Oct 13, 2014 Original Short Stories
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
The Visitor
©October 13th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
The Visitor looked around.
Cautiously, she tapped the glowing brass disc. A shimmer made her rear back.
Surveying the row of white and black teeth, arrayed like a beast without a body, she thought, “I must not fear.”
She let her extremities travel over the teeth. The beast did not stir.
When she bumped against something, a red light glowed. She leaned against the teeth, smooth and white, and a strangely beautiful, discordant noise blasted out of something behind her. She hissed.
Dust from some explosion lay in stillness about her.
She sniffed delicately. “Human,” she thought, turning to go.
_________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and for the photo-prompt! Friday Fictioneers is an online writing community, and we respond to photo-prompts with 100-word short stories. Check out the link below for other stories on this prompt! You will be amply rewarded.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, Science Fiction post-apocalyptic short story
Sep 25, 2014 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT Copyright – Marie Gail Stratford
Word Count: 100 words
Genre: Greek Mythology
The Twice-Born*
©September 26th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
I stand, ivy-covered thyrsus in hand. I induce madness, ecstasy or death. I, born of Semele of earth, and Zeus of the Lightning Bolt, stand, uncertain for the first time.
You ask, “Will you help me forget myself? For I am bereft.”
If I said, “Yes,” I would invite your death. I will not willingly take you there.
I kneel at your feet, Ariadne of the Labyrinth.
Come, sip on nectar and sup on ambrosia, while I throw your crown into the skies.
I am Dionysos, God of Joyous Oblivion. And this is the first time have I truly loved.
__________________________________________________________________________
* My second attempt at a story based on this photo-prompt. Thanks for reading!
Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, our Fairy Blog-Mother, for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and to Marie Gail Stratford for the lovely photograph!
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Love, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, Ariadne, Dionysos, Dionysus, falling in love, Flash Fiction, Greek Mythology, thyrsus
Sep 25, 2014 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT Copyright – Marie Gail Stratford
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count (not including the title, name, date): 100 words
Only Darkness at the End of the Day
©September 25th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
The wine-light spilled in gem-tones, red, gold and green, filled with promise, promising respite. He yearned for it.
He thought about what had happened that day — the morning quarrel, the slammed door, the long commute to work, work that sucked away his joy, unmade all he had become.
And when he’d come home, the note he’d found on the dresser, and the absence of his center, the lingering ghost of her perfume sealed it.
I’m sorry. I tried. It won’t work. You didn’t try hard enough.
Gazing deep into all that light, he reached for it.
Bitter oblivion tasted of grapes.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks, as always, to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for being such a warm and inspiring host of Friday Fictioneers. Thanks, also, to Marie Gail Stratford, for her beautiful photograph.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Heartbreak, #Original Short Story, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, breakup, Flash Fiction, in vino veritas, Oblivion, wine and marriage
Sep 17, 2014 Original Short Stories
Genre: Magic Realist Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Wax-Blood
©September 17th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Farewell, my friends.
Those I’ve loved have melted away, and all those whom I hated have made moulds out of them. They sit, grinning, like skull-candles upon a mantelpiece in the home of the enemy, wherein visitors enter, and say, “Oh, how … unusual!”
All whom I loved do not exist, except as pieces in someone’s dream, atop a mantel-mountain with trophies littered around, like sleeping cats who may, at any time, unprovoked, unsheathe their claws.
Yesterday, I took my hoe, and went to my little terrace-garden on the top of the mountain.
I met a jaguar.
Sunlight spilled on blood.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, Flash Fiction
Sep 11, 2014 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, Original Short Stories, the surreal and the unreal
Genre: Fantasy/Supernatural Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
You Won’t See Me*
©September 11th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
I lived alone in the world behind the mirror. Those whom I saw, looked back at me, but didn’t see me – just themselves, endlessly repeated. They didn’t look, you see.
They didn’t see me, mouth open, beseeching… See me! Free me!
No, they smiled or pirouetted, smiled, frowned at fat, examined bruises, glared, and spoke to unseen enemies, stroked their hair, but missed me entirely.
Then, a child saw me, reaching out her hand. I stepped through.
Everyone vanished behind my mirror. I couldn’t see them, just a lonely, lace-curtained window reflected in the mirror.
And I didn’t see me.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting, and to Janet Webb for the lovely photo-prompt!
*With a nod to The Beatles for the title!
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, Flash Fiction
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
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
May 14, 2014 Original Short Stories
Sheep and Nipples
©May 14, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Welcome to my 100-word story contribution to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers! This is an online community of writers who post 100-word stories based on a photo prompt provided on Rochelle’s blog. This week’s photo is courtesy of Sandra Crook. 
I lay in bed, counting sheep.
A car appeared amidst the sheep. Its rear bumpers were visible. I tried to hail it. Nothing happened. The sheep pressed forward, urgent and militant, in my direction.
I reminded myself that I was trying to get to sleep.
The sheep came closer, backing me into a corner of the image.
I tapped at the edges of my mental image, but it remained resolutely two-dimensional.
Sleep never came. Sheep poured in, though.
Beside me, the baby stirred and made sucking noises. I awoke. Sigh.
I shall never use lanolin on sore nipples again, ever.
____________________________________________________________________
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, #Sheep, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, lanolin, nursing story, sore nipples