Tag Archives: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

The Valentine Saint

snow

© Dale Rogerson

“It’s so pretty, Daddy. I’ve never seen so much snow before.” Anna had just turned ten and although she’d lived in Colorado all her life, she’d never seen snow because she’d always been blind.

“Yes it’s pretty, Anna. It’s your Valentine’s Day present.” She smiled and hugged him.

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Not enough to call it a snow day. Besides, you’ll get to see all of your friends.”

Attorney Tim Bishop called his client and refused the case. He wasn’t about to file a malpractice suit against the doctor who gave his Anna her sight.

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge. The idea is to take the image above and use it as the prompt for creating a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I felt this being Valentine’s Day, I should somehow work that into my story. I looked up the Wikipedia page and discovered:

Martyrdom stories associated with various Valentines connected to February 14 are presented in martyrologies, including a written account of Saint Valentine of Rome’s imprisonment for performing weddings for soldiers, who were forbidden to marry, and for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire. According to legend, during his imprisonment Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his judge, and before his execution he wrote her a letter signed “Your Valentine” as a farewell.

I very, very loosely based my story on that legend (no one gets executed) trying to communicate warmth, gratitude, and a human heart.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The New Adventures of Tarzan

hotel henry berrisford

© JS Brand

The Ape Man prowled as a stealthy jaguar through the Guatemalan jungle. Ahead, the enemy agent Raglan had the Green Goddess idol containing a terrible weapon. Now that his friend D’Arnot has been freed, he had to lead his party to recover the idol and escape before the tribesmen attacked.

“Cut. That’s a wrap. Great work, Herman.”

Tarzan stepped out of character and became actor Herman Brix again. “Think Burroughs will like it, Ed?”

“He’s said your Tarzan is the closest to what’s in his books. Look. Sun’s setting. Let’s get back to the Berrisford and get cleaned up.”

I authored this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as an inspiration for creating a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 99.

I could see the dilapidated hotel in the photo was the Hotel Henry Berrisford. A quick Google search said it was located in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. In looking at that Wikipedia page, I discovered one of the most interesting things about the place was that in 1935, the twelve-part movie serial The New Adventures of Tarzan starring Harold Brix (later known as Bruce Bennett) was filmed there.

The serial was co-produced by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs along with Aston Dearholt and George W. Stout, and Brix’s Tarzan, unlike most other film depictions up to that time, was more in keeping with the Tarzan in the novels, who was a cultured and well-educated gentleman.

I’ve always been a Tarzan fan, so this bit of historical trivia was fun for me, though of course, the dialogue and much of the circumstances are fictional. The “Ed” mentioned is director Edward Kull.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Wood Smoke

wood

© Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

The old man loaded the portions of the dead tree his son had reduced to firewood into a wheelbarrow and took it to the back of his house. From there, he carried it to the fireplace. His favorite chili was brewing on the stove. He’s spend a quiet evening after dinner reading and sipping a bourbon but he was really looking forward to the morning. He’d get up before dawn and start a warm fire. Then in the flicking light, he’d sit back with his coffee and feel peace and contentment rising like smoke.

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 94.

The scene spoke to me of peace and contentment by the fireplace. I often wake up much earlier than my wife and spend the early morning hours drinking coffee and usually checking various sites online. She’s allergic to smoke, so we only have a gas fireplace and to conserve funds, we very rarely use it.

There are times when I enjoy the company of family and friends engaged in this activity or that, but I can also appreciate the peace of being alone with my own thoughts for a while.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Stepping Back

swanage pier

© Sandra Crook

“It’s not real.”

The building and pier are quite real, Jonathan.”

“But the scene inside the cafe looks like a painting, Raven.”

“Simply step through the door as you did previously.”

Jonathan Cypher walked toward the painting on the building in the English coastal town. Then there was an actual door and everything changed.

“It is now 1927. The men inside are members of the Communist party. A Soviet agent has recruited them to assassinate the King of England. You must stop them.”

The man without a past stepped back in time ninety years on his mission to rewrite history.

I authored this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge for 26 January 2018. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I did a Google image search and discovered the Pier Head Cafe is located at Swanage Pier in Southern England. The Bizarro comic strip for 24 January 2018 depicted a one-panel joke set in 1927 so I had the year stuck in my head. I looked up 1927 at Wikipedia and discovered the following items:

  • January 19 – Great Britain sends troops to China to protect foreign nationals from spreading anti-foreign riots in Central China.
  • March 24 – Nanking Incident: After six foreigners have been killed in Nanking and it appears that Kuomintang and Communist Party of China forces would overrun the foreign consulates, warships of the U.S. Navy and the British Royal Navy fire shells and shot to disperse the crowds.
  • November 12 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

So I hatched a plot of the Communist party of China to assassinate King George V of England. The man who is passing himself off as a Soviet agent is really working for the Chinese (I edited this paragraph to be more historically accurate as per my conversation with Neil below). The word limit prevented me from explaining things in more detail.

I once again am using the characters Jonathan Cypher and Raven last seen in The Kepler Tomb. Of course there was no real plot to assassinate the King of England in 1927, but I needed to make up something.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Not My Heaven

amusement park

© J Hardy Carroll

The ride slowed down and Jessie thought it was over. The man running it yelled, “Free ride” and it started again. He was dressed funny like the girl next to her.

“I’m Harriet. Isn’t this fun?” It was fun and scary. The sky was a different color and the children on the ride weren’t the same.

“Where are we?”

“Heaven, silly.”

“Am I dead?”

“We are but you can get off when it stops again.”

“Why am I here, Harriet?”

“So you know being loved by a Mommy and Daddy is better than anything else, even being in Heaven.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge for 19 January 2018. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I pondered a number of different ideas for this one, from the sappy sentimental to murderous and dark. I decided to settle on “creepy carnival” but give it a happy ending. I thought about having Jessie actually die, but then figured I’d give her a break and a moral. Even being in paradise, I imagine the souls of all the children who died way before their time would still miss the Moms and Dads who loved them.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Grandmother Spider

spider web

© Victor and Sarah Potter

“Grandfather, you let that creepy spider build her web in your kitchen?”

“Charlotte, don’t be unkind. Grandmother Spider is very important here.”

“But Grandfather, what if the spider tries to crawl on me?” The nine-year-old girl hadn’t visited Grandfather in years and didn’t remember spiders being in his house.

“She is very kind and keeps all manner of pests out of my house. Besides, she’s very old.”

“Will she die soon?”

“I hope not. She brings a very warm light into my house and into my world, just like you do. Now let’s see what we can make for dinner.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge for 12 January 2018 (although she put “2017” in the title). The idea is to use the image above to inspire the creation of a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

The spider and vintage lighting fixtures reminded me both of an older person’s home and “house spider” myths. Supposedly, you’re not supposed to kill the house spider (though my wife has me do so on a regular basis), but a quick Google search didn’t yield any specifics. Finally, I looked up Spider Mythology and Folklore.

There are any number of legends that depict spiders in a positive light including this one:

Cherokee (Native American): A popular Cherokee tale credits Grandmother Spider with bringing light to the world. According to legend, in the early times everything was dark and no one could see at all because the sun was on the other side of the world. The animals agreed that someone must go and steal some light and bring the sun back so people could see. Possum and Buzzard both gave it a shot, but failed – and ended up with a burned tail and burned feathers, respectively. Finally, Grandmother Spider said she would try to capture the light. She made a bowl of clay, and using her eight legs, rolled it to where the sun sat, weaving a web as she traveled. Gently, she took the sun and placed it in the clay bowl, and rolled it home, following her web. She traveled from east to west, bringing light with her as she came, and brought the sun to the people.

The Hopi legends also attribute the creation of humanity to the Spider Woman and Sun god.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Whatever Happened to Jamaica?

bultot art

© Roger Bultot

“What is it, Al?”

“Beats me Enrico, but my calculations say we’ve got another twelve hours and nineteen minutes to find out before the next reality shift occurs.”

“We wouldn’t be in this mess if that plane carrying MIT’s experimental quantum resonator hadn’t overshot JFK International and crashed in Queens. I wonder why only Jamaica was affected?”

“Probably has to do with the available power and the size of field it could generate.”

“Maybe it’s art, Al.”

“Enrico, do you ever wonder what happened to the original inhabitants here?”

“I hope they’re living in a better world than this one.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge of January 5, 2018. The idea is to use the image at the top as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I was stuck on this one but then in the image’s URL, I saw “roger bultot art”. I Googled “Roger Bultot artist” and among other responses, found his Flickr page. Since it says he lives in Jamaica Queens, NY, I set my story there. The fact that it is fairly close to John F. Kennedy International Airport was a plus.

Beyond that, I decided that due to some terrible technological accident, every twelve to twenty-four hours or so, a different version of Jamaica appears on the site. Since the possibility of different quantum realities is limitless (in the fictional universe I’ve just created), all manner of strange and unreal things might appear, including the artwork in the photo above. Al and Enrico (named for Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi) are scientists studying the phenomena.

I guess we’ll never know where the people who were originally living in Jamaica ended up.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Rube Goldberg Doesn’t Live Here

wheels

© Ted Strutz

“What’s it do, Mikey?”

“Beats me, Lynn.”

The eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister stood contemplating the strange series of discs constructed in their Grandpa’s backyard.

“I’ll take a picture and do an image search.” Moments later the boy’s handheld yielded a result. “I think it’s called a Rube Goldberg machine, a really complicated machine that’s supposed to do something really simple.”

“Like?”

“Can’t tell.”

“That?” Grandpa called from the back porch. “Doesn’t do anything. Built it outta scraps ’cause I was bored. Hey. I found a game I used to play with your Dad. Anyone up for Mouse Trap?

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields weekly writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for writing a flash fiction story no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I was really stuck on this one. If it really were a Rube Goldberg machine, I’d think its purpose could be derived from looking at it, but nothing came up for me. The best I could do was think of the game “Mouse Trap” which I played as a kid.

Yeah, the story’s weak, but it’s all I could think of.

To read other (and probably better) stories based on the prompt go to InLinkz.com.

The Romanian

montenegro

© Björn Rudberg

He was among the locals and tourists trapped in that little shop when Italian troops declared curfew. An unseasonable cold front lightly dusted medieval Kotor with snow. He couldn’t remain until morning but preferred to leave undetected.

He walked past quaint hats and other curios intending to escape out the rear.

“Monsieur, stay. You’re safe with us.” The Frenchman thought he was being kind.

“I have business elsewhere,” he said in accented French.

Antonie slipped into the darkness, encountering the three soldiers patrolling the alley. Later, they’d recall experiencing sudden fatigue. No one knew what happened to the Vampiritic-looking Romanian.

I authored this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. I did a Google image search but it primarily came up with salami and various cloth items. Finally, I was able to figure out they were stacks of knitted hats.

I saw the photo was credited to Björn Rudberg so I went to his blog and saw the domain country extension was .me which is Montenegro. I did more Googling (the research took longer than the actual writing) and found the medieval coastal city of Kotor among other things.

I couldn’t find a news story that interested me, but noted the history of the area during World War II and how it was primarily occupied by the Italians from 1941 to 1943. That still didn’t provide me with a complete “hook,” so I leveraged the vampire character Antoine from my Sean Becker Undead Series and placed him in Kotor when the Italians first occupied the area in April 1941. Given the snow in the background of the photo, I made up an unseasonable cold snap.

I’ve read stories (okay, Marvel’s “Dracula” comic books from the 1970s) which took a modern-day vampire and sometimes set him back in history through flashbacks/memories. I thought I’d try that with Antonie who exists in 2017 but who is thought to be very old.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The Alchemist’s Orb

orb

© Sandra Crook

“I want my money back.”

“Why, Romano? I sold it to you at a bargain.”

“You’re a cheat, Valentino. The real Alchemist’s Orb should have turned my worthless lead into gold.”

During the argument, a street urchin slipped into Romano’s shop. “Excuse me, Sir. My Mother is sick and we have no food. Can you spare…”

“Out filthy beggar. Get out!”

As the child ran, Valentino knew the Alchemist’s Orb had worked again. Romano’s reputation was one of generosity and kindness but the Orb had changed his outward behavior to match the cold and miserly stone that was his heart.

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields flash fiction challenge for 15 December 2017. The idea is to use the photo above as the inspiration for crafting a wee tale no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture was that the object it depicted looked fake. From there, I thought of something magic and, realizing I had a scant 100 words to play with, told my small story of greed and charity appropriate for this “season of giving.”

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.