Flash Fiction

Now or Never

/ michaelwynnauthor / 41 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT ©Jill Wisoff

Laura stared at the city lights imagining the party people guzzling champagne and caviar. She was of this city too; they were the lights of her youth’s dreams, so why was she serving stolid stew of the cheapest cuts every night?
“Buck,” she called to a man with a helping of her stew hanging from his moustache, “Is this it then?”
Buck was nonplussed, “Good food, good company. What more is there?”
‘Hell!’ she thought. She flipped the closed sign round on the door. “Lock up when you’re finished.”
“Where you going?”
“To find company who know how to eat.”

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

Self Portrait

/ michaelwynnauthor / 56 Comments

This week, an idea that has been bobbing about in my mind for a while now without form or structure. I’ve tried to realise it here but I’m not sure about the result; it will be interesting to hear your opinions.

PHOTO PROMPT © Jan Wayne Fields

 

 

 

 

 

Salvin writhed in his slumber, trapped in a painting. He knew it from the thick black outline round his shape; the mirror, creased in the middle and suspended from a  staircase sweeping to infinity on the neck of a frightened horse.
The sun burnt fiercely with the promise inherent in bright colours waning to the calm of cobalt. Yet where he stood was arid.
Time dripped blood-like from a broken watch caught in the gnarled fingers of a dead tree. He recognised the tree in the mirror.
Snatching up brushes and violent hues, he lunged at the canvas and began, “Self-Portrait.”

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

(A short explanation: Van Gogh would often include a dead or dying flower or branch  to represent himself in his paintings and obviously symbolism pervades most art. Here we’re supposed to be in an artist’s dream.)

The Primary School Teacher

/ michaelwynnauthor / 62 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

PROMPT © Douglas M. MacIlroy

They’d been her charges since they were five; now they were dispersing to higher schools. She liked to think with a good start. She was sending them out to bloom into the butterflies she hoped they’d become.
But today was sadder than the emptied playground.
This year one butterfly wouldn’t emerge. Melissa wouldn’t be graduating.
As her pupils waved goodbye, she imagined she saw the pretty smile and ponytails.
‘Why did it have to be her?’ But she knew she’d be asking the same for any of them. ‘Why did it have to be?’ Sometimes life just doesn’t proffer answers.

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

Maybe Tomorrow

/ michaelwynnauthor / 60 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Yarnspinnerr

The solid slab of heat pinned Forbes down into his chair. The wicker scored a painful lattice in his dripping thighs but not painful enough to consider moving.
For want of anything else to look at, his hooded eyes rested on the ceiling fan and the flies buzzing endless figures-of-eight beneath it. Their energy drained him more.
“Any chance of having the fan on?”
“Fan broken many years.”
“I’ll fix it for a beer. What’s wrong with it?”
“No ‘lectric, need re-wiring.”
Forbes sighed, as he had the day before and the one before that, “Put the beer on the tab.”
Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

Hope is Forever, an Allegory

/ michaelwynnauthor / 41 Comments

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Proudly stood that solitary tree amid the ochre bricks and daisy-strewn lawns. It grew where the grass wasn’t mown; a magnet for kids from streets around, its arms constantly full of adventures enacted by marauders, happily distracted from the tedium of long holidays.
So we couldn’t comprehend the sudden death, lightning dealt our friend. The leaves crumbled and the lifeless branches humbled; it remained bare for five years and bound with barbed wire to keep the children down, who just climbed higher.
Until one spring, a sprout of green and branches swarmed again with naive belief and that prodigious disregard for mortality.

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

The Last Day Mending Nets

/ michaelwynnauthor / 31 Comments

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Saline tanned and rope-roughed hands, the old fisherman pulls the needle through and round, over and hitch as he’s always done.
The waves against the sea wall fizzle respect for a worthy adversary; the gulls keen camaraderie from a deferential blue sky.
A disabled, rotting hull, he mends nets but can no longer fish. His stagnant, rock-pooled tears harbour painful pining beneath dead eyes, lamenting brutal years of toil.
Life’s soundtrack of the sea’s noises, fades like a relentlessly turning record slowing to an elegy. There’s a last weary wisp of breath and the needle drops unnoticed to the cobbles.

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

The Circles of Oppression

/ michaelwynnauthor / 56 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

“A cult is a malevolent circle, Mrs Mantle. A circle has no egress.”
“So how do we get her out?”
“She has closed her mind on the proposition of this twisted clique, until she opens it up, she’s lost.”
I looked down into the dregs of my coffee. “She is surrounded by others like ranks of concentric circles imprisoning her; you cannot break through from the outside. The weakness is on the inside. The only weapon, independent thought.”
“You mean she has to think for herself?”
“Is she used to that Mrs Mantle? Has she been allowed to do that before?”

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

Cold Turkey

/ michaelwynnauthor / 41 Comments

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Björn Rudberg

“Dribble said it was in the goatherd’s hat. There’s loads of ‘em.” Fingal bit his lip; this could get ugly.
“Why Spanish goatherd hats in Liverpool? It’s not exactly goat country.”
He began rifling the mound of woollen hats.
The shopkeeper approached the pair dismantling his display, “Need assistance gentlemen?”
Fingal exchanged looks with Crammer, “Just fancied a goatherd hat.”
“They’re Peruvian alpaca herders’ hats. The goatherd’s are there. We’ve only one…”
“I’ll take it,” blurted Crammer.

Outside, his shaking hands fumbled a tobacco pouch from inside the hat.
“Thank heavens,” sighed Fingal, “I wish Dribble would quit hiding his gear.”

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

The Trouble with Moths…

/ michaelwynnauthor / 61 Comments

Well I’ve managed another one. I haven’t posted lately as everything is hectic here and I couldn’t commit the time to commenting on others, so didn’t feel I should post mine. Hence I have two or three stories in the bank which will hopefully fit the next time we have a toilet or cold weather for a prompt. I hope you all enjoy this week’s effort and look forward to hearing your views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

Drab moths streamed toward the streetlight, like they had to her when she shone, clamouring to be close and desperate for transference of some of her butterfly colour.
They came mouthing exaggerated air kisses and contrived adulation and drowned her in “Darlings!” and “Looking absolutely gorgeous! Loved the show.”
But with the light fading, the moths deserted her for this year’s sparkle.
Tears of realisation trickled over her raw cheeks.
She slid down the lamppost to slump at its base but firm hands caught her and pulled her up.
“Why? It’s you. You’re here.”
“Always have been, didn’t you notice?”

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.

The Cat Lady

/ michaelwynnauthor / 29 Comments

 

 

 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Sarah Ann Hall

“Scary cats, Dad. Funny watching the RSPCA man catching them all.”
They picked their way through the gloom, gagging at the stench of overflowing litter trays.
“Why did Auntie have so many cats?”
“They were drawn here, son. She wouldn’t turn them away. If she had, she could have afforded electricity. Light and warmth in the place.”
Some objects on a shelf shone bright through the dilapidation.
“What are they?”
“Urns. To keep loved ones’ ashes.”
“Auntie had so many friends.”
“But she didn’t.”
Andrew read the name on one, ‘Smudge,’ sighing he glanced over the others, ‘Marmaduke, Sox, Empress…’

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 words story based on a photo prompt. Hosted by Rochelle. Read the other entries here.