PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

He finally found his prey in a tourist attraction. It took months, working with a couple of dozen patients on his caseload, listening to hundreds of hours of tape. Finally it paid off.

“Dr. Chiron.” Andrew looked up from the bench in the middle of the alley. “What are you doing here?” Andrew’s right hand twitched as if he wanted to reach for the gun in his jacket.

“I knew you’d be here at this moment.” Jacob Chiron pulled the trigger of his semi-automatic three times eliminating another serial killer. Being a psychologist was a good cover for hunting them.

It’s Wednesday and time to participate in this week’s edition of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image on top as the prompt to craft a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

I used Google image search to find the location of Dale’s photo:

Ruelle des Fortifications (Fortifications Alley) is a historic, cobblestoned laneway located in Old Montreal, Canada, often associated with the InterContinental Montreal hotel and the remnants of Montreal’s 18th-century city walls, offering a charming glimpse into the city’s fortified past and now a venue for events and photos, despite some walls being leveled for development.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a story about a psychologist who uses his position to locate a certain type of prey. It’s just an vague thought but I decided to test it out this morning.

“The Trickster Healer” is a name one of my graduate school instructors used when I was studying to be a mental health therapist back in the 1980s. I’m sure he didn’t mean for it to be used this way.

Cover art for “Far Futures: Book Four”

To read other stories based on the prompt or to post your own, go to inlinkz.

Fantastic Schools Familiars is available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. It contains my short story “Dead Cat Fever.” If you like fantasy stories about all manner of animal and other familiars serving (or not serving) masters and amateurs of the occult, this one’s for you.

The science fiction anthology Far Futures Four is available for pre-order now for delivery to your Kindle device on December 23, 2025. It features my military SciFi short story “Awash on Titan’s Shores.”