Hell’s Harlequin

joker

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

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“There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief.”

Jester pretended to play a game on her cell’s frayed bedsheets with a worn deck of cards. The old Dylan tune running through her head seemed too cliché, even for her. She didn’t know how to play solitaire, but it mollified the guards while she planned her escape.

The thief was out there, the one who sent her to Hell. But Persephone hadn’t helped Jester escape Hades’ clutches just to be jailed for shoplifting food she again needed to eat. She would find him.

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The Duet

musician

© Sunayana MoiPensieve

I was born too late. I should have been singing with Dylan in the sixties. Instead, I spend my weekends in this little square between the London Film and Transport Museums playing his charts to uninterested passersby. It’s early Saturday, so the place is almost empty.

Pavement’s still wet from the rain as I sing “Like a Rolling Stone.” I can smell the woman’s cigarette smoke behind me as I play “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“I’m working on “Forever Young” when someone walks toward me. He’s right in front of me. I stop singing. Oh wow!

“Mind if I sit in?”

I motion dumbly to where I keep my back up six-string. Glad I tuned it.

He stands next to me and begins “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” I join in. I’m playing a duet with Bob Dylan. Before long, the square is packed. When it’s over and he has to go, I say, “Thanks for making my dream come true.”

He gives me his hand and I shake it. “Anytime. Anytime at all.”

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge-Week of March 21, 2017 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the photo prompt above to write a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long, with 150 being the ideal. I barely made it at 174 words.

To read other stories written from the same prompt, go to InLinkz.com.