(Photo: Daniela Paola Alchapar on Unsplash)
They took the temperature
Of the crowd,
And realized they could
Twist skeins of truth into
Great blobs of knotted lies,
Then sell
As remedy
To now a fevered mob,
A distorted gospel
Bloated with melodramatic
Sighs.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Temperature in 37 words
“It cannot be saved.” The mechanic stuck stained hands in blackened pockets of oily coveralls.
Shelly tilted his head in bewilderment.
“Perhaps a new suspension…” he chanced. “A bit of wax or paint job.” Shelly could not recall the last time that the car was operational, nor how to do a thing on its behalf, but surely all that the conveyance needed was an odd term or two and the tinkering of a sufficiently grimy man.
“The only suspension that can help this pile of rust,” the mechanic muttered, “will be one that suspends it en route to wrecking.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Fleur Lind
It was the opposite of everything. No more the steady breath of fire in the hearth. No more the solid oaken walls that Grandpa hewed and Grandma charred. No more the steady view that only seasons marked.
She was aloft atop the bedding, swaying on the ruts, the creaks of wooden wheels squeaking out of step with the team’s heavy clip-clop.
Another place awaits, Ma says, though where or what Faith couldn’t tell. How when all who’d gone before hadn’t returned?
Pa’s steady shoulders hitched with the reins. “Prepare,” he said. “We’ll circle wagons and there’d be chores ‘fore long to tend.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Alicia Jamtaas
(Photo: Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash)
There might not be an end to this, she thought.
It broke her heart to even think it. For she did not recognize herself in this thought. This worry.
Hardship was a familiar thing. She understood struggle. The effort of building muscle against force.
She knew suffering.
But not this. Not the deliberate harm.
Not the anfractuous path of sorrow inflicted purely for the sake of pain.
She knew not what to do with that.
Other than build a barrier around her soul to protect what was left, grieve for the need to do so.
And hope.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: anfractuous in 97 words
She’d see it on her way to school. A shell of itself.
A bit like her it was, she felt. Unprotected. Exposed to the elements.
Years later she returned to do her duty by those who birthed her. She took a walk, eager to escape the cloying empathy of people who knew exactly why she’d left. She saw it. Still a shell. But now a possibility.
“I’ll build you up,” she said. And did.
The thick walls welcomed her, insulating. The roof salvaged old beams into current protection.
A home at last. For old times sake. For new beginnings.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Susan Rouchard
(Photo: Jonatan Balderas Cabañas on Unsplash)
They didn’t know what they’d find when they got there.
The note only said to, quote: “get your backsides to my place without a dally.”
One didn’t dally when it came to Gamma. Didn’t stop their speculating, though. The whole seven-hour drive.
They didn’t try to call. Gamma abhorred phones.
“The Devil’s in them things,” she said.
One didn’t argue. Now no one would.
She was in her chair. Waiting. Already cold.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of Note in 72 words
“She’ll never,” Howey said.
“Still, she might,” Ron argued.
Howey shook his head. No use arguing. Ron couldn’t see what he chose to ignore.
Much like Mom, Ron was, if less pessimistic. Though Howey did worry that Ron, too, would ossify with hardship and time.
“If we did all the chores, perhaps?” Ron offered.
“She’d see that as us doing our duty,” Howey noted.
Ron’s face fell. He so yearned to see the fair!
“Maybe if we patch that roof she’ll thaw a little,” Howey added, seeing his brother’s disappointment.
“Thaw who?” Mom thundered. “Wash up. We go to town!”
Photo prompt: © Jennifer Pendergast
(Photo: Juho S on Unsplash)
She had promised herself to never revisit those times. The best forgotten ones. And yet there she was, a small child in her lap, embers glowing in the hearth, the dog worrying a burnt crust, and her mind meandering down memory lane.
“I was where I am when the snow began,” she started.
The child shifted a knobby knee into a rib, and a cold replaced the sweet weight in her lap. Stolen coals, they were then. Collected under pain worse than whipping if she was discovered yet at the risk of frostbite and no dinner if she did not. She’d secreted an apron-full before the snow began, coating the path, incriminating every footprint.
For the payment, she bore scars.
“I was where I am,” she pushed an unneeded log into the fire. Just because. “Yet now the snow scares me none.”
Prosery prompt: “I was where I am
When the snow began”
From “The Dead of Winter” by Samuel Menashe. Full poem here.
We were not supposed to be afraid of them. After all, they were the articulate. Inquisitive. Supposedly enlightened.
It was the latter which scared us. The assumption. The expectation that if they have found their way here, they are automatically allies, and not foe.
And yet, they marched with those who sought to do us harm. They justified what should not be. They claimed superiority through intellectual high-ground dressed as morality.
A repetition. It was. Of the past.
And so we learned to hide. Our names. Our true identity. Our truth.
Lest we be hunted.
In the name of peace.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo credit: © David Stewart
They built their house on the other side of the fence.
The far end of the bay.
To stay away.
Others aren’t like us, they’d say.
We’re better.
People don’t understand that
They’re nothing like us.
They built their house on the other side
Of the fence.
Taught their kids to hate
The Others
For not being
Like them.
For being
Less worthy.
Less than.
They build their house on the other side of
The fence.
The town gawked
First
Then shrugged
Then came to believe
That indeed
They were different,
Even dangerous
On the other side of
The fence.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Rowena Curtin
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