Every Wednesday Rundown Wisoff-Fields posts a picture prompt challenging writers to create a 100-word story, poem, or whatever works for you. After posting your work on your blog, go back to her site and add your link on her Friday Fictioneers post. Place. Page.
I’m going to try to keep up with this, as should you. Give it a shot. I prefer to stick to 100 words, but she doesn’t mind either way. Not everyone has the time to sit and write, revise, edit, revise, edit, etc. until getting it down to 100 and telling everything you want to tell.
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The Barn
Two children sit in a barn loft.
“Granpa Wilson demolishing this tomorrow,” he complains.
“Why?”
“Building a new one.”
“After all these years?” she whines. “Where we gonna play?”
“I’m staying right here. He don’t scare me.”
“He’s knocking it down ‘cause he hates us playing here.”
He drops from the loft. “He don’t even know we’re here.”
“Sure he knows,” she smiles. “Hands shaking,” she mimics. “Holding his gun when we get too loud. Let him knock it down. Ain’t chasing me away.”
Next morning, backhoes dig the foundation, then stop.
“Ho-ly Christ.”
“What’s that?”
“Bones. Go get Wilson.”
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100 words
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brainsnorts inc. 
Saw it coming, but only because you and I think alike.
lol. Excellent take.
Scott
thanks. was worried about it being seen too much or not enough. guess i’ll wait and see how the “less alike” notice it. thanks for reading.
i changed the ending. can you peek again and let me know what you think? thanks.
The barn causes everyone to value it or want to save it. Your “save” was most unique, hard ending but well done!
thanks for reading.
Nice! There’s so much the reader can interpret into it. I love the dialogue especially, the vernacular or local dialect. Great writing!
thanks very much, and thanks for reading.
Is this Mr. Wilson of Dennis the Menace fame? Diggin up bodies is one way to stop construction.
didn’t think about the menace connection. maybe i should change that. thanks for reading.
Terrific drama there.
thanks for reading.
Great job! Seems a lot of people are dying in that old structure these days.
haven’t seen others yet, but i would expect that would be most common. thanks for reading.
I really didn’t see that coming. This has to be one of my favourite that I’ve ever read of yours Rich. Fantastic dialogue between the children, and the perfect last line.
thanks very much. i greatly appreciate such kind words. and thanks for reading.
Didn’t see that coming at all. Good one
thanks very much. wasn’t sure if my intent came through. thanks for reading.
Love the twist ending. Nice job 😉
thanks miss. i saw you did one. yay!!
Oooo…double !’s! Hee hee….
coulda been double D’s
I didn’t see the ending coming. Nice work Old man!
thanks very much. was it clear to you that the bones were the bodies of the two kids playing in the barn?
I thought they were, but wasn’t certain.
i’m glad you asked.
This week on Bones… Good images. I could smell the decay in the earth. Nice one Rich.
thanks very much. and thanks for reading.
Them bones were subtly planted. Nice job!
thanks for reading.
I guess the barn’s not going anywhere too soon. Nicely done as always.
nope, barn isn’t going anywhere just yet. thanks for reading.
Hi Rich,
Uh oh, psycho granpa. Didn’t see that coming Shades of Slingblade. Essentially a type of southern gothic story, my favorite kind. Ron .
love that movie. yeah, grandpa buried the kids years ago but is tortured by their laughs, so he thinks tearing down the barn will get rid of them.
Hi Rich, you always have such refreshing way of writing. Who planted the bones? I wonder if someone else tried to get in grandpa’s way ?
Shenine
thanks very much. granpa buried them, and their spirits stay in the barn. gramps thinks knocking down the barn will get rid of them, but not so.
“Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…” When Grandpa Wilson says he doesn’t like kids playing in the old barn, he means it. A question, were these supposed to be bones from other kids or the ones speaking in the beginning? Sorry if I’m the dense one here. I am after all somewhat Rundown.
Shalom.
Or is that Runtdown?
Runt to most given my shortness of height. Rundown as in name of the week. 😉 Like I really needed to explain?
those are the bones of the kids speaking in the barn, kids that were killed and buried. but i don’t think he killed them, now that i think more about it. i think they were there before his time.
So they’re ghosts?
Yup. But I suppose not good clues.
Good job, Rich, and I got that it was the bones of the children. They were all right–he didn’t scare them off and he did get rid of them.
janet
Thanks for making me feel even denser, Janet. ;). Backing out of the room slowly.
yup, he got rid of them, but not completely. thanks for reading.
Those pesky bones don’t just vanish overnight.
never do. from what i hear.
I was hoping that wasn’t from experience! 🙂
not that i’ll admit to.
Haunting stuff…liked the idea very much and way it was scribed – hard to cram into the 100 ..!
thanks cap’n. it was fun to write it. thanks for reading.
Nice, Rich. My fear is old Granpa is going to get away with it because they’re letting him know first that they found the bones!
Demother
yeah, that could happen. but they were too dumb to know.
Great work, didn’t see that coming
i was hoping you might have seen it a little, but thanks very much for reading.
Hi Rich — good dialog, really liked the ending.
thanks very much and thanks for reading.
oh…. oooh! so it was ghosts talking!!
Nice spin! Love it!
zzzzactly. thanks for reading.
I did not see that ending coming.
When I first read this, I thought the grandpa wanted to tear the barn down because it was unsafe for the children to play in, and that they’d fallen somewhere and died while they were having the conversation . . . and their bones were found in the morning. I guess if they’d just died, though, there’d be more than bones. I do like that the story can be read in several ways, though.
My favorite part of this was the well-done dialect.
thanks very much. i usually get compliments for dialogue, which i think is my strength and an effective way of packing a lot into 100 words. and thanks for reading.
A little ghostly chatter. Fun. I hate to say I saw it coming…but I did. I still adore this bit of fiction. Nicely written. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that any work/home improvement projects of that nature can seriously kick up the spectral activity. Grandpa may end up with more than he bargained for.
if you saw it coming, then you’re a careful reader, and that’s a good thing. i appreciate your comments, and thanks very much for reading. and yes, disturbing a home can sometimes disturb unseen guests.
Even though I rather saw the end coming, you still gave me a big shiver. Excellent.
Here’s mine: http://unexpectedpaths.com/friday-fictioneers/death-throes/
thanks. if you saw it coming, you’re a careful reader, and that’s good.
I guess I think otherwise because I did not see the end coming. What a surprise. Nice job here Rich.
Nobody’s eyes see the same thing as everyone else. And that is a good thing. Thank you for reading.
I love the tension created through the dialogue.
Thanks very much, and thanks for reading.
This is an old barn; those bones, gotta be pretty old too.
that’s what i’m thinking. that’s why the girl said “after all these years?”
Yes…
thanks for reading. much appreciated.
Cool! I like the idea of finding something under the barn. I just have one query, which might be one of those British vs American things. I thought it was spelt “grandpa”, with a d in the middle.
normally, yes, the d. but i was going on pronunciation, how a kid might actually say it, which likely would not be with the D. so you’re right, but i’m right too.
So we’re both allowed to engage “smug mode” as though we were Kryten (from Red Dwarf) then! Good, good.
smug mode. i like that.
You’d probably quite enjoy Red Dwarf as a TV show. It’s not high-brow humour, it can be down-right disgusting, but it is very funny, and very British.
i’m a big python/fawlty towers fan. dr. who not so much.
Red Dwarf is less clever than Monty Python & Fawlty Towers in many ways, but I do recommend it. I sometimes like Doctor Who and sometimes I don’t, it depends on my mood and who the current Doctor is.
my kids love it, but i don’t get it. it’s like the worst star trek episodes times ten.
I was never a Trek fan, but I totally understand what you mean! Sometimes Doctor Who can be too surreal for words.
oh my. I hope they weren’t his kids. If they were they should have haunted him more. I love ghosts.
you should read my ghost story then.
you have one? so do I! I’ll read yours if you read mine. send me the link.
how many words? mine is 56,000. it’s about a girl, 16, murdered, her boyfriend is in jail but he didn’t do it. she knows where to find the evidence to convict the real guy but has to convince someone to believe her and then go find it.
Mine is not near that long. Also mine is true. Are you done with yours? Is it a book or a short story? I would still read it if I could. here is the link to mine if you want to read it.
http://jlroeder.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/my-life-with-abe-a-true-ghost-story/
emailing you a link. let me know if it works.
I’ll go check it out now
nope rich it doesn’t work. says that it is no longer available
i’ll fix it in a few. sawwwrry.
no biggie
you don’t have to be mean about it. we’re not all big, okay? yeesh.
you want a word document? that easier? or you can search my blog for “lizzie’s journal.” whatever works for you. i think it’s there. i don’t think i removed it.
oh dang it. I will do a search. You are so difficult sometimes. and here you go talking about body parts again. I’m beginning to think you got a fetish.
ha! think? uh oh. it seems what’s on my blog starts around ch. 6. musta deleted 1-5. i’ll e-mail you a word document.
yeah I was just gonna write. I did the search but it’s all jumbled and I couldn’t find 1-5. Send it on big boy (there is that better?)
much better. do you like mainly spooky ghost stories or even nice ghosts?
oh I enjoy them all, well except stories that are all blood and gore. then I have nightmares. I’m sensitive ya know.
sent. hope you enjoy.
I’ll let you know. go read mine, should take all of 5 minutes. ha!
ok, got it downloaded and in my pc. will read it sometime this weekend. probably in between a million other things I should be doing. I did read the first couple of pages. will let you know when I’m done. probably through email.
no rush. it’s not short. and it takes a few chapters before ghost stuff shows up. it really needs to be revised. i have another ghost story that’s kind of like “when harry met sally” but ghosts. if you’d rather read that, it’s shorter and better but not creepy ghost.
I can read both. I’m just that good
no question how good you are.
https://brainsnorts.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/disconnection-ch-1/
this one is almost as long as the other one! 19 chapters? I read chapter one and now I have to see what happened. Did they crash? I suppose they did and I bet they all died. Otherwise where is the ghost coming from. Damn you rich now I have two to read!
just read the plane crash, not the other one. i have to revise the other one once more. well, really, i should just be thankful you’re interested. i’ll shut up now. the plane crashed at the end of ch. 1. the part about the metal bird screaming, that was the crash.
I figured that out all myself big guy (about the plane crash) cus I’m smurt that way. I will probably read both, just because I can but I will read the plane one first. I’ll email you when I’m done.
you can find the chapters on my blog, but one of them is missing. i’ll check which one and e-mail that one to you.
sounds good thanks
Nice lead in for a longer tale to tell. I enjoyed this.
thanks, that’s nice of you. and thanks for reading.
Didn’t see that coming. Really love the dialogue
thanks very much about the dialogue. i believe it’s my strength. and thanks for reading.
An unexpected (for me) twist ending. Thank you! It was well done.
thanks very much, and thanks for reading.
great dialogue, spot on. I was there, early 20th century, seeing the characters in their period clothing. Didn’t expect bones. kind of caught me off guard as I was humming along in story. twists do that you know.
thanks very much. glad you were affected but managed to get “there.” and thanks for reading.
haunting tale..well done
thanks, and thanks for reading.
This story is really good, as usual terrific dialogue, and the ambiguity in the end .. I see 100s of word coming out of this 🙂
thanks very much, and thanks for reading.
excellent story.. kinda saw it coming then it disturbed me how dark my mind got.lol but for some reason you still managed to surprise, with the bones there! when i played the scene in my mind, it was reeaaaally haunting. amazing work!
thanks very much. i do plant seeds, and you caught them, and that’s good. thanks for reading.
Well done. Should’ve realised the kids were ghosts but didn’t. Didn’t the neighbours here the gunshots?
i don’t think they were shot, but also, some farms are faaaar away. or, are you making a play about the guy in south africa? either way, thanks for reading.
Not quite as dark as I thought you were going to be Mr Rich. I enjoyed the tale of the ghosts in the barn. Great dialogue, but then I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you.
Like the new photo by the way
Dee
yeah, not as dark, no death at the moment but it happened years before. thanks very much about the dialogue and the very kind words, and on the picture too. decided to do something different. and thanks very much for reading.
Yikes! More bones? And even so, a different take. Good job.
thanks, and thanks very much for reading.
I would love to know what happens next!
i think what happens next is the bodies are discovered, and then the ghosts will have to leave.
That was great. Didn’t expect that ending at all.
Thanks very much, and thanks for reading.
🙂 Great story!!! I guess there were some skeletons in that closet/barn after all…
i didn’t think of it that way. thanks! skeletons in the barn.
🙂 And after they find the bodies what happens?
i think the ghost will then leave.
Yes, you’re right. They must leave after that… 🙂