Friday Fiction – Nothing Before Everything

My story for this week came in an unusual way and I can’t decide how I feel about. Please do be honest in your comments, I appreciate it even if it stings! And if you like it, that’s great too!

Rochelle hosts, long-term Fictioneer, Sandra Crook, whose writings I recommend highly to you, provides this week’s picture.

Nothing Before Everything

“If you could time-travel, where would you go?”

“Or when?”

He laughed, sending tingles through me. “I guess.”

“Seventeenth century,” I said. “All those romantic Shakespeare scenes, being acted out for real, men wearing tights, and…”

“Less pollution too,” he said, kicking an old milk bottle.

“Maybe not,” I said, thinking a lack of rubbish collections might outweigh even our plastic culture. “Just different kinds.”

“What’s so great about men in tights, anyway?” he said.

My legs itched under uniform grey wool. “Nothing, but if I have to wear them, everyone should suffer along too.”

That’s when he kissed me.

Friday Fictioneers – Perspective

Well, I finally finished reading the last of last week’s submissions yesterday evening. If you didn’t get a comment from me, it’s because the internet ate it (is that the modern version of ‘The dog ate my homework”?). I enjoyed the diversity, as well as the quality, but I think we can safely say I won’t be reading all the entries again for a while. I got nothing else done this week. My respect for those who do it every week has just hit new levels!

This week’s prompt is from returned Fictioneer, Doug MacIlroy. Our leader, Rochelle, is one of those I mentioned above. They both write stunning stories, so I urge you to check out the links. As for me, my story is hopefully a little less obtuse than last week’s, but who knows – I eagerly await your comments.

Perspective

Dear Diary,

Downloaded a new book: The Diary of Anne Frank. This girl was stuck in an attic for years. Mum said I should read it to get some perspective, but it just makes me cry. She had so little. Like, she couldn’t talk to her friends or anything, because back then they didn’t have computers and whatever.

Had to stop reading it when it got dark – we can’t risk any light at night in case it seeps through the curtains letting the soldiers know there’s someone up here. Dad says tomorrow we’ll do a Google maps tour of home.

Friday Fiction – As Seen On TV

This week’s FF post comes with a moderate language warning. Also, a note that none of the characters in this story reflect any actual persons alive or dead. That’s always the case with my writing, but in this instance one of the Fictioneers might notice a nod to her profession!

For those who don’t know, The Great British Bake-Off (aka Bake Off) has been a great hit with women of a certain age and disposition in the UK recently. so much so, it’s spawned The Great British Sewing Bee and presumably other hobbies and activities are lining up to follow. Just wait until the adult entertainment industry catches up and add The Great British Fu… I digress.

Quick, before I have to upgrade that warning, here’s Renee’s photo (the way it loads on the iPad I saw the bottom first, hence my interpretation), and my story. Comments always welcome.

As Seen On TV

“Shit!” Charlotte dumped the piping bag in the bowl. “Shit, shit shit!”

She shouldn’t have used fondant. A nice spreadable buttercream, or rolled-out royal and she’d be done by now. But no, she had to try fondant. They made it look so easy on Bake-off.

Now, she had rivers of sticky icing racing down the cupboards. Soon it would reach the floor, and Andy had already called to say they’d left the airport.

The door slammed and Charlotte drew breath. They couldn’t be here already.

“Hi Mum!”

She breathed again. “Ah, kids, perfect timing. Who wants to decorate Grandma’s cake?”

In Mon – Fridge Monster

It’s been a few weeks since I posted for InMon and I will say now it might be a while before I can again, but I’m glad to be here this time, and with a story for the prompt “fridge monster”. I hope you enjoy; your comments are welcome either way.

The Fridge

“Jules, could you pass Mummy the butter please?” She’s holding the big knife and sawing away at a loaf of bread on the counter, so she doesn’t look up when she says it. Just asks, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

And it is, right? All I have to do is walk to the fridge, open the door, grab the butter, close the door, take it to Mummy. Easy. All things I have been able to do for ages. When I was a baby, like my little sister Mary, I couldn’t, but now I’m three and a half, I could do it. Easy, right?

But it’s not easy at all.

See. There’s a light in the fridge. And the light only comes on when you open the door, and then if you look really really carefully when you close the door, you can see it going off again just before it’s shut.

And Mummy says the light is powered by magic, but Miranda at daycare says there’s no such thing as magic and Miranda is five and goes to school, so she knows things.

So if there’s no such thing as magic, who turns the light on and off? And why? Why would the whoever it is only turn it on when I’ve got the door open? Because when the door’s open, there’s light from the kitchen anyway, so the only reason they would turn the light on is to shine it on whoever opens the door. And the only reason they would do that is to decide whether to attack you.

And if they live in the fridge, they must be pretty small, so they probably wouldn’t attack Mummy or Daddy. And Mary’s too small to open the fridge, so they couldn’t reach her. So that leaves me. And the whoever in the fridge hasn’t eaten me yet, so it’s probably pretty hungry.

I wish it liked cheese. Then it could just eat the cheese in the fridge. But it doesn’t. And that only leaves me.

“Come on, Jules, I need you to help me out.”

Mummy’s getting angry, but she doesn’t know about the whoever in the fridge. She thinks it’s magic. She wouldn’t want me to open the fridge if she knew.

 

 

In Mon – Is That a Real Place?

More fun prompts over at BeKindRewrite this week. This take on one probably isn’t that original, but I enjoyed writing it and definitely feel I could work more with these characters. Have a look, leave your thoughts, and/or stop over to Steph’s site to use the prompts yourself.

Getaway

The bar was quiet and our host was friendly, setting down drinks then hovering behind Alice. “So what brings you to this corner of the globe?”

“Walking,” I replied, hoping he’d leave us alone. “We’ve heard there are fantastic trails up into the mountains.”

“Sure thing,” he said, pulling over a chair, “We’ve got a load of maps and guides you could take a look at in the Snug.”

“Great.” I picked up the menu and tried to leave the conversation at that.

“I also know a few more secluded trails if you’d like a personal touch. There are places I can show you where you won’t see another person for hours.”

“Except you,” Alice muttered.

Our host laughed. “Well, of course.” He pulled his chair in. “But I can be unobtrusive when I want to be.”

Unlike now, I thought. I caught Alice’s eye and she smiled, reading my mind.

“Do you remember on our honeymoon?” I asked her, excluding him as much as I could from the conversation.

“The Lover’s Island!” she laughed, then she turned to him. “We booked a private island getaway for a day. Then a bunch of Italians turned up with a picnic.”

Now that she’d included him, I tried to hammer home the privacy point. “I paid good money to get some alone time with my wife.”

“Ha, yes,” he said, “Well you’ll definitely find that here.” But I could tell he didn’t really get it. Instead he began to explain the flora and fauna we might chance to see if we took him up on his offer. Alice and I continued briefly our reminiscences, then gave up and read the menus while he droned on.

“… And the mandrakes are spectacular. Although not at this time of year, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what he was talking about.

“Mandrakes are real?” Alice said. “I thought JK Rowling made them up!”

“No, they are quite real. Nice cheap hallucinogen, if you like that sort of thing.”

“Now we’ve never been offered those before!” Alice laughed. “Someone tried to sell us Speed in New York once, and we smoked weed in Timbuktu.”

“That’s a real place?” asked our host, finally standing up.

“Yes, believe it or not. It’s a city in Mali.” He was looking at me blankly. “In Africa,” I added.

“Not like the movies, then?” he asked. “Not quite so many skyscrapers and yellow cabs.”

“What?” I think Alice and I spoke at once.

“New York. You must have seen the movies – all skycrapers, yellow cabs and Americans with loads of money. I assume it’s a bit different if it’s in Afrcia.”

I probably just stared at him. For all I know, my mouth was hanging open.

Eventually Alice spoke. “You’re kidding, right?”

The man sighed. “Did you pass the train station when you drove into town?”

“Sure, but it was all boarded up.”

“Exactly. When I was a kid, I always said as soon as I left school, I’d travel the world and see places. Then the day before my eighteenth birthday, they closed the station. I guess some things just aren’t meant to be.”

Friday Fiction – Preserving Beauty

Wow, FF hasn’t been this difficult for me in a long time. The picture from Danny Bowman is so bleak and yet stunning, I wanted to do it justice with my story, but the ideas clanked out slowly and the resulting first draft was much too long and pointless to be worth sharing. Sometimes, the muse just doesn’t want to get out of bed – I know how she feels!

But here, at last, it my offering. I hope it’s worth the wait.

Preserving Beauty

Marie nipped the flower from a crevice in the rock and into her book. She glanced around and sighed. In preserving beauty, she had crushed the volcano’s only hope of bearing life.

Tears blinded her as she stumbled back to the Observation Station. She and Louis had shared a hope once, but she too was barren wasteland.

“I ruin everything,” she sobbed.

“Another quake,” he whispered. “We need to evacuate.”

Blackness seeped into the crevice, scorching roots and stem as the research team retreated. Tucked away, the hope of the mountain survived: pollen caught in the leaves of a sketchbook.

Friday Fiction – Delays

This week’s FF photograph reminded me of an old FF entry here, but I went a different way instead with my story and you can read it below. I welcome comments and critique; I’m particularly interested in any suggestions for a better title. I feel there must be a great one out there, but it’s eluding me this morning.

Thanks to Rochelle for hosting and Sandra Crook for the photo.

Delays

“Oh God, move it!” Dad yelled.

Amy looked up at the castle on the hill. They’d passed signs advertising “Les spectacles des chevaux”, which sounded like glasses for horses, but meant equestrian shows. She’d have made a joke, even suggested they go, but the car was thick with Dad’s anger at the tractor so she kept quiet.

“You’d think he’d pull over and let us by!”

A few miles later, the tractor turned off. Dad floored the accelerator and narrowly avoided a pensioner who’d chosen that moment to cross.

“Now, is there anywhere you’d like to visit today?” Dad asked.

 

***

An extra thought…

The lesson in this story is one I try to bear in mind as Sebastian and I are walking through the freezing wind and he stops to study a discarded plastic bottle or a pile of dirty snow. I’m not preaching – I know that it’s too easy to be “Dad” and get swept away with the need to get somewhere without ever stopping to wonder if you’re already there.

Inspiration Monday – End of Forever

Having returned to something approaching normality, I am pleased to bring you a new InMon story, based on the excellent prompts from Bekindrewrite. If you head over there, you’ll find a handful of great other stories based on either the phrase I used as my title and inspiration, or various other words and phrases. I hope you enjoy my story. As ever, I am open to comments and critique, so please do leave your thoughts.

End of Forever

We were so different, Patrick and I. He roared into love liked a tsunami, casting aside every obstacle, every question, every other possibility except that we would be together for all time. He never professed any religion, nor any concrete ideas about what happens after death, but he was certain that love was everlasting, and that we would be together for eternity.

I admired his passion all the more, because I had none. My love was a calm emotion: waves washing gently over a shore, unstoppable as a whole, but yielding on a smaller scale to piers and groynes and to the big problems that we encountered in those early days. And I believe in heaven, but not as a family reunion; my vows were only until death us do part.

And so I bury him with more finality than he would have done me. I am free to love again. I am free to find another man who will sweep me off my feet with his passion and vigour. I am free to listen to a new promise of happy ever after, of eternal devotion, of love forever.

But there is nothing after the end of forever. There is only darkness and silence. A bed that is too big for one person and a table with too many chairs. After the end of forever, nothing and never begin, and I am there, hoping I am wrong about heaven.

Friday Fiction – Liberties

Well the painters have gone and I’m finally beginning to feel like Canadian timings are natural again, so that’s another couple of adventures under the belt. Just in time, because it’s Friday Fiction day. Today’s photo brought two ideas (OK, tell it like it is – two puns) to mind. I hope you enjoy them, and the more serious thoughts behind today’s story. I welcome your comments and critique.

Today’s photo comes from David Stewart; as ever, Rochelle leads the way over at FF HQ. Please note this story comes with a Mature Content (language) warning.

Liberties

She heard their whispers as she passed – she was meant to, she thought. “Have you seen the new girl? Belle? I’d sure like to ring that.”

It was hardly a new joke, or a particularly inspired one, but Belle smiled to herself. Alice, alongside her, was affronted. “Assholes,” she muttered.

“Why? Because they complimented me?”

Alice scoffed. “You’re a victim of their objectification of your sexuality.”

“Or they think I’m hot,” Belle said.

“People died for your freedom, Belle. You should be free to wear whatever you like without being…”

“Admired?” Belle interrupted. “I’d prefer to die for free speech.”

Friday Fiction – Enlightenment

A quick post from me today as I’m short of battery and internet time. Today’s picture is from Dawn M Miller and as ever Rochelle leads our merry band of believers and non-believers. I would have liked to add another paragraph at the end of this story to wrap things up, but it was hard enough to get it down to 100 words as it was, so the rest will have to be up to your imagination. Again, I am unlikely to have much time to read and comment on others – if that offends you, feel free to skip mine. Otherwise, enjoy!

Enlightenment

Dad reeked of Catholic guilt like a sour cologne; Mum was Anglican and sometimes I felt only their agreement on the sixth Commandment kept them alive.

I veered wildly between the fires of Hell and the glories of Heaven: persuaded that while both could not be completely right, the truth lay where their dogmas converged. Then I met a man from the Unitarian Church.

“There are as many paths to Heaven as there are doorways in the world,” he told me. “Faith is the light that guides us, not the lantern that holds it, nor the hand that carries it.”