Upstaged

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Curtain Call, Determination, Emergency, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, parenting, Performance, Sacrifice 61 Comments

The lights seemed brighter than usual that night. The music louder than remembered. The movements blurred. The words slurred. The heels on the wood rung jackhammers in his head.

He clenched his teeth and dug his nails into the worn velvet of his seat to keep from squirming.

She’d worked so hard for this.

The years of training. The months of practice. The weeks of rehearsals. The days of excited anxiety as the premiere neared. The long awaited curtain calls.

He was not going to let his daughter’s performance be upstaged by a migraine. Or a stroke. Or an aneurysm.

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

Photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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:

Out Focus

February 5, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Allegory, Cult, Current affairs, Dystopia, Flash Fiction, Focus, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Politics, Truth, Tyranny 50 Comments

Photo prompt: © Ted Strutz

He wanted to take the glasses off but it was not allowed.

The penalty was devastatingly permanent.

True Focus was reserved for a selected few. A privilege. Stealing it would result in losing all sight. Both eyes.

He blinked and tried to calm the nausea that came with the distorting lenses. He never got used to the dizziness. Or the headache.

He didn’t think they were meant to.

“Loyalty above clarity; Fealty, not facts.”

It was chanted. It was law.

A disoriented population was the goal.

He grieved for the realities that had been ignored when freedom still had hope.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Wait For The Light

January 29, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, children, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Illness, Loss, Micro-fiction, Night, parenting, Twilight, Waiting, Writing prompt 49 Comments

Photo prompt: Dale Rogerson

“Can we go to the playground, Mama?”

The woman stroked the small forehead to compose herself and smiled into the over-bright eyes. “It is the middle of the night, Cara.”

“Can I see?”

The woman tucked the blankets under the child and lifted her. The bundle in her arms felt devastatingly like the infant Cara had been a handful of winters ago, and heartbreakingly almost as light again. She turned so her daughter faced the window.

“It’s dark,” the girl sighed. “I’m tired, Mama. Maybe I wait for the light?”

“Yes, Cara,” the mother whispered. “We wait for the light.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Last Course

January 22, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Airplane, Be in the moment, empathy, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Ice-Cream, Micro-fiction, Optimism, Relationships, Small Things, travel 45 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

“So nice of them to give us ice-cream!” Sheri grinned. It was her favorite brand, too. On a plane! How fun!

“Even people on death row get a last meal.”

She elbowed him. Her friends said Robert was a party-popper. A fuddy-duddy, spoil sport, malcontent. Sometimes she wondered if they were right. Her husband did have a way of deflating. She felt bad for him. Life must be so gray, to experience life his way.

“Well, I’m going to enjoy mine,” she announced, infusing extra-cheer into her voice. “If it’s my last course, I’ll be halfway up to heaven already.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

(Note: Thank you, Rochelle for using my potentially boring 16 hour direct flight photo from JFK to Hong-Kong from the summer before last … While this is not an ad, the ice-cream sure was a comfort … 🙂 )

Eden In A Bubble

January 15, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Garden, Ingenuity, Loss, Making do, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Practical solutions, Relationships 38 Comments

Photo prompt © J Hardy Carroll

They were going to have to move.

Her health. His job.

They were going to miss so many things.

The beach. Their yard. The hours spent outdoors.

He laid in bed at night, awake. Her breath gentle at his side.

She would not complain. Even if she could still speak, he knew she wouldn’t put that burden on him. It broke his heart.

He put the shards into action. Poured his mind into design.

He’d build a bubble. An Eden in the forbidding landlocked wintry ground. A lush oasis where they could both breathe in the memories of better times.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Last One In

January 8, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Adversity, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Poverty, rules, RV, Shame, Siblings, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 40 Comments

Photo Prompt: C.E. Ayr

“They’ll kick us out!”

Darlene shook her head. “They won’t know.”

“Dad will kill us if we get caught.”

Darlene sighed. Shirley was such a wimp. Never took any risks. Never had any fun. “We won’t.”

Shirley peered out of the RV at the shimmering pool. Darlene never met a rule she didn’t want to break, and somehow both of them would end up punished. “It says ‘Guests Only.'”

“We’re guests.”

Without a permit. Shame rose like hot bile. They were always the ones without, the ones left out.

“C’mon then,” she blinked away tears. “Last one in cleans up!”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Maybe So

January 1, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, children, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Hanukkah, History, Longing, Micro-fiction, Past and Future, Technology, Telephone 48 Comments

Photo prompt: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

“I wish I could show you the Menorah, Papa!”

“I wish so, too, Leah!”

“Shall I describe it?”

“Oh please do!” he covered the mouthpiece and pressed his ear to receiver. It’ll be months before he’d save enough to hear her sweet voice again.

“We have white candles and the Shamash is melting fastest,” the child stared at her father’s photo, sent from far away. “I’ll use my new crayons and mail you a drawing! Maybe one day people will have special phones that will let them see each other!”

The fantasies of children. He smiled. “Maybe so, maybe so.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

The Great Loss

December 25, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Holidays, humanity, Loss, Memoriam, Micro-fiction, No More War, Tradition, Universality 35 Comments

“Did Great-Grandpa really fight in the Great War?”

“He did.”

“What made it great, Mama?”

She sighed. This place’s heaviness only settled thicker during the holidays. She’d come every year on Christmas as a child. Too infrequently since. The ocean’s breeze whipped hair into the boy’s eyes and she tucked a lock behind his ear. He so reminded her of herself.

“Grandma Rose said it was because the Heavens everywhere lit with the great number of souls and broken hearts. The Great Loss, she called it.”

“A lot of Christmas angels, Mama?”

“Perhaps so.”

“I think Great-Grandpa is one, though.”

Note: Dedicated to all who are missing loved ones during the holidays, to all who are no longer with us for they’d given their lives (or parts of their souls) for others, in search of peace, in hope of no more war or hate or greed. May we do better, as a species. Let there be true peace on Earth.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

(Thank you Sandra Cook for the evocative photo prompt!)

Reconsidered Romance

December 18, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Choices, Classics, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Funny, Micro-fiction, Movies, Photo prompt, Reality, Sound Of Music, Teenagers 43 Comments

It was better in the movie.

She’d slipped on the snow and had a wet imprint of her behind on her dress and a freezing spot in her lower back. His shoes got drenched when he’d stepped in a slush puddle, and generated awful squeaky sounds in every step. The benches needed deicing or they risked breaking their necks if they as much as tried to climb them, let alone jump around.

“I am sixteen, going on seventeen, and I’m going back inside,” she declared, teeth chattering.

“I am seventeen going on eighteen, and I’ll beat you to the house…”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers