PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

“Ah, crap.” Jackson looked out the window expecting to see his salvation. Beyond the shed’s single window frame on the abandoned farm, he did see what he hoped for, but right before that, there was something much worse.

“You never give up, do you?” He almost let his fingertips glide along the lengths of frozen webbing. “So close.”

Outside it was Spring, the first Spring since he was a little boy. The climate was turning again in favor of life. But the ice giants were taking one last shot at him before they went.

Then he saw the first spider.

Cover art for my fantasy novelette “Ice”

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

The background of the photo really does look like early spring, but the foreground looked like a spider’s handiwork had been taken over by frost and ice. I got the idea that maybe the webbing was supposed to be ice and decided to throw in the idea of ice giants monkeying around with the climate.

Actually, that’s more or less the premise of my one and only self-published novelette called Ice although that one starts out with ALL the ice having been melted rendering a very different Earth in the far future, complete with sailing ships, pirates, dinosaurs, and an iceless Antarctica.

Cover image for my novel “A Wobblegong and His Boy”

To read other stories based on the prompt or to contribute one of your own, visit inlinkz.

My new science fiction boy’s adventure novel A Wobblegong And His Boy was published last Friday in both Kindle and paperback formats. As I write this, it is current the number one new release in Amazon’s Children’s Action and Adventure Sci-Fi Books category, which is pretty impressive.

No reviews or ratings of the book on Amazon yet, but someone left a single four-star (out of five) rating on Goodreads. A great out-of-this-world adventure for the young and the young at heart. Buy a copy for the adventurous boy or girl in your life or even for you.