A Friday Fictioneers Challenge – An Occasional Story or Magazine

Up a Tree (Friday Fictioneers)

This week’s Friday Fictioneers’ 100 word story Invitational presents this photo of a dog up a tree. Check out Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blog to see the other entries, which are pretty good this week. The idea is to write a 100 word story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, which Bumba did not exactly do, but since it’s a dog talking you can’t expect too much narrative – unless you want to hear a long tale.

Don’t ask me how I got up here. I can’t talk anyway because I’m a dog. A dog up a tree.

It ain’t so bad up here by the way. In fact, I kinda like it.

I can see into the neighbors yard. They left a plate of cookies on the patio table. Hmm. I can also scope out those squirrels that have been on my mind. I can look down on people instead of the usual state of affairs. Not bad. But all good things come to an end, including this little story about… what was it about anyway?

Boots

This week’s Friday Fictioneers’ photo prompt for a 100 word story is a photo of someone’s boots.

Inspired by Nancy Sinatra’s “These boots are made for walking and that’s just what they’ll do”, Bumba wrote the following. Please see Friday Fictioneers’ host Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for more stories and info on how to enter the Fictioneers’ Fun.

Winston was excited about his beautiful, new boots. He gazed at them lovingly. His plan was to finally scale Lawson’s Peak, the 12,000 foot-high mountain just outside of town. It was #1 on his bucket list – something he had always said he would do. Now that he was retired there was nothing to stop him.

“Winston!!” called Marjorie Plant, Winston’s wife.

“Winston! Winston! Do you hear me?”

“Yeah?” he finally called back.

“Winston. How long you gonna keep those damn boots out there on the porch?”

“No problem, dear.”

Winston reached down, laced up the boots and headed for the mountain.

Friday Fictioneers ———— Traffic

This week’s Friday Fictioneer’s photo prompt is a bit fishy. Go to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ excellent blog to see all the entries and to participate yourself. Why not? It’s fun.

Here is Bumba’s entry, which is even fishier than the picture.

As I drove along the 105 I pondered the phenomenon that everyone stayed in their lanes and obeyed all the rules. What with all the crazy, unmanageable, half-criminal types out there, you can nonetheless rely on them to stop at stop signs and red lights. It must be some universal conformity principle, some genetically ingrained social instinct that keeps them in line, keeps them from wandering too far…. Keeps us from….keeps us from ….from …..

Here the narrative is interrupted by the following police report:

Date 10/30/13: Man killed on 105 freeway. Cause of death: wandered out of lane.

“I still don’t want no cell phone,” said Frank Lombard

Thanks again to Rochelle Wiskoff and her prompts for the Friday Fictioneers 100 word challenge, which this week is a telephone booth:

Frank Lombard prided himself on not possessing a cell phone. Yet here he was alongside a Mobil gas station on a busy thoroughfare, all his quarters already lost to the phone company coffer – the last three wasted in trying to get assistance from the AT&T operator! The traffic roared around him. What to do? He had lost the address for the job interview and he would soon be late. The old telephone booth looked back at him mockingly.

“Same to you, buddy,” grumbled Frank as he got back in the car and headed for the beach.

Strange Town, A Friday Fictioneers Challenge

This is the photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneer’s Challenge

Friday evening in a strange town. I’d eaten supper in a local diner. As I walked the bare, cold streets, I felt more alone than usual. Electric light bathed the sidewalks; I knew the discomfort of loneliness. Or was it simply the emptiness of this town? Its lack of soul mirrored my own failings. The stores were closed, the locals had headed home to their television shows, to their lives. Ah, if only the night could be made real. These streets to vanish! The desert to return, the wind to howl through the night, the coyote to walk in peace once more.