Flash Fiction #292

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

AN ESSAY: BY ARCHON

My writing method – Teacher says to get marks, I have to make a story outline, then fill it in.
Doesn’t work.  I leave a space at the top, write the story, then build the outline.

I just open the mental floodgates and let the concepts spill out.  I take an idea from here, a pun from there, stitch it together like Frankenstein’s monster, and hope that creative lightning will weld it together into a coherent story.  Sometimes I win.  Sometimes you lose.  Then I use my patented,© push-broom, accurate, re-filing, storage system, ready for next time.

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If you’d like to join the fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site, and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #291

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

HAPPY  NEW YEAR!

With the fervent hope that that wish may be better realized than last year’s similar one.

2022 exits as it entered, with many of us still exiled and isolated in our homes.  The streets and shops are empty.  Merchants pray for trade, and only the likes of FedEx and Door-Dash delivery drivers, courting sickness and death, keep the economy limping along.

Things will improve.  Here’s a happy helping of confidence, and an optimistic quote from the Little Engine, who says, “I know we can!  I know we can!”

Let’s make it a great year, fellow Friday Fictioneers.

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If you’d like to join the fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site, and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100-word story.

Flash Fiction #290

PHOTO PROMPT © Brenda Cox

PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES

I have the best anti-car-theft system.  I bought the world’s ugliest car.  Guys with BMWs won’t even park on the same block, lest parts fall off and hit their cars.

I combat Global Warming by installing an electric engine, but I can’t find an extension cord long enough to get to work, and out-of-town trips are impossible.

I ran it on flashlight batteries for a while, but cleaned out local suppliers.  Plus, there was the detour going home, to drop dead ones at the recycle center.

I added a Honda gasoline generator to charge the batteries.  Now it’s an eco-hybrid.

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If you’d like to join in on the Friday Fictioneers fun, just go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site, and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100-word story.

Flash Fiction #289

PHOTO PROMPT © Alicia Jamtaas

I’M STUFFED

For those of us Baby-Boomers, and even pre-Boomers, who remember the Second World War, and perhaps the lingering results of the Great Depression, (All hail modern medicine!) many of us succumb to the Keep it.  It might be useful someday Syndrome.

Boomers are not the only ones who do it, but we’re a bit crazy.  We leave our valuable cars in front of the house, and fill our garages with junk.  As memories deteriorate, we’re not sure we still have what we search for, and usually don’t find it.

“Why am I here?  Oh yeah, to turn off the light.”

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If you would like to join the Friday Fictioneers, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #288

 

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

IN AUTUMN, A YOUNG MAN’S FANCY

It’s Labor Day??!  Time to go back to high school.  Oh thrill!  Oh joy! (Insert sarcasm here!)

Some more pencils
some more books
some more teachers’
dirty looks

All the fun and freedom of summer, gone for another year.  No more swimming.  No more camping.  It’s like walking the Last Mile.  I feel the will to live draining away.

Hmmm??  A hot new girl just moved into the neighborhood?  She’ll be on our bus??!  She’ll be in our class??!  Interestinger and interestinger!

I’m going to get my hormones rotated, and YES, I enrolled in the Drama course.  Bring it, school!

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If you’d like to join the Friday Fictioneers fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #287

PHOTO PROMPT © Brenda Cox

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

After Richard got his Business degree at Louisiana U., he was thrilled to get an entry position in Chicago.  He loved the South, but revelled in the global culture in the North, especially the food.  When his friend, BillyJoeBob flew up to visit, he excitedly took him to the Market, to sample the foreign fare.

Bubba said, “Ain’t none too sure ’bout this Chink food.  I hears they eats funny meat, and stuff that grows in ditches and swamps.”

Astounded, Richard replied, “Bubba, you’re so narrow-minded, your ears rub together.  Don’t y’all remember chitlins, gator steak, poke salad, and crawfish?”

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If you’d like to join the Friday Fictioneers fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction # 286

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

ROCKIN’ UP

All society is a pendulum, from too strict, to too lax, and back again.  Our best hope is that the average is always upward.  The proof is here in Ed Sheeran’s Castle On The Hill-land.  Once, the rich, who stole from the weak and poor to get that way, built huge commanding castles on hilltops to keep others from stealing from them.

Nowadays, that service is provided by the IRS.  I am optimistic that American education will improve, and Trump-sponsored Christian willful ignorance and intolerance will begin to abate.  Castles are passé, but ‘Prepper Shelters’ are becoming all too common.

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If you want to join the fun with the Friday Fictioneers, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site, and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #285

PHOTO PROMPT © Bill Reynolds

WOW

My creative git up and go has got up and went.  (What, again??!)  😳

Much as I would like to, I can’t always rely on Fibbing Fridays to end the week with.

My writing skills have flamed out.  Rochelle’s picture this week has left them as sere and ravaged as Yosemite after a wildfire, so this will have to be a WOW post.

The Word Of the Week is

Ischia

This is a Latin word for the name of an island in the Bay of Naples.  It is called that because it resembles the bones at the back of the pelvis.

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If you’d like to join the fun with the Friday Fictioneers, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #284

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

SPIN SPIN SPIN

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.
I have to run faster and faster, just to stay in the same place.

It is pleasant to recline in the lap of technology – so many things to make our lives quicker and easier – but, there is a cost to pay.  Change has been thrust upon us, occurring more and more often.

Studies show if the maze is constantly altered, the lab rat eventually goes insane – which brings us to cops killing innocent people, and schoolboys committing mass murders.  It’s not the testosterone or guns. Our easy, effortless lives are killing us.

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If you’d like to join the fun with the Friday Fictioneers, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #283

PHOTO PROMPT © Jan Wayne Fields

THERE’S ONE IN EVERY JOCKSTRAP

Yeehaw!!  It’s Canada Day, and, as usual, the city was celebrating with a big Multicultural Festival in the downtown park.

Bruce had spent most of the afternoon sampling the food and drink – perhaps too much.  He approached another food truck.  “Gimme two crispy tacos.”

I tell yu befoe, we no sell tacos.  Yu go way now please.

Okay, okay, don’t get yer serape in a twist!  Gimme a chicken quesadilla.  You got any’a that Japanzie beer, Kirin, in one of them kegs?

We no sell beer.  We sell flowah.

Sir!  Park Security. Please come with us.  You need a rest.

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If you’d like to join the fun with the Friday Fictioneers, just go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.