Tag Archives: Photo Challenge

The Princess and the Bear

girl and bear

Photo credit: Google images – found at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

Catherine and Vincent were in love, but cursed by the evil Bishop of Aquila to forever be apart. She had spurned his blasphemous advances, and though thought to be the faithful servant of the Holy Pope, he in fact was in league with dark and sinister forces.

He discovered her affair with Vincent, Captain of the King’s Guard, a relationship forbade her due to her royal blood, and so with His Majesty’s blessings, a powerful spell born in Hell forever changed the man Vincent was into a huge, ferocious beast.

“Oh, sure. You want it now. Can’t you wait until we get to the cabin? In case you haven’t noticed, its freezing.”

Come on, Baby. Don’t be like that. You’re just mad because I was hibernating with those other bears.”

“I noticed how you had your eye on the large female.”

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Whatever Happened to Eva?

lover

Lover and the wild @ deviantart

Eva had lost count of how many men she’d slept with, but then this was never about keeping score. She rarely encountered Asmodius, her own seducer, the master incubus who launched her on this sad and lonely path of revenge, since she had fallen so deep into her own abyss, she required little encouragement to continue the descent.

She didn’t travel alone, however. There were a trail of formerly virtuous, noble, and even holy men left in her wake, spiraling down into Hell with her. She never felt sorry for them, no matter how piteously they pleaded with her, how they would lose everything, their wives, their children, their careers. It didn’t matter.

The seductress wasn’t responsible for them falling into her trap, only for setting herself out as the bait. She was the temptation, but the sins were on them.

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The New Neighborhood

monster

© Igor Morski

“I’ll get it.”

Ron Moore, his wife Layna, and their almost three-year-old daughter Emily had just moved into the new house in the suburbs the week before, but this was the first time anyone had come to visit.

“Hi. May I help you?”

“Seth Kennedy. I’m your next door neighbor. Just thought I’d drop by and say…”

Little Emily grabbed onto her Mommy’s leg and started crying hysterically. She looked up in terror at the man at the door, and then buried her face again.

“I’m sorry. She doesn’t usually do this.”

“What?” The neighbor cupped his hand around his ear.

Ron looked back at his wife.

“I’ll take her into the other room.”

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Unlocked

love locks

Photo credit: Alpha Coders

“It’s got to be around here somewhere, Jamie. Maybe on the other side.”

“No, I’m positive that we put it on this side, Dex.”

“You’d be positive that the sky is green and grass is blue, but that wouldn’t make you right.”

“How would you know, you loser? You haven’t done right by me since the day we got married.”

“A problem I’d be all too happy to fix…oh, here it is.”

“See? I told you it was on this side.”

“Shut up and hand me the bolt cutters.”

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Lift

car balloons

Photo credit: Vincent Bourilhon

“They’re gaining, Tomas. We need more lift. Hurry.”

“I’m trying Irma. It’s easy to imagine more balloons but hard to make them pull us up.”

Twelve-year-old Irma Ruiz was mimicking the motions of her Papa, remembering how he drove his antediluvian Rambler, putting her hands at the ten and two o’ clock positions on the wheel to steer it. The wheel was wet because of her sweaty palms and every time she looked in the rear view mirror, she saw them getting closer.

“Tomas!”

“I’m hurrying! I’m hurrying!” Her ten-year-old brother couldn’t afford to look behind them. His head was stuck out the passenger door window looking up, concentrating on visualizing an ever-growing bouquet of helium-filled balloons, red, white, yellow, green, blue, all the colors of the rainbow. He could feel the car continue to climb but they had to go faster and higher.

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The Girl with the Green Eyes

girl with green eyes

Photo credit: Ryn-Sweet-Surreal

She remembered looking at her reflection in a tidal pool. Her eyes were green, like the color of the seaweed coves. She had dark red hair and her “polka dots” (what Papa called her freckles) punctuated her face like the lakes and ponds in the Verdant Hills to the north. Merilyn dressed in clothes the color of her eyes.

She had only been six years old and lived in a village on a river near an estuary to the ocean. The ocean sustained them in so many ways. Some of the men and a few of the women fished on the long boats. Others managed the seaweed farms. A lot of the older kids worked on the desalination units, each of which stood out of the water like solitary and noble sentries, yet provided fresh water to be sold to the desert provinces and the Negev city of Quebracho.

Merilyn knew they were all necessary but none of them were exciting, not like pearl diving.

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Tikkun Olam

road

© Hossein Zare

This world wasn’t real but then nothing he dreamed was real. Unfortunately, he was dead and all he had left were his dreams.

Jonathan Cypher stood on a salty white plain, the sky above a uniform gray mist. How had he gotten here? He woke up but the statement hardly did his situation justice. He was always dreaming and when he woke up, he was always in another dream.

The dream of the salt plain held two remarkable features. The first was a tree in the distance. Like everything else around him, it was presented in varying shades of charcoal, but it was lush and alive, or so it appeared as it stood on the distant horizon.

Then there were the tracks. Some looked like twin tire tracks but for others, the pair were too close together. What could have made them? There were no vehicles in sight, no sound of engines or people, not even birds. No wind, no rain, the only thing he could hear was the crunching of the salt that probably wasn’t salt under his feet as he stepped down.

The idea of following the tracks was compelling. Something had made them but whatever it was had disappeared at their vanishing points. The only reasonable destination, if reason could be said to apply here, was the tree.

He started walking.

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The Ocean’s Daughter

swimming pool trust

Photo credit: BleachFilm

“Are you sure you want to do this, Sis? We can wait until a better time.”

“There’s never going to be a better time, Cody. You heard what my counselor said. Sooner or later I’ve got to face this. I can’t be afraid of the water all my life.”

“Okay, Darya. You’re in charge. Remember, I’m going to be with you all of the time so if you get in trouble…”

“I know, I know. Look. I’m nervous enough. Let’s just do this.”

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The Überlingen Collision Affair

briefcase

© Kyle Thompson

2 July 2002 – London

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” MI6 operative Ian Dennis could hear himself asking that question in his mind over and over again. How the hell was he supposed to find the courier’s briefcase amid the widely scattered wreckage of the Tupolev passenger jet? The horrendous mid-air collision with the 757 cargo plane could have sent it anywhere and by rights it and it’s classified contents should have been destroyed.

“The case is covered with genuine faux leather to be sure Dennis, but that conceals the titanium shell. Our man paid a small fortune in bribes to get in on board in Moscow so rest assured, it would survive the crash. It was designed to do just that.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Wilks. But why? This was supposed to be a milk run from Moscow to Barcelona. The courier was part of a UNESCO committee escorting a bunch of children on a school trip to Costa Dorada.”

“Thank you, Dennis. I am familiar with the facts of the Op.” A casual observer would conclude that Richard Wilks was in ill temper because what Ian had called a “milk run Op” had gone terribly sour but in actuality, he was always disgruntled. At age 72, he was one of the last of the old guard at MI6, his career as a field agent having spanned three decades. He was a young agent at the start of the cold war and he had a hand in the fall of the Berlin Wall (though very few were aware of that fact). Truth be told, he hated life behind a desk, but he had been forced to it at age 60 due to a botched hip replacement after being severely wounded in shootout in Sangi, Pakistan.

“Your security clearance does not justify you knowing the full details of the courier’s Op, Dennis. Your job is to go to Überlingen in the guise of an adviser to the German Air Accident investigators, retrieve the briefcase, and return it to London. You are not under any circumstances to attempt to open it.”

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The Moon At My Shoulder

moon

© Justin Peters

“I must be dreaming. I mean, you can’t be God.”

“Yes, you are dreaming and I am a manifestation of the Almighty that won’t totally blow your mind.”

Lucas Todd still felt like his mind was being blown. He’d just been accepted into UCLA’s Astronomy and Astrophysics graduate program. Ever since his Dad told him about watching Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon on television, he wanted to go there, too.

NASA’s manned space program had gotten pretty disappointing since then. His Dad always thought he’d see a permanent Lunar Base or maybe even a colony being established during his lifetime, but poor Dad died of cancer last year. Lucas didn’t want Dad’s dreams to die with him.

If either NASA or a private space agency was going to establish that Moon Base, then Lucas was determined to be a part of it

“I mean, I don’t even believe in God, well not really.”

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