Photo: Bryan Schneider on Pexels.com
“How does it look?” she twirled,
And I knew she was asking about
A lot more
Than the dress.
“It looks really great,” I answered,
And she knew
It was about
A lot more than
Her silhouette,
Or how the fabric hugged
Her curves.
“Then I’ll take it,” she said.
And we smiled because
We both knew
It meant she will take him, as well.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Silhouette in 65 words
Photo: Inbar Asif
“They’re all old,” the guide gestured, “but some are worse off than others, for they are windowed.”
“Age does not make a building old,” he explained. “Even if sooner or later years form spider webs of fine cracks on every wall, those are just realities built by time. The product of life.”
“But these ones,” his hand rose in half-salute, half-point toward a row of especially dilapidated shutters, “they are windowed.”
When our faces must have told him we still hadn’t the story he’d wanted be told, he sighed and took pity on us. So privileged we had to be to not have lived what would have let us understand the depth of meaning in his words.
“Rooms empty of everything but ruined dreams. Windows widowed of hope. Houses like these go beyond broken relics. Some had gone so long bereft of young ones to gaze through their portals in a waking dream, that short of a miracle to breathe life back into them, they are windowed: dried to the bone of sound, stripped of souls, ready to fall.”
For V.J.’s Weekly Challenge: Windows
“Can I take one now?”
“Breakfast first.”
Deena sighed. She ate her oatmeal and drank her milk, but her eyes kept returning to the seashell table Dad had gotten for Mom. Before. To the jar that usually stood on the mantel. Since.
Finally, Grandma rose and put her mug in the sink.
Now that it was time, Deena hung back. She remembered filling the jar, with Grandma, after the accident, when memories were fresh and both their hearts were broken.
Grandma took her hand. “Come. Reach in. Pick one, and you’ll see – the right moment with them will find you.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Ofir Asif
“Will he come back?” Leah peered over the wall.
Rachel pulled her younger sibling back into the shade.
“Will he?” Leah pressed.
“I don’t know,” Rachel’s voice caught. She coughed to hide her fear. She’d break if her sister became frightened. It would make everything too real.
She didn’t know where they were. A car ride preceded a long hike into the desert and the nap in the ruins. “Best thing during the heat of the day,” Dad said.
He was gone by the time they woke, deserted like forgotten stones.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Foundations in 91 words
“We don’t go There,” Mama always warned. “Ever.”
“There” was beyond the fence. Where the embankment locked in perpetual shadows and where the yellow cliffs rose shining in the sun and where the scary things lived and mortal danger was certain to find you.
As a child I never questioned the relative flimsiness of the wire fence and how it possibly prevented such pervasive awfulness from invading the compound.
It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me to wonder whether both the fence and its electric bite were there to keep us in.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo Credit: Joy Pixley
It had been a long trek on an oven of a day in what had to be a replica of hell. I was parched half-way to mummification and about as lively as the end result, but Mark seemed as bouncy as a pixie in morning dew.
He checked the map. “Twenty more feet!”
Either he didn’t notice the forest of thorns (and its likely residents) or didn’t care. He was in his element. I definitely was not.
I’d joined THOR (Treasure Hunters Of Renown) a month prior, on the rebound from a breakup. The local chapter was small but Mark’s enthusiasm was contagious and the prospects were exciting. We compared topography maps with old mining records and discussed unsolved mysteries of lost gold from the bandit days of the Wild West. Hunting treasure sounded alluring. It made me feel brave. From the AC.
“I’m not going in there!” I croaked with a drywall tongue as my mind filled with images of scorpions and my ears strained for rattlers. I was sure I’d heard the cackle of ghosts.
If I made it home alive, the only treasures I wanted were a cool drink, my couch, and my remote.
“She insists on coming,” he noted without raising his head and even though I hadn’t worded my question.
The quiet breathed and a soft breeze rustled the leaves and made shadows caress the stones.
“She stands by the gate and belts until I take her,” he added and continued to wipe his already spotless glasses. His fingers trembled, from palsy or emotion or both, I didn’t know.
“She misses her, you see,” he glanced at the goat. “Rejected by her nanny, this kid was. My Mary hand-raised her. She was this kid’s rock. Now all that’s left is this headstone.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Tomasz Mikolajczyk on Pexels
“Are these from olden times?” the boy’s eyes were round with wonder.
“Not so olden,” his mother sighed. “We have some in our bomb-shelter. Everyone was fitted with a gas mask during the Gulf War. We had to carry it everywhere. Even preschoolers like you.”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Mask in 45 words
Photo: Harpal Singh via Unsplash
They rode long through the dark
After closing the park
Wooden horses a-spiral in endless embark.
For the Three Line Tales Challenge
“They do not remember who they are.”
The old man’s voice was somber without judgment. A skill born of patience shaped by the combined weights of history and time.
“It is why I brought them here.”
The elder regarded his visitor. His dark eyes pools of wisdom deeper than the lines upon his skin.
A silence stretched.
“They will not find it in this place,” Sorrowful Skies said finally.
Disappointment filled the woman’s face.
“They will sleep in the lodge tonight,” he added. “Tomorrow, they will walk like their ancestors. In bare feet on breathing land. Then they will remember.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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