I looked out at the strange city.

We were only supposed to have a four hour lay-over before that long flight across the Pacific.

We watched the TVs in horror.  I didn’t understand a word. I didn’t have to.

Our flight was delayed and then canceled.  I was placed on a flight the next day, but that was canceled as well, as were all flights for the next few days.

The airline put us up for a few nights, but then word came that it would be weeks, maybe months.

I guess it is a good time to learn Korean….

***

word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Ted Strutz . Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “Linky“.

***

I was thinking the aftermath of 9/11, but perhaps something modern and even worse. It could, of course, fit into being stranded by the pandemic…

You’re in prison?! What happened?

I decided to save some money and move our doublewide mobile home myself.  Bob took the right half, I took the left.

Bob?  Oh no…

Bob did OK and delivered it fine.  I had never driven a big-rig and didn’t know you needed a special license.  Or training…

What happened?

I was making a left from 42 onto Main…

The busiest intersection in town.

…and misjudged the corner.  I got stuck blocking all lanes from all directions.

Oh no.

When I didn’t have ID, the police asked where I lived.

You didn’t!

I said, “Here…”

***

word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Ted Strutz . Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “Linky“.

We used to sit down by the lake, old cable spool as a table, and just shoot the breeze; you know, life, the Universe and everything.  Of course, mostly women.

But then life actually happened and I went out to explore the Universe, or at least this corner of it called “America”.  And, yeah, I met a woman and everything.

That was years ago, a lot of water under the bridge.

I never heard what it was: stroke, heart attack or whatnot.  Just old age.

I sit by the lake and think about life, the Universe and everything.

And him.

***

word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Dale Rogerson . Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

What on Earth is that?

The guy called it a “Herble” and hinted it’s not from Earth.

Ha ha.  “Herble?” So it’s alive, like a plant?  It looks like a colorful LCD toy.

Yeah, though maybe closer to an animal.  Here, hold it.

It’s so soft!  And it purrs….

And coos.  Its super cute…

Adorable.  I could hold it all day….

Me too.

**

How many Herbles did you get?

Just two.

Two?  Look out the window….

**

Our invasion of Earth went better than expected.  They were completely inundated.

Sir, now what do we do with the Horrible Herbles?

****

word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © David Stewart . Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

**

OK, I’ll admit it, I was thinking The Trouble with Tribbles. ;)

Freder splashed his way through the stench of the workers’ subterranean street.  Fresh from his pleasure garden two thousand feet above the ground, he felt suffocated being as far below that long-lost surface.

He never knew that the masses lived like this!  Perhaps H. G. Wells was prophetic and humans were splitting into the leisure-class Eloi and working-class Morlocks.

Did his father know what the rule of his 1% did to those 99% who created that lavish lifestyle in the clouds?

He would find Maria, join he people.

“The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.”

***

word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Anne Higa. Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

**

The photo made me think of an underground city, or a city’s underground. A poor area with the upper-class’ sewage running unchecked into the poor’s domain. Which led me to the movie Metropolis. Freder is the main character of the movie, with Maria the female lead. His father is the head of the elites and runs the city. She is from the poor worker’s city and is trying to find a way for the rich Capitalists and the poor Workers to get together. The last line of the story is the last line of the movie.

“Is this Chinese, Korean or what?”

“How in the world should I know?”

I jumped.  I didn’t know the muse had entered.

She frowned at the photo.

“All I know is that it isn’t ancient Greek.  I haven’t read since Timocles.”

“A lot of help you are….”

“You could ask a friend….”

Kyung is Korean and Lilly Chinese, but I would never bother either of them over this photo!

“Just begin with someone who is lost in a new culture, OK?”

I started writing, “Thalia hadn’t had a date in two millennia.”

“Hey!”

“I thought you only knew ancient Greek?”

***

word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Brenda Cox. Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

**

OK, I had nothing. And since I didn’t know the language, I was 99.99% sure which ever language I picked, even doing a coin toss, I’d be wrong. And that idea distracted me, so…

Perhaps the most frustrating issue with this book was the lack of characterization.  Although the surface details were drawn with care, the characters themselves came out as flat. Flat, flat, flat, totally flat.  You could not imagine an emotion more than a silly grin on any of them.  Even the dog and cat seemed more archetypes of the species than real, live, breathing animals.  I rate this book one star for lack of characterization alone. Not recommended.

Wow, that was pretty harsh.  What was your book about?

It was children’s book that featured a family of gingerbread people…  Totally flat.

***

Word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Jennifer Pendergast. Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

I do not go for abstraction but can only paint what I see, and what I see is fascinating.  Do you not think the swirls of nature in the roots of trees is a work of beauty?  Or the wind-blown wheat in the field?

You say the lamp is clear and distinct, but you must be seeing it wrong, for there is an aura of light, a halo of being, around it.

And the stars in the sky, what wonders these points of light echoing through space!  The morning star on the horizon is almost as bright as the moon!

***

Vincent van Gogh was against abstraction and painted from nature. His sketchbook is full of fascinating drawings that people of his day thought boring. All of the points on his famous painting “Starry Night” can be identified, from Venus on the horizon to the constellation Aries. The moon was gibbous on the night represented, but he abstracted it for the composition. One thing, though – there are a lot of people who think Vincent had Cataracts or another eye ailment that caused him to see halos around bright objects since he always painted them with halos. It isn’t uncommon, so there is a very strong possibility…

***

Word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Dale Rogerson . Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

While Jones and I explored the village, Hixon and Simmons went to investigate something interesting they saw.  Simmons said that the multi-rooted tree looked like a structure with a statue in the middle.  I laughed at Hixon’s description of a “sinuous man with outstretched arms, three sets of eyes and a long, pointed beard.”

Simmons and Hixon were long overdue, so, through the interpreters, we asked their whereabouts. 

The interpreters must have misunderstood.  It was just gibberish thanking us for the sacrifice and, since their god was satiated, for sparing one of their own.

Simmons and Hixon are still missing.

***

Word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Liz Young. Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

**

My opinion, ones you hear “Hixon’s” description of the tree, you can’t un-see it ;)

It was cold, not frigid, but the wind was biting. Good, that meant I had the beach to myself.

The stark late winter sun turned the summer vacation site into a monochrome fantasy, an old silverplate photo from a bygone era.

I shared this world away with only a single soul who, thankfully, was walking the other direction, his form silhouetted by the low, southern sun.

Typically, a walk, any walk, gets the creative juices flowing, fires the imagination, sends a spark of creativity that wakes the system.  A walk on the beach?  Paradise for the muse!

But not today…

***

Word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © CEAyr. Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

***

Yeah, yeah, the missing muse story seems to be a common thread on FF, but some days we just draw a total blank.