Click the Script graphic for Sammi’s page and more writings.
So, Tell Me
I want to know you. The real, secret you.
I want to read your mind’s script.
Show me your play list. Who do you love?
What about friends? What’s your deal?
I want to know what you do in private
and tell no one. What was your childhood like?
When did you decide to be you?
Who do you hate? What was
your relationship with your parents?
Do you swear? Ever been sexually molested?
How many sex partners do you have?
Tell me your favorite everything.
I’d ask you what you think of me,
but that’s none of my business.
Look both ways at people.
It’s okay to wonder and to imagine.
But mind the gaps.
Not everything makes sense or is what you expect it to be.
Our mysterious and mischievous Mistress, Rochelle, passionate for the pool (she could swim circles around most of us), has bestowed upon us a Friday the 13th photo by Fleur Lind. We are to be magically inspired and motivated to write a story of fewer than 101 words (unlike Dalmatians or Arabian Nights).
To help enlighten you as you steer your story to the inlinkz squares, click on Fleur’s photo to be driven to Rochelle’s blog where it’s all mapped out for us. It’s fun. Try it. Then join the pack as we read and hopefully comment on as many stories as we like.
Genre: Narrative Poetry
Title: A Verse of Light
Word Count: 100
***
Driving, my twisted mind a malaise of anger
lost in sorrow that love controls,
I think of her and of him.
That Sting song played,
“I’m so happy that I can’t stop crying
… I’m laughing through my tears”
The blood red sky, like love. The clouds cheering,
“Something about the universe and how it’s all connected”
I saw light coming. I heard,
“Everybody’s got to leave the darkness sometime”
As I drove into the light, I felt the pain leaving me.
“I’m so happy that I can’t stop crying
I’m laughing through my tears” And the pain is gone.
***
Look both ways.
At times, let the future heal the past.
Mind the gaps, some pain remains.
Click on the crash to read other (more uplifting) stories.
I have no idea why I like this old Sting song so much.
One day I was chopping weeds.
When I looked up Libby, our toy poodle, was gone.
I knew she would go home with virtually anyone.
But she’d been fixed years earlier, so she could go play.
I noticed a familiar SUV driving away. I was unarmed, but I felt, maybe,
Libby had been dognapped. I called for her and looked around.
After a while, the car returned and pulled over near me.
The lady driving rolled down the window. She held a small black dog
in her lap and asked if it was my dog. I said, “I don’t know. Lemme check
her license right here on her collar.” Libby was calm. I got semi-sarcastic.
“Yep. Last seen right over there in my yard sniffing her own shit.”
The indignant do-gooder gave me a look and said, “I’m a dog
rescuer. I rescue strays.” I took Libby and said, “Today you’ve
moved up to dognapping. Last I checked that was against the law.
Now may I see your rescue license?”
I could tell she was getting pissed at me.
Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall started pounding my mind and I turned up my volume,
“Hey! Lady! Leave this dog alone!”
All-in-all, look both ways when tending your flock.
Your poor wretched strays may get “rescued” the minute you look one way.
Mind the gaps in the minds of those dumbly righteous souls who do good to feel better than.
I first posted a story on Friday Fictioneers on 8/14/2020. That was less than three years ago.
So, when Mistress Rochelle slips in an old photo prompt (four years ago, in this case) [Correction. Roger’s pic is new. Rochelle’s story is a rerun.] as she did today with a Roger Bultot photo redux, it’s new to me. Since our maven of end of week mystery has pressed go for 2023, I’ve carved my new story into the blogosphere granite.
If you’re interested, just click on Roger’s pic to take the trip on over to Rochelle’s blog page where we all begin this challenge each week.
Genre: Fiction
Title: Deadly Staircase
Word Count: 100
The stairs down to the underground apartment were blocked by a locked gate. It was a trash bin for whatever was blowing. Daily, people walked past the infamous flat, still haunted by ghosts of the many women who were tortured, raped, and murdered inside.
She said, “Babe, we’ve got to go down there. We need pictures for literary inspiration.”
I replied, “How can you consider breaking in? It’s morbid. Sick. You’re out of your mind.”
She jimmied the lock, walked down to the door, and disappeared inside.
“Honestly officer. That was the last time I saw Rochelle—five hours ago.”
Look both ways to solve mysteries and puzzles.
Mind the gaps. They’re traps for fear to some but inspiration to others.
Click on the police tape to read more great stories.
During the year twenty-twenty-two, the lovely and wonderful Rochelle has tempted and challenged all comers with photographic inspiration. Every week, she boosted me to the writing of a one-hundred-word story. This is my fifty-second story this year: 5,200 words that might have been a brief short story, but each is a micro fictional attempt to swing fanatically for the fences.
This year’s finale provides us with one of Rochelle’s personal pictures from which we are to connect the dots and write a complete story with fewer words than compose the average parrot’s vocabulary: no more than 100.
Join the fun by clicking on the photo for a quick taxi ride over to Rochelle’s blog. There you can find all you need to know to play along. Post your story with the others on the inlinkz app.
As Hanukkah ends
Kwanzaa begins, and it is boxing day in Canada.
Because yesterday over two billion enlightened
of the eight billion humans alive
decide a religious thing and dispute
coffee cups and well wishes,
which must be specifically selfish.
It’s also the climaxing week of
collegiate football bowls
so schools can decide who to fire
or to obscenely overpay with locked down
contracts having nothing to do
with anything educational (or successful)
except that we are better than you—
more near neurotic selfishness. Yay,
we’re number one (so what?).
But it is serious business
for calendars. The end of another
elliptical orbital trip around the
minor star we call Sun,
and another 365 days bite the dust.
In the meantime, libraries close,
school music programs falter
or are cancelled to reduce cost,
and art blows in the wind.
Happy holidays. Congratulations,
it’s a wonderful life, Mister Potter.
Look both ways except this week.
For twenty-twenty-two, it’s over.
Mind the gaps for “what have we done?”
To welcome official northern hemisphere Winter and to punctuate the solstice, Mistress of Fictioneering, Rochelle, has teamed up with the wonderful winter scene photographer, Dale Rogerson, to inspire us to create, write, and to post stories of fewer than 101 words.
While a click on Dale’s pic gets you a sleigh ride over to Rochelle’s blog where all the fun begins, I can tell you that this is a challenging writing experience. So is going to the page of squares (inlinkz) where reading and commenting begets us the same. Do that by clicking on the below photo of Jackie O and her bane paparazzo, Ron G.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Title: Ambivalent Vanity
Word Count: 100
***
“Ron, that’s her private property across the creek. You’re obsessed with this woman. No wonder everyone hates all paparazzi.”
While looking through his telephoto viewfinder, “People love my photos and rags pay us big bucks, Billy-boy. Celebs want it both ways — fame and fortune with pictures but hate me for taking them. Hand me my waders.”
I stayed back while he walked toward the house.
Ron came running back to the crack of gun shots. He fell into the freezing water. Then he got up, and we ran to the car. He laughed and said, “Ain’t this job fun, Billy-boy?”
***
Look both ways for a paparazzo hiding behind a bush.
These days, everyone has a camera.
Mind the gaps or just surrender to the inevitable cha-ching of notoriety.
The facts: Ron Galella, the freelance photographer who relentlessly pursued Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis until a judge barred him from taking her picture, who pestered Marlon Brando until Brando broke his jaw and detached five teeth, and who for better or worse helped define today’s boundary-challenged culture of celebrity, died on Saturday, April 30, 2022, at his home in Montville, N.J. He was 91.
Click on the photo of Jackie Onassis and photographer Ron Galella to read more excellent stories inspired by Dale’s photo. (1971 in NYC. Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Our Literary Journey 