Friday Fictioneers: Free

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 © Roger Bultot

Free

The highchair was the last thing to join the pile. It was next to the car seat, the crib, the diaper caddy, and playpen. Marie taped the tear-stained “Free” sign on the highchair.

Inside, Marie sat in the former nursery and sobbed.

Rodney ascended the stairs. “I got the last of the… Oh, baby.”

“Everything’s out there now.”

“I would have done it.”

“I just needed it out. I can’t look at it anymore.”

“It’s gonna sit out there. Nobody’s gonna take it.”

“I know. Maybe the garbage man will.”

“We can try again.”

“They’ll just take that one, too.”

Friday Fictioneers: The Curious Odyssey Of Roderick Van Pelt, III

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 © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

I’ve read a lot about people struggling with the new block editor. I didn’t know what everybody was talking about until now. For whatever reason, mine was updated today. So…. Fun! Fortunately, I can make anything sexy. Look at your screen. Yeah, it’s sexy now.

The Curious Odyssey Of Roderick Van Pelt, III

This shop, in its back back room was the culmination of my quest.

“Password?”

 “Saint Salamander sequestered seven soulful sisters.”

I was ushered to the back back room, down a clandestine flight of stairs, to a door with seven locks, each requiring a combination, key, retina scan, and handprint. The seven soulful sisters, I presume.

Per the instructions, I bowed my head, entered, and knelt before the throne shrouded in elaborate curtains. One mustn’t behold the face of God.

“Lord, I beseech you, our world is suffering. Why, Lord? Why do you allow such suffering?”

God spake unto me, “Meow!”

Friday Fictioneers: Menagerie

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 © CEAyr

Menagerie

I awoke disoriented. The bed, hard and small, wasn’t mine. The room wasn’t mine. The light coming through the window wasn’t sunlight.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The scene below looked like something out of the ‘20s, the 1920s. Vertigo nearly overtook me. I stepped back and took a series of deep breaths.

I regained a modicum of composure and reapproached the window. This time I looked to the sky, or what should have been sky, to find only a ceiling.

You are the twelfth arrival since then. They keep their human exhibit well stocked.

Friday Fictioneers: Gorgeous Ladies Of Bioluminescence

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 © J Hardy Carroll

Gorgeous Ladies Of Bioluminescence

The first cases were thought to be hoaxes. Those who wanted to believe thought them aliens.

The first glowers* were kept in laboratories, subjected to experimentation, and shunned.

“Not another virus.”

The scientific community announced the bioluminescence was caused by pollutants in the water and food supplies.

Governments leaped into action. After months of deliberation, they decided to deliberate the issue. It was added to the calendar three months hence. After two years of debates, they decided to reduce pollution by 30% by the year 2142.

Now, the darkies, or people who don’t glow, are the pariahs subject to experimentation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*That’s people who glowed, not glares, frowns, or scowls. I’m sure everybody got that, but just in case. I’d be the one person, “What? They gave it a mean look and hoped it would go away?”

Friday Fictioneers: The Haunting

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 © Ted Strutz

The Haunting

The property has been in my family for generations. The house was built by a great to some power grandparent. Now, it’s fallen to me.

No one’s lived there for years. Local legends have the house being haunted. Knowing ghosts don’t exist doesn’t make the house any less creepy.

I made it halfway through my second night before admitting the strange noises weren’t products of the wind. There was no wind.

The property has been in the family long enough.

******

“Good job, Hershel. You almost convinced me.”

“Gets ‘em every time. We’re not goin’ back to livin’ on the streets.”