What Pegman Saw – Trapped

“What Pegman saw” is a weekly challenge based on Google Streetview. Using the location provided, you must write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 150 words. You can read the rules here. You can find today’s location on this page,  from where you can also get the Inlinkz code. This week’s prompt is Maienfeld, Switzerland.

WPS - Trapped 190928

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Trapped

A flurry of snow burst against the window, leaving its four little panes crusted so thickly white that the feeble daylight could hardly force a way through.

Heidi poured warm goat’s milk into a bottle, and sighed. Before her grandfather had died, she had enjoyed living on the Alm even in the winter. Grandfather had kept the woodstore full of dry logs which smelled sweet when they burned slow and hot in the stove. He had kept cheese and cured meat in the store, tasty and ample to feed them through a blizzard.

What did she have now? A little butter and some potatoes riddled with dark spots of decay. Peter, feeding the last of the hay to their goats, would turn up his nose at them.

She heard thumping as Peter knocked ice off his boots.

In the corner, the baby started to wail.

The snow kept falling.

What Pegman Saw – The Thain takes a Wife

“What Pegman saw” is a weekly challenge based on Google Streetview. Using the location provided, you must write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 150 words. You can read the rules here. You can find today’s location on this page,  from where you can also get the Inlinkz code. This week’s prompt is Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

WPS - The Thain's Wife 190922

Image from Axe20 by Pixabay

The Thain takes a Wife

My parents’ blood soaked into my clothes. I lay still, as though dead, clutching a knife beneath me. Its serrated blade was designed to strip the hide off a seal; it should take the life of at least one of these murderers, these Vikings.

I heard footsteps; I felt the draft as he lifted the flap of our mamateek. I could smell him. He reached down and touched my shoulder.

“Aiieee!” With the loudest cry I could muster, I twisted to one side and thrust upwards with all my strength, willing the blade to snatch at least one Viking life in exchange for the deaths of so many of my tribe.

He stepped back, and his boot kicked away my blade.

His sword was raised.

He stared at me, then seized me and dragged me from the floor.

“Come,” he grunted. “To the boat. You will bear me many warriors.”

Friday Fictioneers – Window on the Heavens

Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

FF - Window on the Heavens 190919

Photoprompt © J Hardy Carroll

Window on the Heavens

At first I was frightened.

The fall had concussed me. My hip hurt like hell, and I couldn’t stand up – couldn’t even crawl.

My children had told me I should always carry my phone, but I’ve never taken good advice.

I tried calling for help. My voice sounded strange, feeble and quavering. Nobody came.

Soon it was dark. Starshine crept in through the skylight. So did the cold. I shook.

The pain was subsiding. My mind felt strangely lucid. I was going to die, here, on my kitchen floor. I watched the glorious, terrible darkness through the window above…

 

What Pegman Saw – Nkosi

“What Pegman saw” is a weekly challenge based on Google Streetview. Using the location provided, you must write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 150 words. You can read the rules here. You can find today’s location on this page,  from where you can also get the Inlinkz code. This week’s prompt is Angola.

WPS - Nkosi 190916

Image by mdccruz01 from Pixabay

Nkosi

The first thing that struck me about the man was his size. His voice matched his physique, resonant, ringing like music as he spoke to us of justice, of freedom. My heart beat faster as I realised that here was a man who could change things. I had to know more!

Over the following months I attended half a dozen meetings. The message was always the same, reverberating within me like the thunder of war drums.

One evening he walked over to me.

“You wish to join me.”

I couldn’t hold his gaze, and bowed my head.

“Yes, Nkosi.”

He frowned.

“We do not use such titles. Ours is a brotherhood. Come.”

In time, he drew me into the inner circle, teaching me how diamonds funded the cause, how warriors were trained in the jungle.

The date of liberation is near.

It is time for action by the Portuguese, my paymasters.