draliman on life

Here is my story for Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo was contributed by Sarah Potter.

I came up blank this week. I don’t do well when there’s nothing hilarious in the photo. So here’s a story which makes some sort of statement. Or whatever.

Copyright Sarah Potter

Snowflakes fluttered down through the darkness, silent, gentle, already a centimetre deep. The people of England were beginning to panic.

“How will I get to work?”

“The kids’ school is half a mile away! What will we do?”

“What if we run out of food?”

“This is a DISASTER!”

Half a world away Amira dodged through an underpass to avoid the roving gangs, bread clutched to her chest. Gunfire sounded, but a few streets over. She took a chance and raced across the square into her half-collapsed bedsit.

Home safe, food for the babies. Today had been a good day.

Here is my post for Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. This week’s picture was contributed by Liz Young.

There’s been a lot of talk recently of the great strides in AI and robotics…

To read this week’s other stories, click on the blue froggy.

Copyright Liz Young

“Live, damn you, live! One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand…”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Push the fluids! Another amp of epi! Charge to 360! Clear!”

“Stop! Um… she’s gone.”

“Gone? How do you know?”

“Firstly, her body is over here and her head is over there.”

“Can’t we just, you know, reattach it? With some glue?”

“Actually, yes. Because this is First Aid training and you just broke the Resusci Annie.”

“But she was so young! What have I done? Why, God, whhhhyyyyyyy…?”

“Hello, is that St Winifred’s Home for the Permanently Baffled? We have another one… mistaken Resusci Annie for his robotic girlfriend…”

Here is my story for Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo was contributed by Ted Strutz.

Work is mad but I spent the end of my lunch break hammering out a little story. Well, not really a story. It’s a bit weird as you can probably tell from the title. Hey ho.

Here goes 🙂

Copyright Ted Strutz

What am I doing out here? would be a sensible question for a chair in this situation to ask, if a chair could ask such a question.

I wonder where all the people have gone? might be a reasonable thought for a chair, if a chair could think reasonable thoughts.

Maybe it had been left here as a prank, back when there were pranks, and kids to play them?

These questions are best left to the trees, ancient and indomitable, thinking thoughts lasting decades. And after all those decades of a world without humans, they reach the same conclusion.

Peace at last.

Here is my story for Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. The photo was contributed by Roger Bultot.

My story this week is a real downer. Yay!

Copyright Roger Bultot

Frank grimaced as his pain-racked body refused to cooperate. Why won’t they just let me go? he wondered. I’m an old man, crippled, in agony. Even the pill bottle he’d acquired had failed him, his fingers too gnarled, too weak.

The cold just made it worse.

Cold? They’ve left the window open…

He dragged himself slowly, painfully across the room and hauled himself onto the sill. One more metre…

The pain fell away, an incredible lightness overtook him. I can fly! He shot upwards, spiralling, joyful, pain-free!

Far below, someone screamed. A crowd gathered. Mobile phones recorded the scene.

Here is my story for Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo was contributed by Al Forbes.

I’m really busy at the moment and thought of re-posting the story I wrote for this picture last year in the hopes that nobody would notice 🙂 but I decided to bung something together after all.

To read the other stories, click on the blue froggy.

Copyright Al Forbes

“Ah, look at those. I remember motoring down the road, wind in my hair…”

“Darling, stop it! You had an Austin Morris! Vintage car, indeed.”

“Wow, Dad. Cars have changed so much! When I grow up I’m gonna invent a flying car!”

“Hundreds have promised the same, son…”

Trevor looked wistfully at his “Amazing Flying Car”, rusting in the field. No way to power it since the Fuel Wars of the mid-twenty-first century. No fuel, no electricity. No civilisation, some would say.

Shaking his head, he nudged Daisy and headed to market. “Giddy-up, girl!”

Life was so much simpler now.

Here is my post for the 100 word fiction challenge Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle. The photo this week was supplied by Dale Rogerson.

A quick warning – I used the “f” word near the end as I felt it gave more impact to the story and served to emphasise the mood switch. Nothing else I tried had quite the same bite and I feel this guy would have said it.

To read this week’s other stories, click on the blue froggy!

Copyright Dale Rogerson

Cowled figures shrouded in darkness, we await the acolyte. Candles in alcoves light the way to the sacred chamber. All is in readiness. Ceremonial knives are razor-sharp; the sacrifice bleats in terror, bowls ready to receive its blood.

Our origins lost in the mists of time, our members few yet powerful, today we welcome another into our fold.

Movement! He approaches!

“Excuse me, I’m looking for the toilets… um… bloody hell, is that a goat?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, another one! Back the way you came, second door on the left.”

“Um… thanks.”

Ahem. Cowled figures shrouded in darkness, we await the acolyte…

Here is my story for Friday Fictioneers, the 100 word challenge hosted by Rochelle with a photo this week by C. E. Ayr.

I did think of a dark story to do with the take over of jobs by machines, but in the end I went for this ridiculous little news story.

To read the other stories, click on the blue froggy.

Copyright C. E. Ayr

Excerpt from The Daily Prattle

The inquest into the “PlugGate” incident on Britain’s railways, which last April caused 745 deaths and millions of pounds of damage, closed today.

The coroner heard that the new Automated Railway Signalling Equipment (ARSE) system was deactivated when contract cleaner Mrs Moira Dimple, 47, unplugged it as she, in her own words, “needed somewhere to plug in my vacuum cleaner, dearie.”

National Rail has reassured customers that such a disaster could never happen again as they have “invested in loads of Sellotape to stick over the plug sockets”.

This reporter remains sceptical and will be taking the bus.

Here is my post for Friday Fictioneers, the 100 word writing challenge hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo comes from Sandra Crook.

A bit of a silly story this week but once I got it in my head I couldn’t think of anything else. It looked to me like one of those elaborate things you set up in that game “Mousetrap”.

To read the other stories, click on the blue froggy.

Copyright Sandra Crook

“How does it work, Master?”

“Observe. He approaches. The door opens…”

Clunk

“… loosing the ball bearing to roll down the plank, triggering the mechanism…”

Rumble

“… the cog turns…”

Griiiind

“… releasing the flour above…”

Cough cough

“… thus blocking out the light…”

Huh?

“… our target lights a match…”

Scrape

“… igniting the flour particles…”

Whoomp!

“… blowing him to pieces.”

Aaaarggggh!

“Couldn’t we have just blown his brains out with a sawn-off shotgun, Sensei?”

“Finesse, young Padawan. Beauty, elegance. That is why I am the Master, and you, the student. Now, go upstairs and scrape him off the carpet.”

Here is my story for Friday Fictioneers, the weekly 100 word story prompt hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo comes from Shaktiki Sharma.

I was going to do a Christmassy one, maybe with Santa in it, but the first thing this photo said to me was “death in the shadows” 🙂

To read this week’s other stories, click on the blue froggy.

Copyright Shaktiki Sharma

A scream, swiftly silenced, rang through the darkness. The humans shuddered and gathered closer to the light. Since the Awakening, things waited in the shadows.

They said there are no monsters.

They were wrong.

Graduk smiled to itself, pouring more energy into its bio-luminescent appendages. Its glow increased, drawing more of the bipeds close. “Adapt or die” was a favourite saying amongst them, it had heard. Those of its brethren, lurking in the dark places waiting for an occasional foolish meal, had not adapted.

Graduk had.

It increased its glow still more and awaited the unsuspecting feast.

Here is my happy jolly Christmas offering for Friday Fictioneers, the weekly 100 word photo prompt hosted by Rochelle. This week’s photo was contributed by Roger Bultot.

To read this week’s other stories, click on the blue froggy.

Copyright Roger Bultot

“Hey, look, I love UV black light, let’s go in.”

“Yeah, it’s such a great colour!”

“And it shows up all sorts of stains and blood and Oh. My. God. What the Hell happened here? Waitress?”

“Good evening! Coffee? Pie?”

“What happened, Miss?”

“Ooh, a big grisly murder. A whole bus-load of tourists. And they never found the bodies!”

“Never found the bodies?”

“No. Not a single one!”

“Wow. Weird. I wonder what happened to them? Anyway, I guess we’ll have a couple of coffees. And a slice of pie with two forks, please. ‘Mystery meat pie’. Sounds tasty!”