Sep 2, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Glimpse
©September 2nd, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
All of life was mirrored in those bay windows. The sky went about its business, pink and gold, to blue, sometimes storm-gray, back to pink and gold, to deep blue to black, back to pink and gold. Clouds played out their drama occasionally. Stars blinked in and out of existence.
Another window saw itself reflected in those windows.
Their owners glimpsed each other.
All the desire in the world converged at the intersection of their glance. A universe of possibility unfolded before them. They glimpsed happiness, mad ecstasy, union.
Then, they went back to their wives.
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (our Fairy Blog-Mother) for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and for the photo-prompt!
Tags: #Romance, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, forbidden love, realistic fiction
Sep 2, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 words exactly (text)
Breaking Free
©September 1st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
With a blend of euphoria, weariness, and anger, she shut her classroom door for the last time.
She’d spent years teaching, engaging and inspiring. Many students had matched it with hard work, creativity, brilliance. She tried to obliterate memories of tears she’d shed in quiet, to forget how some colleagues had susurrated behind her back, and to erase the sense that no matter what she did, she would never belong.
As she walked out, the lockers turned blank faces towards her. No one saw her jubilantly made rude hand-gesture.
Emerging into the bright July sunlight, she laughed.
She was free!
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Thanks, as always, to Rochelle WIsoff-Fields (whom I have nicknamed our Fairy Blog-Mother) for hosting Friday Fictioneers, a community of writers from around the world who await the photo-prompts she puts up on Wednesdays, and respond with brilliant stories. Thanks to Claire Fuller for this thought-provoking photograph prompt!
Rochelle, I made it! I was away this past week, and finally got to this past week’s prompt tonight. Now, tomorrow, we’ll have the new one! Can’t wait!
Aug 14, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
(Photo-prompt ©Madison Woods)
Genre: Dream scene / Sci-Fi
Word Count: Exactly 100 words (sans title, etc.)
Moon-Escape
©August 12th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
It was past full-Earth on the moon. Hopping lightly from her dream-boat, she blanched.
Everything was paved with brick. Where she stood, it was sideways all the way. Walking on that surface, she saw, horrified, that someone had already been there.
A bright, smiling voice trilled, “Welcome to McDonald’s! We will follow, no matter where in the Universe you go!” She passed a placard where she discerned the words, “… comments and suggestions should be made out to …”
She wafted hurriedly back to her ship, defying one-sixth gravity.
Later, a luna moth fluttered onto the wall of a McDonald’s on earth.
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With thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields who hosts Friday Fictioneers every week. Thanks, also to Madison Woods, for the cool photograph-prompt.
Aug 6, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
Genre: Myth-fantasy
Word-Count: 100 words (text)
Laurel and the Night-Terrors
© August 6th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
A throttled moon shone from between strangling branches. A vast, bat-shaped creature flew around and around overhead. Underneath her body, creepers snaked out of the ground and wound themselves lovingly around her arms.
Daphne gazed skywards, desperate, ready to shout out the name of her pursuer, her lust-maddened god.
The moon shone down, and a pale warning beamed her way — Do not fear the night.
Daphne took a deep breath, shuddered once, let her body lie limp, and fell asleep.
At daybreak, a beautiful laurel tree stood quietly in the sunlight, where her night-dream-self had lain.
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Thanks, as always to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for her inspiration, gracious hosting of Friday Fictioneers and loving support to all of us, and to Madison Woods, for her beautiful photograph-prompt.
Tags: 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Fantasy, Greek Mythology
Jul 31, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: Exactly 100 words of text
Djinn and Tonic
©July 31st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
All those bottles and not one single Djinni, she sighed. Sunset bounced kaleidoscopically off the bottles on the shelves. The bottles shone like a hallucination.
Examining a green jewel-toned bottle, she spotted a speck of dust, and wiped it with her shirt-sleeve.
Everything tilted sideways. She plummeted into a midnight-dark landscape. All around her stood Djinn, arms folded.
“You are now our servant,” boomed the largest one.
“No, I’m not,” she replied, although her heart beat like a caged bird. Resolutely, she pulled out the stopper, then pushed it in.
Reality re-tilted back.
Sighing again, she reached for tonic water.
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I couldn’t resist writing another 100-word response to the prompt from yesterday. Thanks, Friday Fictioneers, for being such a wonderful community of writers! Thanks, Rochelle, for all you do for us! Great photo-prompt from G.L. MacMillan — thank you!
Tags: 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Djinn
Jul 30, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
Genre: Evil Fiction (okay, Realistic Fiction!)
Word Count: 100 words exactly (sans title, etc.)
Potion
©July 30th, 2015]
By Vijaya Sundaram
I liked hunting. My wife hated it.
We’d just inherited some wooded land, and a shack. When we’d roto-tilled the ground, she’d found some antique bottles, and displayed them, but I mocked them. We weren’t getting on much by then.
The summer lengthened. Returning from hunting one evening, deer on shoulder, I saw my wife at the door. Smiling (how strange!), she said, “There’s some local wine in that brown bottle–want some?”
I won’t say no to some local wine. I was thirsty.
Downing a glass, I remarked: “A little bitter, not bad…”
The floor rose up to meet me.
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Thanks, as always to our Inspirer-in-Chief, Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting Friday Fictioneers every week, and to G.L. MacMillan, for the photograph prompt.
Jul 18, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
Word Count: 100
Genre: (almost, but not quite, okay, very loosely): Historical Fiction
Last Song
©July 18th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
The cobbled street sang. The song was of ecstasy and sadness, of seriousness and playfulness. It trembled under his footsteps and echoed in his chest till he thought he would burst.
“Get up!” said a rough voice.
“I thought I heard music,” Frédéric coughed, struggling to his feet. His face was bruised. There was a trickle of blood at his mouth. He brushed away dust from his face. His eyes were full of sound.
The gendarme looked scornful. “Move along,” he snapped.
Frédéric moved on. The cobblestones looked like piano keys gone mad. He began to hum.
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Thanks, as always to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for keeping us inspired, and for hosting Friday Fictioneers (a worldwide online writing community wherein we contribute 100 words of fiction based on a photo-prompt every Wednesday)! Also, thanks to Sandra Crook for her wonderful photograph, which, I’m guessing, is set in France, because she writes about her travels in France, along French waterways.
Jul 9, 2015 Friday Fictioneers
PHOTO PROMPT © Stephen Baum
Word Count: Exactly 100 words of story-text Genre: Post-apocalyptic fiction
Always Darkest
©July 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
We had prepared and stocked our bunker. When the End happened, we descended the two-hundred steps to it, shut the lead-lined, heavy doors, and sat and waited …
Alex was ill. One day, while I was asleep, he crawled upstairs opened the door, and shut it with a clang. When I awoke, I was alone. When my hysterical sobbing subsided, I stayed — in the dark. I could see, eat, sleep, live and mourn in the dark. Time passed.
One day, miraculously, the door opened. Light flooded in.
I whimpered, clawed at my eyes, ripped them out.
It’s always darkest before dawn.
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (who has run Friday Fictioneers faithfully for quite a while now) for hosting, and to Stephen Baum for the photograph prompt.
Tags: 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Jun 5, 2015 Teaching and Learning
Genre: Goofy Science-Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Slugging Through The Cosmos
©June 5th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
We are the Slug-People. No, wait! Don’t back away from us. We come in peace, we truly do.
See, we got stranded on your lovely blue-green-white planet. We wanted a piece of it.
Our planet, which was all green and blue like yours, blew up. Nobody on any planet we visited believed us. Someone blamed it on my colleagues and me. We were trying to find food for everyone. It’s what we always did. Slowly, we ate our dense, green planet. Then, it combusted spontaneously.
No, we don’t mean to harm you.
Could you spare us just one green island?
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Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
May 13, 2015 Original Short Stories
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PROMPT -© Marie Gail Stratford
Body text word count: 100 words
Genre: Futuristic Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
The Others
©May 13, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Long ago, something happened. Nobody mentions it. Every full moon night, we young ones emerge from underground, tiptoeing around the fenced-in field, searching.
We are the People. There were others before us … Stranger People. Tall, smooth-pelted, with five-toed feet, they had no bumps on their shoulders, like we do. Then, we came to be.
Today’s different.
A shadow crosses the moon, getting larger. A vessel descends, the hatch opens, and a Being emerges.
I kneel.
My shoulders blossom into wings. My webbed feet become toes. I turn and look at my People.
“Goodbye,” I whisper, and join the Others.
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for hosting Friday Fictioneers every week, and to Marie Gail Stratford, for the photo prompt!
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt