Friday Fictioneers 5/18 – via Madison Woods

/ May 17, 2012

Every Wednesday Madison Woods posts a picture prompt to challenge writers to create a 100-word story or poem or anything that works for you.  then post your work on your blog.  additionally, on friday, you go back to her site and post a link to your blog entry in the comments on her friday fictioneers post.

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 an hour and a half like i had this morning to sit and write, revise, edit, revise, edit, etc. until getting it down to 100 and telling everything you want to tell.

here’s this week’s picture.  if you don’t want to read my entry or be influenced by what i wrote, then don’t scroll beyond the picture.  until friday.

.

.

.

“Can’t be.  They always move.”

“Jimmy.  Again.  It’s.  Not.  Moving.”

They walked circles.  It stayed still.

David knelt in grass.  “It just goes into the ground.”  He found a stick, poked, nothing.  He tossed it, not watching.  It landed near flattened grass and footsteps, blades curled, blackened.

“Touch it.”

“You touch it.”

“Rock, paper, scissors.”

“Okay.”

“Best of three.”

Jimmy cursed, rolled up sleeves.

David stepped back, unaware, standing in a dark trail leading away.

A clump of trees, not far.  One last, lonely heartbeat of a boy.  Rusted skin.  Charred arm.  Missing hand.

Ants feasted.

A scream.

Vultures blinked.

________________________

100 words

Related posts

91 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers 5/18 – via Madison Woods”

  4. Hmmm, having just come back from OZ myself, when I saw this picture I KNEW I was going to be lead Somewhere Over the Rainbow! Thanks for surprising me. Nice!

    Reply

    • hey, i never thought of that. i was thinking the kid crawled away after burning his hand on the rainbow. maybe something created the rainbow and carried him away, so the next kids won’t see the body and then get the next kid too. could be.

      Reply

  14. Rich, I was a little disappointed this time. Which is your own fault because you have set my bar of expectation very high. You usually do a very well-crafted 100 words. I thought that this one was a bit rough. It was very graphic and did its job of storytelling. No doubt about that. It just felt a bit rushed – as if you were chucking out words to get down to the 100, without really rewriting. On the other hand, you wrote something. I didn’t. So, well done for that.

    Reply

    • i accept. thanks. it was not written well in terms of crafted sentences. it was kind of choppy with incomplete phrases in order to get down to 100. but then i was actually a bit below and looked what to add to get back up to 100, thus came the vultures and ants. maybe i could have done without them in place of better sentences. no disagreement from me.

      Reply

      • I hesitated about saying anything, but I thought that it was better to do so because when, in the (probably) near future, I tell you that I think that you’ve done a great job, you’ll know that it’s true – not just conventional words.

      • don’t hesitate when it’s what you really feel because sometimes i feel similar things, but i’m not sure. your kind of genuine feedback is what makes people write better. that’s important and hard to find.

      • That’s very generous of you, Rich. However, never forget that it’s all a bit like raising children – everyone has an opinion on what you should be doing. The trick is to listen to everyone, think about it, then make your own decision. Your stories are YOUR children. Other people’s opinions can be helpful but you’re the father. You’re in charge. The only exception would be if you’re dealing with an editor who might be going to publish your first book. Then, you DO ANYTHING that (s)he says. You can start resisting when you get to publishing the second one. Because the first one will have been a success – no doubt about that.

      • those are great words of encouragement. thanks. i’ve had suggestions with which i thanked the person. and i’ve had suggestions that i felt made the story better, and i made a change as soon as possible. i value them all. but i don’t agree with them all.

  17. This moved from being an idyllic tale of finding the end of the rainbow into something much more gruesome. I think the reference to the vultures/ants brought the tale into another dimension which worked at the ‘horrifying’ level but maybe took something away from it at the ‘supernatural’ level. Just my thoughts. Either way, a good one that will stick in my mind. Well done!
    Mine: http://castelsarrasin.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/pursuit-friday-fictioneers-may-2012/

    Reply

  20. Vultures blinked. What a great ending from a ‘normal’ beginning. I also loved the last, lonely heartbeat, too.

    Reply

  29. I thought I’d commented on this one already but I don’t see it… Anyway, loved the story, gruesome though it is. It amazes me how anyone thinks of anything other than happy when looking at rainbows. I know I was happy when I saw it in real life, but my own story had a touch of sinister to it, too, lol.

    Reply

    • thanks. you did comment, i saw it somewhere. i know i did, but i don’t know where. i’m reading through them all now, making my way up the list. i don’t “see” sinister, but i search for it.

      Reply

  30. Your story is like shorthand for a Grimm Fairytale! I love the sparsity of it. I know you said you were paring down to get to 100 words but you should claim this as your own genre of writing.

    Reply

  31. really good as usual man. sadly, i didn’t do it again. i need to start planning for it on wednesday, because i don’t have times on fridays and the weekend. i try not to write on the weekends so that i can spend all that time with the family.

    Reply

  32. Crikey, Rich, that’s note a pretty picture! You convey it stylishly though – the writing is almost poetic especially towards the end.
    I got a little confused by “it landed near flattened grass and footsteps, blades curled, blackened.” I felt like you would be describing the stick as having suffered in the raibow, but blades curled seems to refer to the grass, so I wasn’t sure whehter it was the grass or the stick that was blackened. Maybe a tweak there would help?
    Overall, though, I thought you captured the boys perfectly (“best of three.” Brilliant), and the image was all too clear at the end!
    If your readers are interested, I’m over here: http://elmowrites.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/friday-fiction-the-lie-of-the-land/

    Reply

    • the stick was affected by the rainbow, but it was a delayed effect. david poked the rainbow, nothing happened, so he tossed the stick away. the grass near the stick, and the stick, blackened. the footsteps were to indicate that someone else had been there – which is the boy who just died because he touched the rainbow and it killed him.

      Reply

  35. This was a very unique and unespected view of what might actually be at the end of a rainbow. Overpowering high energy, burning up all who dare trespass, loved it. I like the rock paper scizzors to choose which one. I know you had to cut words to get here, but I think you did well considering – this would be a good one to expand and give it the word count it deserves.

    Reply

  39. Great job, Rich. I’m sure writing dark stories to pretty pictures is as difficult as writing humor to disaster photos. I liked the short, choppy sentences. It creates a very vivid image in the mind.

    Reply

what say you?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s