Relaxing at Sunset

pool

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Harold thought it was great that his friend Jimmy let him use his place in the Arizona desert while he had to stay in Phoenix. At sunset, it was still warm enough to relax in the pool with a drink, and in November, too.

“This is the life,” he said sipping at another bourbon. “At least while the food lasts.”

The emergency news channel was coming across his phone. The narrator was describing the vampire plague sweeping every populated area in the world.

“It’ll take ‘em a while to find me. After Jimmy turns, I wonder if he’ll come home?”

It’s Wednesday and time once again to participate in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 14 November 2025 edition of Friday Fictioneers.

The idea is to use the image at the top as the prompt for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

isoldier

Cover art for iSoldiers anthology by Shacklebound Books.

Seeing the image, the first thing I imagined was what I wrote, relaxing in the pool with a drink. The second thing I thought of was a nuclear holocaust. After I wrote it, I decided I didn’t like it and deleted it, but then something in my email made me think of vampires.

In a lot of horror movies, the Zombie apocalypse begins with some sort of plague. I decided to make them vampires instead. Harold will be okay for a while since he’s so isolated and he’s always safe by day. I gave him plenty of food, a well for water, and solar energy for electricity. Also, Jimmy’s liquor cabinet is well stocked.

Will the vampires make the long trek across the desert on the hopes of finding stray blood sources, or will starvation get Harold first?

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

You can now purchase the two latest anthologies featuring my short stories.

familiars

Cover art for the anthology “Fantastic Schools Familiars”

“iSoldiers Anthology of Military Science Fiction” is available for purchase and contains four of my military SciFi drabbles. The skill to create those “100 word” stories was honed right here on “Friday Fictioneers.” You can order it at Amazon.

Fantastic Schools Familiars has just come out at Amazon and can be downloaded to your Kindle device. It contains my short story “Dead Cat Fever.” The paperback version should be ready in another week or so.

The most exciting news though is that I’ve signed a contract to have my latest science fiction novel published. They actually sent me a PR packet to complete and send back. You can read all about “A Wobblegong And His Boy” (well maybe not ALL about it) in my recent blog post.

33 thoughts on “Relaxing at Sunset”

  13. What an interesting concept. What will the vampires eat when they’ve eaten everyone? Do they have a kind of government that restricts too much turning, so the food won’t run out too fast? Or do they breed us? Where’s Buffy when we need her?

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