No Shoveling!

April 29, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Birthday, Celebration, cold, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Hard work, Micro-fiction, Protection, Restaurant, winter 42 Comments

“I’ll just be a minute,” Benito shooed his family ahead. “Don’t want you catching cold.”

He rubbed his gloved hands together. The temperature had dropped over twenty degrees in the last few hours.

“Especially you, Junior!” he pointed at his youngest. The boy had weak lungs and had just finished another long course of antibiotics. “In you go.”

“Oh, no, you’re not!” Maria planted her feet in front of her husband. “You are coming in with us. Right now. There will be no shoveling by you today. Boss Manuel insisted. Today you are a guest. After all, it is your birthday!”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Elbow Grease

April 22, 2020April 22, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, House hunting, Just because, Macabre, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Real Estate, Surprise, Unexpected 49 Comments

Photo prompt © C.E.Ayr

“It’s been a while since they lived here.”

I nodded. The place was filthy. A bit stinky, too.

“Nothing a little elbow grease won’t fix.”

I wished she would shut up. The property manager’s eagerness to sell the place was obvious. Her neglect of the place was, too. She might’ve spent a bit of elbow grease before showing the space.

No matter. The sorry state of the cottage might lower her price to my range.

“Why aren’t these garbage bins outside?” I ventured.

“Oh,” she fidgeted, “those are … um … kind of urns. They’d wanted to be buried in them, indoors.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

From The Rooftops

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, City life, Creativity, Dance, expectation, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Planning, Rooftop, Sleepless 55 Comments

Photo prompt: © Roger Bultot

It was going to be epic.

He could hardly sleep. His feet itched. His toes tingled. His fingers yearned to move.

“Count sheep,” his girlfriend grumbled. His tossing and turning was keeping her up, too.

“I can’t,” he breathed into the nape of her neck. Smelling shampoo and a hint of laundry softener.

When dawn finally neared, he crawled out of bed, exhausted and exhilarated, both.

He checked the locks and clocks. He stretched. Warming up.

His dream was coming true. The details. Permits. Plans. It had felt insurmountable. Yet here was the final countdown for the City-wide Rooftop Dance.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

The Spectrum

April 8, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Complementary, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Half-full, Micro-fiction, Optimism, Perspective, Pessimism, Rainbow, Relationships 54 Comments

Photo prompt: © Jeff Arnold

She always saw the half-full of the cup. He always saw the empty.

She saw the rain’s potential. The green to manifest. The flowers. He saw mud and wet and ruinous showers.

She saw the sun and warmth. He saw the cancer.

She pointed out the good. He, the plausible con-men in every alley.

She laughed. He frowned.

She hugged babies and puppies, while he kept both at warning distance.

“We’re like the rainbow,” she explained, when others wondered how she kept sane in the face of constant pessimism. “Our perspectives of mist and light blend a full spectrum’s beauty.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Call Home

April 1, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, connection, Family, Friday Fictioneers, Loss, Memory, Messages, Photo prompt, Visit, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 46 Comments

Photo prompt: © Douglas M. MacIlroy

“Do you still have it?”

“Let me see,” he nodded at the screen even though he knew she couldn’t see him.

“Okay.”

The tremor in her voice told him everything: How tender she felt, how brave she was, how she couldn’t bear for him to ask directly lest it shatter what brittle control she managed to maintain.

“Got it,” he breathed. Attached. Hit ‘send.’ “Check your email.”

The line was silent. Then her voice, full of tears. “I knew it. I knew it hadn’t been a dream. She said she’d visit. From the after. Exactly this way. … And she came.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

His Promise

March 25, 2020March 25, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Be a voice, Commitment, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Grief, Micro-fiction, Persistence, Photo prompt, Promises, Relationships 54 Comments

Photo prompt © Jeff Arnold

It took him months, but he stuck with it.

It took a lot of coffee, and a great deal of wine, and a good bit of yelling at the keys and cursing at the window, and a heap of crumbled sheets of paper flung across the floor in balls he sometimes let stay there, staring dejectedly at the ceiling as he wished to do, too.

A million times he wanted to give up.

He didn’t.

Not when he had promised her he’d write her story.

One finger at a time or not, he was going to learn how to type.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Taking Off

March 18, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Leaving, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Plans, Secrets, Takeoff, Writing Challenge 39 Comments

Photo prompt: © J Hardy Carroll

He packed his bags late at night, tiptoeing around the sleeping figures of his flatmates. His plan would only work for one.

Well, two, perhaps … But much as he wanted company, he knew from experience that the only person he could truly rely on was himself, and he couldn’t afford to add the caprice of another human into an already iffy situation.

He made his way through quiet side-streets, ears perked and eyes peeled. He would approach the lot from the back, scale the pole, rope and lug his luggage up, distribute the weight, check the dials.

Takeoff before dawn.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Once Upon A Swing

March 11, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Beliefs, children, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Grief, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Playground, Wish, Writing Challenge 40 Comments

“It’s where he comes to make a wish,” Johanna whispered over her swing’s ropes as the girls passed each other on the swing-set, ringlets flying in the breeze.

Marie’s eyes widened and she forgot to pump her legs. The old man looked like many others she’d seen. Or was he? She’s never known anyone grown who made wishes. In real life. Into a fountain. Like in stories. It made her wonder what other things in tales were true. Perhaps goblins? Or princesses?

“His wife died, you see,” Johanna added, impressed by her cousin’s reaction. “He wishes for her to return.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Slip Slidin’ Away

February 12, 2020February 12, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Video, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Difficult decisions, Doubt, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Paul Simon, Photo prompt, Relationships, Writing Challenge 37 Comments

Now that it was time, she couldn’t get herself to do it.

The ice around her heart mirrored the slick coating on the deck, the driveway, the car. The accumulation of cold thinned. Her resolve cracked.

It dripped and melted into tears where the memories took hold. Where the sweet moments were as real as the many that weren’t.

Perhaps she should just wait longer. Hope for spring. Pray for summer’s warmth. Forget the frozen tundra that their relationships had become. The hurt. The broken bones.

The more she was nearing her destination, the more she was slip slidin’ away.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Bonus track of the song that played in my head as soon as I saw the photo: