Sep 11, 2014 Original Short Stories
Photograph copyright: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Inferno
©September 11th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
She had come through the worst. She had been forged in fire, and had emerged tempered steel.
Nothing could reach her anymore:
Not the death of a loved one – she had lost all of her family in an fiery accident.
Not the loss of happiness– for she had none.
Not the worries of everyday life – hers had died with her family.
Still, afterwards, she awoke every morning, put on her firefighter’s uniform, went to work. Fire was her enemy. Yet, she knew that though it could destroy life, it could also renew it.
Unafraid, she walked into the four-alarm fire.
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Thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting, and for the photo-prompt! I was too late to submit it for last week’s Friday Fictioneers, but thought I’d still write it. I hope some of you read this!
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, Flash Fiction, Micro-Fiction
Aug 28, 2014 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Madison Woods
Genre: Science Fiction/Horribleness
Word Count: Exactly 100 words
Dinner
©August 28th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Wounded, far from home, crash-landed on this planet, I felt a chasm open up.
Flaring my optics into flame, I shut them down hurriedly. The light was too intense. My heart throbbed, flopping on the dirt, hanging by a thread.
Would I never see Ztruthnutzhehaasszz!%$^ again? “Nooo!” screamed my belly, wherein lay the shining gem my mother had implanted when I was born in her back-sack. I wept copiously, my springs watering the strange pointed blades that emitted oxygen, almost too rich to bear.
A four-pawed creature, horrible breath emanating from a long-snouted, fanged opening, noted me.
The fangs descended.
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Thank, as always, to Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting Friday Fictioneers! Thanks, also, to Madison Woods for this truly terrible picture!
P.S. I was away for the past two weeks prior to this one, so I missed the last two story prompts alas! I’m quite addicted to Friday Fictioneers.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, alien story, canine antagonist, Flash Fiction, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Aug 7, 2014 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright-Björn Rudberg
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Genre: Semi-Horror Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
House (Me)
©August 7th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
I am fashioned from all your dreams and all your nightmares.
You return to me in sorrow, in joy, in darkness, in light. You fall into my arms, and I soothe your senses, your soul. You drown in loneliness, but I’m here, I’m here!
Yet, you see me not for who I am.
Someday, you will.
Cobwebs and horrors crawl through my dark spaces. I scream soundlessly. I wince and sigh, when I’m hurt. I creak and moan and sob through howling winds and storms.
Yet, you hear me not.
Today, you will.
And I’ll take you with me.
Come.
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I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my 100-word story from yesterday. This house called to me. Here’s my second attempt!
(Thanks, as always to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and to Björn Rudberg, for his excellent photo-prompt!)
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Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, Creepy House, Flash Fiction, Micro-Fiction, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, Semi-Horror Story
Aug 6, 2014 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright-Björn Rudberg
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Fold-Unfold
©August 6th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Call me superstitious, but I shouldn’t have bought that house after my marriage folded.
Perched on a precipice, surrounded by a tight mass of trees, it looked picturesque. A constantly folding-unfolding, susurrating ocean looked inviting at a hazy distance.
I had some money that I’d set aside, refusing his help. I had my job, my fiction-writing on the side, my goldfish, sunlight, good looks. Of course, my heart hurt, but I’d learned to ignore it.
I loved my new place. What could possibly go wrong?
At least I wasn’t home when it caved in.
I’d just met my new love.
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Thanks, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting “Friday Fictioneers,” and thanks to Bjorn Rudberg for the great photo-prompt.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, Flash Fiction, Marriage break-up and house cave-in, Micro-Fiction
Aug 5, 2014 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Short Stories
Overthrow–A Sombre Vision
©August 5th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Gaea was angry, and her rage had built up to incandescent levels, lighting up the skies, pouring out through fissures, terrifying her children.
Too long, too much wrong had been done unto her.
Deep down, deeper than the human mind can follow, in the sombre shades of Tartaros, lived the monsters, the forgotten children of Gaea, who waited patiently, calmly.
They knew their turn would come. It was only a matter of Time. It is the way of the Cosmos. One gets overthrown by another, then, another, and another until the end of creation. After this, it would begin again, but in what form, nobody could know.
A crater blew up far, far away, where the Titans and Cyclopes lived in the deep, deep cold of a frost beyond human ken. Then, another, and another.
Things melted. Plumes of invisible spirits arose into the air, vengeful spirits all, locking arms, high above the world.
The Titans and their children were now the Gods of the Air, triumphant and savage after having been chained within for so many billennia.
And the Children of the Earth, puny humans, proud and heedless for so long, looked up and trembled.
Their time had come.
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Note: What made me write this piece? I’ve been reading too many accounts of the horrible methane craters being discovered in Siberia. I’ve also been reading Greek Mythology to (and with) my daughter, who has been devouring them voraciously. (I remember being the same way at that age!)
Tags: #Original Short Story, Climate Change, Cyclopes, Gaea, Gigantes, Greek Mythology references, Methane Craters in Siberia, Tartaros, Titans
Jul 30, 2014 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Short Stories
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Disintegration
©July 30th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
When the world blew up, and the sky fell to pieces, I flew for the first time. My atoms took wing, my flesh disintegrated, my “I” flew into the sun.
There was an explosion of pain beyond imagination.
Fear doesn’t exist in the face of such pain. Fear disintegrates into bits of flesh that fall in slow motion over an uncaring land.
My past died. The “I” that I was, never was. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, light unto light.
I’d lived, loved, learned, left — this, the sum of me.
Somewhere, there was grief. It might have been mine.
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My second story contribution to this week’s prompt for Friday Fictioneers — it’s darker, I’m afraid, than my last story.
Thanks, Rochelle, for hosting. We love you!
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Tags: #Disaster, ashes to ashes, disintegration, dust to dust, fear
Jul 30, 2014 Original Short Stories
Photo Copyright: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 Words
Wing
©July 30th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
She was leaving home. All she had were some clothes, her sitar, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte. She grieved for her past which fell away, as she rose into the skies.
She didn’t know what she’d face when she arrived in the New World. All she knew was that he was there, back in his country, having arrived a day earlier from hers.
Adventures are easy when you’re twenty-four, and married to the man you love.
When the plane touched down, she felt newly minted. Baggage in hand, she stepped out into Arrivals.
He came forward. Joy took wing.
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Salutations and thanks to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for her lovely photo-prompt, and for hosting Friday Fictioneers tirelessly every week. 🙂
Tags: airplanes, flying, future, Leaving the past behind, new bride, New World, Newly Married, past
Jul 23, 2014 Original Short Stories
Here’s another one I wrote, and it’s 74 words long! I cannot believe it! This was done entirely for my daughter, who sat beside me and wondered whether I could write a shorter (than 100 words) story based on a prompt. So, to her wide-eyed astonishment, I unfolded this one from start to finish, with only one phrase and two words edited! (I know it’s weird, or even weirder than the last one, but please be kind, since I wrote this under duress!)
Another One Bites the Dust
©July 23rd, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
I held up my chopsticks and surveyed them calmly.
“More hot sauce,” I snapped.
The waiter came forward in an obsequious manner.
I leaned forward and caught his nose between my chopsticks.
“Get rid of your nose! I don’t like people with big schnozzes serving me,” I said through gritted, razor-sharp teeth, which I bared menacingly, as if to help him with the project.
He turned pale and fled.
Another one bites the dust!
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Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, Flash Fiction, Micro-Fiction, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, seventy-four word short story
Jul 23, 2014 Original Short Stories
Genre: Weird Semi-Real Fiction (I just made that up)
Word Count: 100 Words
Sauce
©July 23rd, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
What? I scare you? Why? Am I not handsome? Isn’t this great food? What’s your problem?
“You are the problem,” you say? Have I harmed you? Okay, I’m from a time far from yours, but that’s no reason to hate me. You don’t believe me? Explain this then: How come I’m answering all your thoughts? Guesses? Sigh. How did I ever emerge from a race like your backward little one?
At least shake hands, then. Hey! You’ve strange hands — FIVE fingers? Check out my two — long, pointed, perfectly carved bone things. Nice, huh?
Fork! Don’t go! Try my hot sauce!
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And, as always, thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and for providing the prompts each week, and to Marie Gail Stratford for her photograph above.
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Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, 100-word short story, Chopsticks, Flash Fiction, Micro-Fiction, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Jul 16, 2014 Original Short Stories
Thanks, as always, to our wonderful Fairy Blog-Mother (I hope you don’t mind my calling you that, Rochelle), Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and to Adam Ickes for the strange, unsettling photo-prompt.
Genre: (Sort of) Realistic Fiction/(Sort of) Humor
Word Count: 100 Words
Horny
©July 16th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
“What do you think?” asked Ben. He’d invited Alicia, his co-worker, home for a drink.
Alicia looked flustered.
“It’s … um … nice,” she finished lamely, staring at the corner of the wall.
“I haven’t unpacked yet,” he replied, bringing her a glass of red wine, gesturing to her to sit beside him.
“I have to go,” she said, moving towards the door.
“Did I offend you?” he asked.
“No, it’s … did you know there’s a ram in that corner?” she blurted.
She opened the door, and fled.
“What is she talking about, Father?” said Ben.
The ram ate cardboard in silence.
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Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, 100-word story, Flash Fiction, Micro-Fiction, Photo-prompt-based story