Reality

Friday Fictioneers for March 17th, 2023

Friday is another fictioneers day and Saint Paddy’s Day. I’m mostly Irish, but I never drink green beer and I seldom eat corned beef and cabbage. Who tells a better story than an old Irishman? Who does a better poem read than a young, attractive Irish actor?

Unable to find a suitable Irish lad or lass, Mistress of her storybook realm of fibs and fables, Rochelle, in her high magnificentness, dove down under to Australia. From there, she has shanghaied the prompt photo from Rowena Curtin to lead us into the temptation of creating a complete story with fewer than 101 words.

Click on Rowena’s pic to get the lowdown from Sydney on Rochelle’s blog page. When you’ve written your scoop, you can post it with all the other glorious wonders on inlinkz dot com (see Tim’s photo at the bottom of this blog).

If you can do this (and you certainly can), we promise to read it and comment (nicely) with hopes of delightful reciprocation.

PHOTO PROMPT © Rowena Curtin

Genre: Biographical Fiction
Title: Decisions Made
Word Count: 100

***

He felt betrayed. Trapped. Cheated. Conflicted. Confused. Rage simmered, but what burned him up most was his own self-pity. He was numb. What could he do?

Escape to Canada was wartime treason. If he joined the Army as a rifleman (eleven bravo), he’d be forced to kill or to die. He wanted neither. Everyone he knew would consider him a coward.

The walls closed in. What to do?

He could fight and die in a just war. This one was unjust.

He relented and lived through it all.

Then he wrote about it. Now they would all know his truth.

***

Look both ways because “the bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over.”
Mind the gaps because “you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.”
(Quotes are from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien)

 

Click on Tim O’Brien to read more micro-fiction stories drawn from Rowena’s photo.

Sammi’s Weekender #301 (treetop)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and to read more 63 word poems or prose.

Down Together

Helicopters are big-ass, noisy targets — preferred bullseyes for AKs or rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers. They’d get enemy kills and loot from the dead machine with one lucky shot.

To live, we flew high or desperately, dumbass low — at treetop levels or less. Other altitudes made things too easy for them. They heard us coming. We did our best to live and to kill.

Look both ways and be a zigzagging target. It’s hard to hit what’s moving.
Mind the gaps so you know where the shots came from.

 

The video with this Billy Joel song is six minutes, but it was my inspiration to the prompt word.

Sammi’s Weekender #298 (jejune)

Click this graphic for Sammi’s page where you’ll find more fine prose/poetry.

I had to look it up. Jejune means devoid of significance and dull. Its many synonyms include stodgy, insipid, vapid, banal, and boring.

Jerkoff

I don’t care
what you think
about
long dead
bukowski.

I read/re-read
(either way)
his non-stuffy
prose or poems.

why do I care?
he’s not jejune.

his paradigm
or mine?

Look both ways for truth and reality.
Mind your gaps but admit not your secret pleasures.

Sammi’s Weekender #297 (key)

Click on graphic to go to Sammi’s blog page where more 71-word poetry or prose are key.

 

 

Whispering Cuts

Lost in a familiar sea of grave reality, my dysfunctional heart not yet surrendered, something of which none are certain. Worry descended like a pall over my will. Sadness has taken control of my soul. Well-intentioned, high-riding key influencers are wheedling me into their delusional corner. Life, lies, and what matters: shut down before I hit the ground. I ponder death, or better, conceivably, never to have been born at all.

Look both ways, but in the end, it is just the end.
Nothing more.
Mind the gaps of life’s traps.
Sometimes it’s your fault. Sometimes it’s not.

Monday’s Rune: Just for me

Humble Sigh

She said, “I write
just for me,
not for any reader.”
All for her own pleasure.
So she said.
So she thought.

But, oh, oh, oh,
the smile she had
and the glint in her eye
over the magazine
that published her story.

Tell me that again my friend,
that part about the writer
without ego or desire
to please or to be pleased.

Look both ways and take the pat on the back.
Mind the gaps for feeling denied.

Monday’s Rune: Just a little poke

Just a little poke

Lying on the Cath Lab table, oxygen
up my nose, needles in my everywhere,
nurses and technicians asking questions.
Technology all around.

It’s like a Federation starship sickbay,
or a Starbase infirmary
with many more actors vying for a role
and space at my table.

There are two main characters. The protagonists are
the Chief Medical Officer and me.
Other smart young wonders,
called residents, watch.

Also, a consulting rep from
the manufacturer of my shiny new transcatheter aortic heart valve,
to be snaked into place and magically,
guided, angiographically trough my veins and arteries,
and into my beating heart, which will soon almost stop,
scaring all except unconscious me,
to replace the defective OEM part.

They all look alike in masks and caps. I’m naked on a procedure table,
surrounded by X-ray machines, big screen monitors,
procedure carts, lights, and computer workstations.

In some other room nearby, more medical miracle role players
wave from behind large windows. I needed a Playbill.

No TV doctor medicine-show drama. Okay, maybe a little,
but two days later I am home and ready to rock.
Ya gotta love modern medical science.

Look both ways and ask lots of questions.
Mind the gaps for diagnoses and prognoses.

Monday’s Rune: Rescue This

 

Innocently Unhelpful

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.

Sammie’s Weekender #293 (preposterous)

Click here for more preposterous writings linked at Sammi’s blog page.

 

 

Dear Danny,

Here’s the thing, man.

It probably seems pathetically preposterous
to a person such as your profoundly proud self,
but at least pretend to listen.

Don’t worry.

I understand.

You cannot validate me.
You are not me, nor I you.
You’re right about that part.
but I’m more you than you’d think,
in a darkly nonspecific way.

See how silly and sad that is?

You despise me for breathing
——- and for being right.

Look both ways as you try to understand people.
All the same, yet different.
Mind the gaps to help keep communication civil.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #288 (momentous)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page.

Bygones

He didn’t marvel at that momentous moment.
After many years, she had become sanctimonious.
It wasn’t the stupendous vision he hoped for. It was horrendous, not tremendous,
seeing her now as portentous.

Look both ways but the past was then, this is now.
Find and mind the gaps for hidden reasons for change.

Friday Fictioneers for December 2nd, 2022

Kicking off the twelfth month of twenty-twenty-two, artist, businesswoman, swimmer, writer, mother, wife, sister, (I could go on), and our friend and fictioneer leader, Rochelle, has provided us with a peek out from Roger Bultot’s window with his inspiring photo as a bridge to creativity.

It goes like this. We look at the picture and write whatever story (beginning, middle, & end) we want. Easy, right? It’s doesn’t even have to be pure fiction. But we must prove our micro (or flash) – (non-)fiction bone fides by trimming our stories to any number of words under 101. Try it!

The directions are simple and available on Rochelle’s blog page, reachable with a simple tap, click, or press on Roger’s picture, like it was a detonator.

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Genre: Espionage Fiction
Title: Truncated Bridge
Word Count: 100
***

Looking out the window, I felt stress. Ignorance fed by fear. After this job, I’d comfortably retire. To what? Sad.

The morning sunrise lacked hope. It was threatening. A foreboding bloody sky in a randomly meaningless universe. I didn’t care. It was time.

I lit what I promised myself was my last cigarette and sat by the window as I’d done hundreds of times before. When I saw the target on the bridge, I pressed the detonator button and watched the explosion. I always hated all the collateral damage. The news would blame the old bridge. Everyone lies. Everyone dies.

***

Look both ways to find happy endings.
Mind the gaps because that’s where the bridges collapse.

 

Click on Tom Hanks in the Bridge of Spies movie to read more stories based on Roger’s photo.

And for the music lovers among us, I present the Eagles singing “Seven Bridges Road.” If it works. I suppose I took the bridges thing a bit too far.