#SundayPhotoFiction

By The Sea

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When he happened upon the village, he had been traveling for a long time. Wandering from place to place. He stopped in the small restaurant for some dinner and that’s when he saw it. There was a sign advertising a position for a lighthouse keeper. His breath caught in his throat. He had worked as a lighthouse keeper many times in his life. Those were the only times he had been a good person. When he had a connection to the sea.

He called the number on the sign. There was a small room he could live in at the bottom of the lighthouse. It had been standing empty for a while now. Workmen came to set its light. He moved in the few things that he had.

That night, he went about the business of calibrating the light. An image came into the path of the light and he realized it was a large ship sailing too close to the coast. When the light began to work, he watched as the ship steered away from the coastline.

He sighed with relief. This Christmas he had done a good deed. Unlike so many Christmas’s in the past.

 

*Thanks to Susan Spaulding and #SundayPhotoFiction

 

 

The Bus Tour

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The old man and woman crept up to the door of the church. They couldn’t believe what they saw. Above the door was the Old Cross, the pagan cross. It was the cross they worshipped when they were young and visited The Sorcerer.

They stood back and looked at the Church, both it and the Old Cross covered in vines, like the church from long ago. Was it possible that The Sorcerer could be here so many years later? He was surely dead by now.

The old couple was on a bus tour of Wales. They had moved to London to have a normal life. They thought they had left paganism behind, but here was the Old Cross. They had an almost unbearable urge to enter the old church.

Their guide and tour group walked up. The guide Continue reading →

Mania

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“Gavin, I’m writing my comprehensive exams for Oxford. I am not going to worry about him right now.”

”How long has he been gone?”

”I’m not sure. You know there are days when I don’t see him. From the looks of the soap in his shower, it looks like he’s been gone for a while.”

Gavin walked into his bathroom and looked in the shower.

“Everything is certainly dried up in there. That soap. He’s just used that little corner,” he said.

”He’s always afraid he won’t be able to buy anything, even with that huge fortune sitting in the bank at his disposal.”

Gavin paced around the apartment. “Any idea where he went?”

I finally sighed and laid down my books.

”A few weeks ago, he mentioned a craving for Indonesian food. If I were you, I’d try Amsterdam.”

”Is he manic right now?”

”Gavin, when will you learn that he’s always manic and get him some help?”

Gavin just looked at me and said, “Where in Amsterdam?”

”The red light district. That’s where his favorite Indonesian restaurant is. As well as a lot of available women.”

 

Thanks to Susan at Sunday Photo Fiction for the prompt and Fandango for the photo!

The Demise of Civilization

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The street looks peaceful doesn’t it? Palm trees, white fences, boys on bicycles going to school this morning. Could be almost any street in Florida. It’s not almost any street. It’s my street.

I live here alone. A 55-year-old lady. Retired. Trying to make ends meet on a small pension and my savings. I’m not nearly old enough yet to quality for social security. I had to retire early because of my vision. I’m legally blind. I’m also scared.

This used to be a wonderful place to live. I knew all the neighbors. We had a nice community. Then the hurricanes came and people moved away. I can’t afford to move.

My neighbors moved and some left their houses empty. Squatters moved in. Those boys on the bicycles? At night, they are part of a gang. They terrorize us by going up and down the street and stealing everything they can find. They spray paint our houses. The police have tried to catch them with no luck.

I don’t have anyone to help me. My family is gone now. What do people like me do? No money to go to a safer place. Is there a safer place?

 

Photo Credit to C. E. Ayr

Thanks Susan and SundayPhotoFictioners for the prompt!

Guy’s Day Out

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”Guy’s, isn’t is great to be out on our own today?”

”Jack, thanks for setting up this half-day in the balloon for us,” replied one of the guys.

Jack, Phil, and Carter were all good friends. They often worked twelve or fourteen hours a day. They barely had time to see their wives and kids. They had little time to see their friends. They talked frequently and recently, they had talked about how tired and stressed they all were. Jack decided to plan something fun for them. He needed time with his friends. He knew they all did.

Their half-day in the balloon was great. When they went for drinks afterward, the talk turned to their wives. They were also friends and they worked hard. Each one had a good job and they had the extra job of child care. The men were sensitive to that. They decided that they would plan a spa day for their wives and they would handle child care and the household for the day.

When the guys got home, they were more relaxed. They told their wives they were planning a spa day for them. That night, the three households were happy.

198 words

Photo Credit: Susan Spaulding

Thanks to Susan for taking over Sunday Photo Fiction!

The Wine Tasting

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“Oh, but isn’t the blue fun, the Gik, darling? It’s so new and different,” Juan asked the party at the wine-tasting.

”It’s fun, but I feel like I’m drinking cough medicine,” the American said.

”But the taste! It’s sweet, light, and bubbly. I’m taking some home for my daughter’s wedding,” the British man commented.

The three men, friends for many years, were attending a wine tasting in Spain, where they were on holiday. It was at a small, rather mysterious winery that none of them had heard of before they got the invitation.

“The yellow! The Vin Jeune! This is the first time I’ve tasted it,” cried the American. “How unique! It’s nutty and fruity at the same time. Delicious.”

”It’s just overdeveloped white wine. Next, please,” said the Brit. The Spaniard was delighting in the taste of the yellow.  The three men briefly argued about the characteristics of the blue versus the yellow.

They came to the red, the burgundy. They agreed. Full-bodied, delicious, perhaps the best.

A commotion took place at the door and two masked men appeared.

”Place your wallets on the table. Then walk into the vat room,” one of the men said.

Mean Girls

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The two girls with bright red hair gazed at their creation hanging on the wall.

“See, Alicia, the one on the left.”

”Oh, she’s the smart bitch. The one the teachers all call on. Her Daddy drinks. She’s nothing.”

They giggled.

”The next one is the Marilyn Monroe chick, Katie. Ms. Beautiful. All the boys want her!”

”Oh, so is the next one, Alicia. She thinks she’s so tall and gorgeous, she’s going to be a model and smart to boot. Who wants to hang around with her?”

”I like the next one, Katie. She’s nice and just seems to be one of us girls. She even kisses the boys, she says! Let’s invite her to our next slumber party.”

”Don’t even mention the next one, Alicia. Her Daddy is some big shot and she thinks she is really something.”

”Alicia, the last one. I like her. Her mom is sick though and she doesn’t get to go anywhere.”

”That makes four of us at our next slumber party, Katie. We just need to find four more out of our high school class.”

After high school, when the ostracized girls weren’t heard from again, the two redheads couldn’t understand why.

200 words

Photo Credit to J Hardy Carroll

 

The Bullying

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The school bus stopped with a screech in front of the fire station. The children had misbehaved almost the entire route and the monitor seemed unable to stop them. Now, something drastic was happening as the monitor was screaming for him to stop and all the children seemed to be screaming. Something about bullying. The bus driver shrugged his shoulders and came to a halt.

The little boy had been shoved around since he had boarded the school bus. He was pushed around every day. The monitor knew it, but she didn’t want to get in the middle of it because those kids would turn on her. The two bigger boys called him terrible names and said awful things to him.

Today, the unthinkable happened. The little boy reached in his backpack and pulled out a pistol. He was waving it around wildly, threatening to shoot the bigger boys who were bullying him and the other kids on the bus. The bigger boys were crying.

They were by the fire station. The driver quietly walked off the bus and got the firemen. When the little boy saw them, he sat down in the floor and started crying too.

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Retribution

/ R.M. Carlson / 19 Comments

red fox

Jack lived in a quiet, wooded subdivision outside of town. The lots were large. Lots of privacy. Jack and his friend, Charles, liked to hunt. They said it was for fun. Everyone knew it was because they enjoyed the kill.

Jack and Charles didn’t think they had to go far to kill a deer. There were many all around Jack’s home. Jack set up a tree stand and baited the deer. Every year, he shot at least one right in his yard, in the midst of the subdivision.

Jack and Charles hunted other animals as well. There was a family of red foxes that lived in the subdivision. They were sly and crafty. Even though the men tried to lure them out to shoot them, they were smarter than the hunters. They never shot a red fox.

One year, Jack took his deer to the taxidermist. To his surprise, there sat a red fox, ready to be picked up. As Jack left the shop, he could have sworn he saw that fox move. He turned around to leave. The last thing he felt were the teeth of the fox sink into the back of his neck.

Sunday Photo Fiction

Photo Courtesy Natural History Museum of London

 

 

The Ruins

/ R.M. Carlson / 13 Comments

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Wearing a special HazMat suit developed in early 2018, Jennifer was one of the environmental scientists who was outdoors in the Fall of 2028 taking soil and air samples. Her team was working in the Washington, DC/New York City/Boston corridor.

After a North Korean missile had struck Japan, the U.S. had bombed North Korea. They got off a missile toward South Korea. Using several nuclear-tipped ICBMs, Beijimg had fired on the east coast of the U.S. and the U.S. had destroyed the capital of China. What was left of the U.S. government had been moved to Columbus, Ohio.

Radiation poisoning spread over the eastern portion of the U.S. Many teams like Jennifer’s were deployed over the entire region. People were surviving, but few survived along the northeast corridor. They had determined that it would be years before the food would be safe to grow. Water was being purified.

Jennifer went inside the in-ground shelter to make her report. No real change from the last time. She recommended importing as much food as possible and relying on the western U.S. for the rest. She laid her head on her desk and cried.

Sunday Photo Fiction