No Fury

They say Widow Walker stormed down to drag her husband back from the riverboat dock where the gambling and carousing went on every Friday night. She pushed grown dockhands clear off the pier into the river, the silly ones that tried to stop her, the Pinkertons and roustabouts. Then she stared down the bullyboys guarding the entrance to the Golden Nugget riverboat, and them hardened hombres backed down whining like whipped dogs. The real trouble started when Widow Walker found her husband drinking with a different painted floozy on each knee. That’s the night Haunted Pier burned to the waterline.

Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT © Erin Leary

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Summer’s End

Alexavier Shaw paced restlessly while his Expert System recounted the details of the morning’s stock trading. He was worth another billion, just another day in the penthouse.

The bar was out of Scotch, so he happily clutched the excuse to take a walk.

While returning, he encountered an anomaly; an ancient wooden door in the concrete canyon. Through it, he could see a field of wildflowers and hear birds. A circus caravan wound its way up a hillside and calliopes played in the distance.

Shaw grunted and pushed the door shut. He’d return to counting, because nothing counts but more.

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

First Class Aerial Seating

The voyage was uneventful until the ship arrived in America on Oct. 29, just in time to meet the 2011 Nor’easter (a.k.a. Snowtober). The Chairman of the Board, Hendrick Van der Decken, repeatedly vowed that his tulips would reach port despite the Devil himself.

Wind and surf drove the sailing ship miles up the coast, from Virginia to New Jersey. During a desperate Board of Directors Emergency Meeting, the ship capsized. A snownado scooped up Van der Decken and deposited his frozen corpse several miles inland.

Legend has it that on Halloween night, at lowest tide, you can still see a ruined office chair rising from the waves, and hear defiant swearing on the wind, in Dutch.

Thus began the Legend of the Flying Chairman.

125 words, inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:
(Okay, I cheated the word count a little, too much fun.)

PHOTO PROMPT – © Dale Rogerson

Queued

What can I tell you? This is the greatest job.

Herding the tours onto the bus is less than spectacular, I suppose. Every group seems to have one particularly large, aggressive guy who had beer for lunch. The Family Units are all right, as long as their kids don’t scream too much.

But the pay is sweet, fifty grand per load, and it’s easy enough to drive another group out to the desert and have another “breakdown.”

You’d think they’d catch on, just from the name. “Tour Beautiful Fly Canyon.” Flies and the undead go together like helpless and tourist.

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

Let Me Look That Up, Sir

The scrawl on the index card on the end of the mobile filing case reads—“Pittsburgh, 15201 to 15232, 1979 to 1983.”

Each of these cases holds the records of tens of thousands of men. All cross-referenced, sorted by date and location. The filing cases recede into infinity, perspective vanishing point at the limits of vision.

Most file clerks have a nervous breakdown the first time they see this filing system. Is this Satan’s own record keeping, are the earliest entries scratched Sumerian logographs on hardened clay tablets?

No, but that’s close. These belong to the V. A. Hospital.

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT – © Claire Fuller

 

Left it right here, I swear

Every time I go back to the apartment, I feel like someone’s watching me.

My husband tells me it’s just paranoia, but when the sunset lengthens the shadows, my skin always begins to crawl. I can feel them, over that way, watching and waiting for something.

All in my head, my husband insists. The only thing “out there” is the Pacific Ocean, uninterrupted for at least five thousand miles. Who do you think is watching, exactly?

***

The whales had been watching humans develop in downtown San Francisco just before the tsunami arrived.

…It was there just a moment ago…

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT – © C.E.Ayr

Die in a Fire

As I sit and watch in the dark, the moths are fluttering. Into and out of the light from my computer screen they spin. They bang against the LCD screen, attracted to the bright light from a browser page that I left open.

I contemplate for a moment how alike we are. A blank page fascinates me as well. I flit and hover ever closer, waiting for the bug-zapper of inspiration to strike or the crash against the glass that warns me to change directions.

Immolation is my distant fluttering hope, to burn in the bright, hot fire of recognition.

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT – © Madison Woods

Tear it Down and Start Over

God took up residence in the singularity that created GRB 09042, in the constellation of Leo, a hair over 13 billion years ago.

He’s not the Judeo-Christian God, but with eons of technological advances behind him, Clarke’s Third Law applies. Primitives like us can’t tell the difference.

His data collection and storage systems are godlike (by definition). He’s aware of us even at a range of 13 billion light years. It is well within his capabilities to collapse the big bang.

He detests us. Our weakness and helplessness revolts him.

On the last day God said, “Let there be Darkness.”

Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT -© Madison Woods

 

 

Declining Yore Kind Offah

We keep grandpa’s soul in that red jar.

Most of the family is here, actually, going back at least three gen’rations. Emily says when the sun hits ‘em right, you can see smoky shapes in the jars, sometimes little eyes. I ain’t never seen none o’ that stuff, but I believe her cause most all of the girls have the Sight.

Grandma had it too. We don’t have a jar for ‘er. She run orft the day ‘fore grandpa got hit by that truck.

Emily says I should quit yammerin’, and not ride home in yore car tonight.

Sorry, mister.

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT © G.L. MacMillan.

Trick or Treat

“Just watch,” Jack said.

A bicycle messenger approached the door at the end of the lane. He pulled a package from his satchel, reached for the doorknocker—and vanished.

“Where did he go?” Ben blinked twice and rubbed his eyes.

“I don’t know, but that’s the third visitor this week.” Jack’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, “They never come back.”

***

“Give me your lunch money, ladies.” Rufus loomed.

“Sure!” Jack handed their money over in great haste. “Say, Rufus, did you hear the folks at the end of the lane are giving away gobs of leftover Halloween candy?”

100 words. Inspired by this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt:

PHOTO PROMPT- © Sandra Crook