Not a Good Place to Die

susan

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

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I’ve been looking for a good place to die but this isn’t it. Just some French town, another bunch of tourists, and pigeons shitting all over the street.

At least it’s warmer here than the last place I showed up. I don’t have a lot of control over what part of the planet I land or how long I stay. Sometimes nothing happens, and sometimes there’s an adventure or whatever you want to call it.

But I’m tired of the world and I want a final resting place. This isn’t it, so I guess I’ll stop by the macaron shop.

It’s Wednesday and once again time to participate in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 12 January 2024 edition of Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

It snowed again last night and in fact, it’s a school “snow day” today, which may mean my house will be visited by more than one grandchild later this morning.

I’m tired, not only because of not sleeping well, but of a lot of things, which lends itself to the melancholy nature of this mediocre tale. My character hops from one part of the Earth to the next for sometimes no particular reason (that’s sometimes how I feel each Wednesday anticipating where Rochelle’s photo journey will take me next). He’s tired too, only a lot more so.

I wanted to find out where the photo was taken, but there weren’t a lot of clues. One building had “Macar…” written on it, so I decided to go with Macarons. The town obviously isn’t in the U.S. and some of the people looked like tourists, so that’s what I went with.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz.

I got my first story acceptance for 2024. My first rejection, too. Then, I checked with a publisher on a story I should have received a “Yes” or “No” on, and they said their submissions call yielded far more than the expected responses (they always say that as if there aren’t a ton of hungry indie authors looking to be published) and they were digging themselves out. So, that one’s still in play, too.

29 thoughts on “Not a Good Place to Die”

  2. Sorry you and the character feel tired, I know the feeling. I hope there’s more hope around the corner for both of you – that acceptance is great news! I’ve sent 3 job applications off this year and still waiting on a response from one in December, so fingers crossed for us both!

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  4. I wonder if your character ever runs into Zing and Zang. They’re tired, too, so they took a little home leave 🙂

    I LOVE real macarons! Leaned the difference between them and macaroons when I visited a small cafe with my son years ago 🙂

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  12. I was trying to figure out where it was too! Looks northern European. And I thought of Macarons too when spotting that on the side of the building. Congrats on your story submissions and I hope you get a good night’s sleep soon, I share your plight and know how challenging it can be.

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