Friday Fictioneers – Wilted

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 include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

PHOTO PROMPT (C) DALE ROGERSON

Wilted

You gave me a single red rose before you left for the special military operation.

‘I should be back within days,’ you said. ‘The rose won’t even have time to wilt.’

But that was months ago.

You brave men must feel as though you’re fighting all the world, when you see NATO’s weapons used against you by the Ukrainian Nazis. It must be terrifying; I don’t know how you can bear it.

I long for you to be home.

The rose will stand, wilted, in its vase, until I hold you in my arms again.

Inlinkz – click here to join the fun!

Friday Fictioneers – Judgement Day

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 include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz (the blue frog) on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

PHOTO PROMPT© Jan Wayne Fields

Judgement Day

It was dark when Bob and Frank pitched their tent. Bob took off his leathers and gazed at the engagement ring Frank had given him.

“Only a hundred miles tomorrow,” said Frank.

“What will your dad say when we tell him we’re going to marry?”

“It’s okay, Bob. Not everybody in the military is prejudiced.” He took out a Marlboro. “Shall we look at the stars?”

As he unzipped the tent door, a dazzling point of light exploded on the horizon, growing rapidly into a fiery pillar thundering into the heavens.

“Shit! I thought they’d scrapped those! That’s a Minuteman!”

The photo is entitled ‘Lights of Sturgis’. Sturgis is a small town in South Dakota, and its main claim to fame is an annual motorcycle rally, one of the biggest in the world. Sturgis is close to the Ellsworth Air Base, where fifty Minuteman missiles (long range missiles with nuclear warheads) were sited. The missiles were said to have been scrapped in 1994. I have no reason to believe that this is not the case, other than general paranoia and a belief in conspiracy theories…