Sunday stories…Buzzards!

Time for another Friday Fictioneers story.  Remember, these are 100-word stories based on a photo.  This is my second story for this great group, four years ago.  By the way, welcome to 2017!  (Yes, I know this isn’t a buzzard, but it is fiction!)

copyright Roxann Phillips

Look alive.  Here comes a buzzard.

Basta!!  You see me (looking dramatic in B&W, I think) and I know what you imagine: death, evil, decaying  flesh.

Contemplate for a moment. Where would you sci-fi, futuristic doom-mongers be without me?  Your future always holds darkness, war, and death. Bodies everywhere.  So you need us.  The carrion-birds.  Cleaning up your messes so you don’t die of terrible diseases due to all that rotting flesh.  (Zombie apocalypse people, this means you, too.)  A little gratitude wouldn’t come amiss!

But instead? “Bird brain” is bad enough, but “buzzard breath” and “old buzzard?”  Beyond the pale!  How would you feel?

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(The title is a saying by Lady Stella Reading.)

Friday Fictioneers–The Big Cheese or The Gjetost of Christmas Past (reprise)

I thought I’d go with a reprise of something seasonal for this week.  I hope you enjoy it because if you don’t, it will cheese me off.  This one was from December 2012.

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My first thought was someone at the end of life thinking of all the choices made, one inside each door.  However, something ran amok inside my head and what emerged was a riff on that idea.  Or maybe just riff-raff.  Who can say?

The Big Cheese
Or
The Gjetost of Christmas Past

His mind wandered.  So many choices throughout his life.  Not all perfect, but he was satisfied.  Head of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe, Attorneys-at-Law, (plural intentional but deceptive—no other power here), people averted their gazes when he passed, feared him.  Life was good!

A knock.

“Enter.”

“A Mr. Gjetost to see you.”  Fat Tim, AKA“Tiny”, handed him a card, departing silently but for his limp.

What the dickens?  This guy’s a Norwegian cheese?  Ebenezeer scrutinized the card.  Mr. G. H. Ost.  Tim and names!  Wonder what this guy wants?

“Mr. Ost, how may I help you?”

“Au contraire, Mr. Skruge…”

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Challenger’s Choice…Sugar and spice and everything nice

I rarely venture into portraiture, but this little girl on the plane caught both my eye and my camera. I offer her as the subject for “Challenger’s Choice” and hope you find her as cute as I did.  (Even though it appears that Mom is wearing a nun’s habit or something similar, it’s only the seat back.)

Feel free to join in the challenge if you like to take photos with any non-traditional camera.  We’re a friendly group and always enjoy new company. A link to Sally’s site will be here once she’s put up her post, approximately 8 am EST.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Express Yourself…cooking

I like to express myself through cooking, although  unfortunately I can’t claim the ability to create recipes.  I find good ones and use them.  Taking cooking classes extended my repertoire.  The favorite recipe to come from the classes is homemade ravioli with walnut sauce.  The sauce comes from an Italian grandmother (not mine) and gilds the lily or, in this case, the ravioli.  This the dish demanded for all major holidays and not difficult to make, although it’s a bit time-consuming.  But there’s something satisfying in making it and in eating it!

This week I have very, very limited internet, but I’ll do my best to visit as many of your posts as possible.

Friday Fictioneers–Black Friday

One hundred words aren’t many to tell a story.  Yet every week, a large group of authors gather to try to do just that, then share their stories with other authors and readers.  We call ourselves Friday Fictioneers, as the photo prompt used to be posted on Friday.  Now it’s posted early Wednesday morning (at least in the US) and the stories come fast and furious, continuing throughout the week.  If you’d like to read more stories, click on the blue critter at the end of my story.  If you want to participate, go to the site of Rochelle, our hostess, read the “rules”, write and post your story.

copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Black Friday

“Fran, let’s go to the fitting room.”

No answer.

I turned around. No little blonde-headed girl. Trying not to panic, I scanned the store.

“Francesca?”

Nothing.

Mouth dry, I hurried to the front of the store, perusing the crowds clogging the street. No chance of spotting one five-year-old. Frantic, I pulled out my cell, started punching 9-1-1.

“Mommy.”

I whirled.
Nothing.

“Fran?”

“Mommy, can you find me?”
“No, honey. Where are you?”

Her blonde head popped out from under the circular clothes rack. “You couldn’t find me!”
“No, honey, I couldn’t.”

Torn between relief and anger, I simply hugged her.

Friday Fictioneers–Out of the Frying Pan

Friday Fictioneers

Eyes observe photo
Tumbling thoughts settle into
One hundred word story

Copyright Danny Bowman

Out of the Frying Pan

He lies
A useless hulk
A ranging mind or a vast emptiness
No one knows
Once-powerful muscles wasted from lack of exercise
He never speaks
Eyes dead and flat
Bodily functions machine- or human-aided
He lies alone
In silence

She never visits
His wife of many years, absent
No children to hold his hand
Or talk of the day’s activities

Some feel sorrow for him

Her bruises, burns, sometime broken bones
(all hidden)
Ended by the frying pan
That finally destroyed his abuse-ordering synapses

Today she signs the papers
Sending him, she hopes,
To the hell he put her through

Friday Fictioneers–Under Cover

Right after family and friends, the short list of things I love most in day-to-day life includes books. The love of books grabbed me as a little girl and I’ve been enmeshed in its web ever since. I unashamedly admit I’m a bibliophile and although I love the ease of my Kindle, I’ll never get rid of my books. Library levies are the only tax increases for which I’ll vote. I love the smell of a new book and browsing in a used bookstore is a joy that never diminishes.

So to honor the love I have for books, my inner muse rolled out a poem in the tradition of the poems of Rudyard Kipling, Dr. Seuss, Ogden Nash, and others (although I’m not comparing my humble offering to any of theirs), poems you might find in the old Childcraft books: the rhyming poem that rolls along, pulls you in, and flows trippingly from the tongue if read aloud (please try it). I hope I’ve achieved a little of that magic this week and perhaps you and your inner child, will enjoy this paean to books.

I’ve even manged to make it come in at exactly 100 words.

Copyright Claire Fuller

….

Under Cover

“Don’t judge a book by its cover”
May or may not be true
But you’ll never discover the story
‘Til you read it through and through.

A book will deliver you places
You can’t ordinarily go
More reliably than the Post Office can
Through the rain and sleet and snow.

It can make you think or make you cry
Turn your world upside down
It holds the power to mesmerize
Without making the slightest sound.

You’ll discover best friends and enemies
The truth and make-believe
And the most wonderful book of all of them
Is one you hate to leave.

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Click here to read all the current stories:

Friday Fictioneers–Grave Choices

It’s finally April.  The sun is beginning to warm the earth.  I can’t wait for the new life of plants to begin adorning the earth and for the excitement of renewal and beginnings.

But life is only one end of the spectrum.  At the other end lies death.

Grave Choices

Beneath the lone, gnarled tree standing sentinel atop the wind-swept hill was the perfect spot for her grave. He didn’t use a backhoe.  Its noise seemed out-of-place at a funeral.  He dug the grave by hand, careful to make it deep enough to frustrate hungry predators. The hard physical work helped assuage his pain, allowing space for memories of the good times they’d shared.

He preserved the wild plants to replace afterward.  The tree would be her headstone; her body would go back to the land.  After all these years, she deserved the best.  His partner…his best friend….his beautiful mare.

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Want to read more?  Click on this little guy to link to any or all of the stories written in response to this prompt.

Friday Fictioneers–Going for the Gold

Why write a 100-word story? 

Consider the impact of three small words–“I hate you.”  Or “I love you.”  Then imagine 33 1/3 times more words and you can create a plethora of experiences and emotions.  Select those words carefully and you have more than enough to draw the unsuspecting reader into your story web.

Wield the scalpel with precision.  Cut to the chase.  Dazzle us.

Going For the Gold

Life had always been horses and jumping.  Those arduous, endless hours not doing “what the cool kids do” were her soul food.  The recognition earned as a major contender for an Olympic medal parlayed into an investment in her future.  Being the human half of a jumping team?  That was pure love.

The gold vanished, snatched by a massive oxer not quite cleared.  In the months following the Games, she dealt with the aftermath, gradually re-dreaming her dreams.

Class time.  Smiling at the sign, Olympic School of Therapeutic Riding, she propelled her wheelchair toward the ring, greeting students and instructors.

Friday Fictioneers–Homecoming

“Good morning, Fictioneer.  Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to write a story of  100 words, post it, then read and comment on the stories posted by other agents Fictioneers.          

This mission is not impossible. 

   As always, should you or any of your Fictioneers Force be caught or killed, Secretary Rochelle will disavow any knowledge of your actions and stories.

These instructions will self-destruct in five seconds.    

   Good luck!”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible

For the first time, I’ve had a character from a previous story return.  She initially introduced herself last October in the first week Rochelle ascended to  fearless leader. This week she informed me she had more to tell.   If you’d like to read that story, you may do so through the following link, but her current story is meant to stand on its own if you choose not to:

https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/friday-fictioneers-needs/

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Picture copyright Lora Mitchell

Homecoming

I’m emotionally mummified by the no-feeling that lies on the far side of unbearable loss, the weariness holding me at the window above the glittering city lights, crude imitations of the innumerable stars in the vastness above my cabin.  I yearn for peace filled only with nature’s sounds, the whispering creek, never-ending vistas, the night’s enveloping darkness, that space where healing begins.

Civilization’s after-death requirements are filed, discarded or buried.  I crave my friends, the cafe, tea and comfort in the corner booth where I’ve so often dispensed it.

I need my homecoming as much as my mother needed hers.