Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and happy end of November to everyone else. This is definitely not a Thanksgiving story: I just wrote the story I saw in the picture. However, I’m very thankful for everyone who reads my stories. Thank you.
As Monty Python said, “And now for something completely different.”
The crutches are my mask. One glance and people have this poor crippled girl all figured out.
“The hell are you?” I come closer and the man’s demeanor flips.
“Hey, you lost?” He’s all Mr. Rogers suddenly. “This is a bad neighborhood.”
I wait until he’s close enough that when I swing the crutch up, the spring-loaded spike destroys his throat. He falls in a bubbling heap. Nighty-night, mugger.
He’s got $300 and a pack of cigarettes on him. I smoke two as I sit on his corpse to rest my aching leg.
Who says cripples can’t be superheroes?
A rare explanation: I realize that the term “cripple” is viewed as offensive by some. That is not at all my intention, so my apologies if you felt uncomfortable. I chose it only to fit with the tone of the story.After all, the point of the story is not to judge someone by their outward appearance.
Mia watched the shadow in growing frustration. Her mother was speaking in their shadow sign language, but the silhouette of her blowing hair kept obscuring her hands.
“I can’t understand!” Mia shouted.
Her mother’s hands dropped, then formed a heart.
A cloud passed over. When the sun reappeared, she was gone.
Mia’s father found her sobbing ten minutes later.
“I just want to see her again.”
“Me too,” he said. “But she’s dead, honey. I envy your gift of seeing her shade in full sunlight.”
He surreptitiously picked a long wig hair from his sleeve and went to hug her.
My apologies to all my Friday Fictioneers friends that I could not read your stories a few weeks back. I usually try to read as many as I can but this has been a busy time. I’m looking forward to reading them this week, plus looking forward to Thanksgiving in a few weeks when I can get a few days off.
copyright Dale Rogerson
Portentous Tinsel
Dad thought Christmas made everything better, so when he started putting up decorations in August, we knew something terrible had happened.
Jasmine felt the dog’s pulse as Dad assembled the Christmas tree. When he put on carols, I called to check on Grandma.
By the afternoon, he was putting up the outside lights and my search history included words like “asteroid” and “zombies”. Mom had no idea, but she gave us a signed affidavit they weren’t getting divorced.
Dad came inside. “Merry Christmas.” He wiped away a tear. “I have tragic news. Tom Seaver died today.”
Silence. “Who?” Mom asked.
In case your reaction was the same as Mom’s: Tom Seaver
“Check it out what this old man gave me,” Brad said, showing Mark his backpack. “Any books you put in here are weightless. The drawback is you forget how to read.”
“That sounds like that one Rick & Morty episode,” Mark said.
“So?”
“So, do you want to get sued?”
“That’s fiction!”
“So are we!” Mark looked nervously at the edges of the blog post.
* * *
David sat back in frustration. This cursed story generator worked great, but the characters kept announcing the plot and breaking the fourth wall. Still, it was worth it to get Friday Fictioneers ideas every week.
Mom called it a cruise, but I knew that prisoners didn’t go on cruises. I rode to the dock the day the ship left. I couldn’t see Dad, but I waved as the ship steamed away, just in case.
He returned five years later, tanned, muscular, almost unrecognizable. He didn’t drink anymore, didn’t yell or get violent. I didn’t mind the polite stranger he’d become.
At first.
But he doesn’t laugh anymore, doesn’t go outside. He just sleeps or watches TV.
Now when the ship comes, I ride to the dock to curse the beast that, somehow, ate my father.
A strange story, but that is probably what you’ve come to expect from me. What do you think happened to the father while he was away?
I keep meaning to write and post the Friday Fictioneers story on Wednesday, but the last few weeks have been crazy busy here. I work in international admissions at Gannon University and we have new students coming in for the October session. Next week should calm down a bit, relatively speaking.
“Describe this picture!”
copyright Rowena Curtain
This was the final round of Eluci-Date, the show where two contestants competed for a date with a lexicographer by creatively describing pictures. It had been called Meta-For-a-Date until it was bought by thesaurus.com.
My mind froze like a naked Floridian in Greenland.
Sunny.Stripey.
My opponent Lewis looked smug.
3…2…1…
“Angelic safecracker!” I bellowed.
Kristina, the lexicographer, gazed at the picture. “Lewis?”
No! She wanted a comparison.
“Smeared titanium white on the palette of creation,” Lewis said, smirking. “With a #6 fan brush.”
Kristina frowned, then grinned at me. “Why would an angel become a safecracker?”
For a moment, Viktor thought the strong hands on his forehead were his mother’s. Then he smelled the blood and gangrene and he remembered.
“How is the battle?”
“The lapots are bombing the Volga’s east bank,” the nurse said. “But Stalingrad still stands.” Her hands worked at the bandage, teasing the cloth away from the fevered flesh.
“Is there penicillin yet?”
“Russian penicillin,” she said. Then the pungent taste of the garlic extract filled his mouth.
“Is there any hope?”
Her hands smoothed down the new bandage onto his scorched scalp. “We are Russians,” she whispered. “We never give up.”
* garlic was used so often by the Red Army that it was nicknamed Russian penicillin
**Lapot: Russian nickname for the JU-87 Stuka divebombers, from the word for bast shoes, since the landing gear resembled that type of shoes.
Did you have supper? It was after breakfast, mid-evening over there.
No reply. My heart beat faster, irrationally. His friend Amber was there too. She’d learned Vietnamese, he’d said.
The phone chimed. I jumped for it.
“Is that Stan?” my husband asked from the kitchen.
“Yeah.”
He came over to read the reply.
Yep!
A picture popped up of a glowing building and a lotus flower fountain.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said. “My lucky little boy. Still, I worry.”
“He’ll be fine. After all, he’s nine now. He’s not a baby anymore.”
*
This Friday Fictioneers story is very late, but since Rochelle chose my picture this week as the prompt, I wanted to make sure I wrote one. I took this picture in Ho Chi Minh City when I was there on business a few months ago. I wrote a kid’s book about my travels called Stanley and Amber in Southeast Asia, about a kid and his unicorn friend traveling around Southeast Asia (it started out as a Flat Stanley project for my niece; thus, the name). So, I thought I’d write this from the parent’s perspective.
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The Green-Walled Tower 