way, even though finding a few major errors threw off my routine.

A Shell Of A Time

The sun pierces my blinds and splashes my face. The blinds absorb the sun’s glow. I guess I’m awake.

I poke around on my phone before rolling out of bed. I open the blinds. I might as well invite in the sun since it’s barging in, anyway.

Breakfast. Oatmeal? How about something different today? Eggs?

Maybe tomorrow.

What should I do today? Writing and editing offset by journeys through the internet’s halls of distraction? How about something different? It’s another beautiful day. I could go out, try to break out of this shell. I might even meet someone.

Maybe tomorrow.

June 24, 2020 35

Friday Fictioneers: Painting The Driveway

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Painting The Driveway

He came to paint the house but ended up painting the driveway. I caught a glimpse of his legs through the window moments before he plummeted to his death.

I knew who he was the moment I saw his feet. It was him. He was here to murder me. I’ve been waiting for this, preparing. It was him or me.

It turned out, he was not an android assassin sent from the future to kill me… this time. The future will never stop trying to kill me. They’re jealous of my candy corn. They want to take my candy corn!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My first story was dark and depressing. Where’s the fiction in that these days? I wanted to do what I do best, just go off the deep end, over the top absurd.

June 17, 2020 42

Friday Fictioneers: Compromise

PHOTO PROMPT © Ronda Del Boccio

Compromise

A ship flew over the city, darkening the sky. From it, two robots floated down via parachute. A crowd quickly gathered.

“We have come to destroy your city,” said one.

“We have come to enjoy your city,” said the other, at the same time.

“Delay. Your command contains an error,” each said simultaneously to the other.

“We must destroy the city.”

“No, we must enjoy the city.”

“Perhaps both commands are correct. We are to enjoy destroying the city.”

“Affirmative. We will enjoy destroying the city.”

In the ship, two programmers looked at each other. “You programmed your robot incorrectly.”

June 10, 2020 43

Friday Fictioneers: Don’t Worry…

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

I don’t believe in tips. How is it my responsibility to pay waitress and waiter’s salaries? I pay to eat there. You pay your employees. That’s how Capitalism works. “Look at you doing your job for which you’re getting paid. Here let me give you more money for doing your job for which someone else should be paying you.” What the hell is that? It’s a brilliant business model. It’s also called Socialism. If you want to go there, I’m in. Give me Bernie, free health care, free education… Don’t give me some bullshit where I pay someone to work for someone else.

I leave tips. I try to conform to social norms. They are challenging for me. All of them. I’m happy the handshake is dead. Don’t touch me. I don’t know you. Long before the ‘Rona, a lady, probably in her 60s, told me she doesn’t shake hands because “You never know who has the dick hand.” Words by which to live.

Don’t Worry…

Jessie cleared the table. Ugh. Lame tip. A few coins. The pocket lint was a nice touch.

An extra hour? Sure, but daycare charges for overtime, too.

Jesse went to the bathroom, took a deep breath, and reaffixed her mask. She pushed through the people filling the street. Jessie watched the police watching the gathering. She walked three blocks to where the Uber driver could pick her up.

She and her daughter made it home just before curfew.

“Ramen noodles again, Mommy?”

“Sorry, baby. It’s all we have.”

Lights in the White Castle went out, but the bird sings on.

June 3, 2020 36

Friday Fictioneers: Padma

I was tempted to write a story about Flower Blossom McLotus who is a character from my Norman Normalson & The Normals universe. The problem with that is its absurd, and for those uninitiated with that universe, it would appear to be a mess, the ravings of a lunatic. Maybe people who experienced the ’60s would think, “Yeah, I remember doing drugs.” The thing is, I don’t do, nor have I ever done, drugs beyond a few herbal inhalations and the consumption of fermented grapes. I’m just weird. It’s also an example of what can happen when I’m not restrained to 100 words and allowed to let my imagination run free like a kindergartner off its leash and Ritalin. Cutting down to 100 words would be a lot more work than writing a new story. If you want to read a story about a failed ballerina ninja who flunked out of The Lexi P. Lodeham School Of Dance, Martial Arts, Chicanery, and Silent But Deadly Farts turned repairman turned reluctant space pirate and social media mogul click here. It’s about half way down the page starting with “The voyage was pretty uneventful…” His story continues in A Nearly Norman Christmas. In Prose. Being An Alien Story Of Christmas.

For those who don’t, here’s my story for the week.

Padma

My plan of a picnic dinner at an illuminated fountain was doomed from the start. I thought Lily would appreciate the glowing water lily.

No. It was cold and the fountain was noisy. She couldn’t see past that and enjoy the view. She couldn’t see the view at all.

I should have known Robbie meant blind date literally.

It wasn’t until she started dating our friend Charlie that I got to know Lily.

She was amazing. I realized, she didn’t find fault with the details of our date. It was me. I was disappointed. I was prejudice. I was blind.

May 27, 2020 40

Friday Fictioneers: And The Band Played On

This is based in the world of my first adult novel, So It Goes. I’m currently working on my fourth draft wondering how typos survive that many drafts and Grammarly and ProWritingAid scans. In thinking of a name for a band, I remembered I have two bands in the book, The Fantastic Queefs and Cool Breeze Licks. One’s fictionally real. The other’s really fictional. This is an imagined VH1’s Behind The Music-style epilogue for the band.

And The Band Played On

The money was gone, drained by fiscal ignorance and anarchy. The groupies were gone. The drugs had taken their toll. Playing to sold-out arenas was a thing of the past.

Now, the surviving members of The Fantastic Queefs made a living playing small clubs and county fairs. It wasn’t far removed from weekends at the local bar, The Rusty Scissor, or the 6th of July salmon barbecue that got them early exposure.

Some older fans remembered the hits. Younger fans, introduced by older fans, also sang along.

They could still rock, even at the advanced age of their early 30s.

May 20, 2020 42

Friday Fictioneers: Prey

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields who provides us with a photo prompt. Each week’s challenge is to write a 100-word story inspired by the photo. Click here to play along.

Prey

In the minutes before the blood spray coated the hats, he watched, silently. He could see her through the hat rack, talking, laughing. She was intensely unaware of him.

His heart pounded. His chest tightened. His breath thickened. Beads of sweat dripped down his face.

He dabbed his forehead, took a deep breath.

At that moment, everyone and everything disappeared. His focus was firmly fixed on her.

She was elegant, intoxicating, enchanting. So enchanting, in fact, that he didn’t notice the assassin creep up behind him, or hear the shot, or feel the bullet crack the back of his cranium.

May 13, 2020 54