Tony took one look at the door mat and burst out laughing. “Wow, Cynthia this is just perfect. My boss will get the not too subtle message the moment he knocks on our door!” “This is just marvelous!”
Cynthia smiled broadly and winked at Tony. “Yes before you tell him you’re resigning, let’s give him a good dinner”
Josh and Willie were arm wrestling for a bet. People around them were betting on who would win and they were cheering their chosen opponent on.
Josh was the muscular guy and Willie was the skinny one, but Willie had something Josh didn’t have. He had a plan. He resisted the pressure from Josh till the end when he feigned weakness. Josh moved in for the final victory when Willie suddenly came up with extra strength and won the bet.
“Now you can buy me that beer”, he said to Josh. But Josh was a sore loser. He grabbed the money off the table and in the process upturned it. “You cheated”, he shouted as he made for the door.
The people who had placed bets on them weren’t going to let him take their money too. They gave him a black eye and he left empty-handed.
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Fandango is the host of Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge
The photo below is from Gratisography @ Pexels.com.
For the visually challenged writer, the photo shows two men armwrestling and there is money on the table.
She was shocked when she opened the envelope and saw that it was…
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She was shocked when she opened the envelope and saw that it was the card she had sent to her sister. Mary had returned the birthday card with a message scribbled instead. “Don’t get in touch with me again. We are finished. In fact, you should forget that you even have a sister”
Laura’s heart broke. There were tears in her eyes as Tom, her husband entered the kitchen.
“What happened my dear?”He was concerned for his wife.
“I just got this” Laura showed him the returned card.
“But why would Mary do this. I don’t understand! There wasn’t any falling out between you two?”
“Yes, that’s why it is more hurtful. After she got married to Bertie, we really didn’t had much contact. Maybe she’s still mad at me for opposing her marriage to that greedy man?”
“Or…… maybe it’s something entirely different. Your sister is a successful businesswoman. Maybe Bertie wants to cut her off from her only sister and plans to play a dirty game! Are you sure it is Mary’s handwriting?”
Laura looked again at the card and now she wasn’t that sure. “ I think you should send her an email and mention this incident. If she really did send the card back, she’ll say so. Otherwise maybe she will be warned that someone is playing tricks on her”
She followed Tom’s advice. And a good thing that she did. Mary told her that she was planning divorce from Bertie and after this stunt that he pulled, she had asked him to leave her house.
Tom and Mary were relieved. Maybe they had saved Laura’s life.
I heard the music as I entered the room, but all that was there…
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I heard the music as I entered the room, but all that was a blue tooth speaker that was playing music from some unseen device. The songs were good but old. In fact, after listening for a while I recalled that I used to love this playlist and it was from one of my very first iPod.
Now I was puzzled. Who could have known of my likes regarding music? Not any of my current friends. And my brother was settled in another country so it couldn’t have been him either.
I heard someone enter the room and turned. I was face to face with someone who looked vaguely familiar.
“Hi”, she said
I replied to her but a bit hesitantly.
“Don’t you remember me?” She said as if surprised.
“I’m afraid I don’t. Though you do look familiar”
“I am Becky. Remember we were together in school. I have gone to a lot of trouble to find you and invite you here”.
Oh, Becky! Now things fell in place for me. We weren’t friends in school. In fact, we rather disliked each other. She was always trying to be better than me in everything that I did.
“But why?” I asked. “Why do you want to meet me. Now? And in this way?”
“I wanted to give you back your iPod. I stole it from you on our last day in school. I found it among my stuff when I was moving to this city. I called a few former classmates and found you. I wanted to apologize to you as well. I was always jealous of you and your achievements. I hope you can forgive me and we can be friends now?”
I was moved by this speech. I did forgive her but as for being friends, I would still be cautious about my dealings with her.
The photo below is from donmatthewspoetry.com and is used with permission.
For the visually challenged writer, the photo shows a young man in a tuxedo in the foreground. He’s carrying a small, white sewing machine in one hand and has a big smile on his face. Meanwhile, behind him is a brown UPS truck askew on a hill with three policemen and possibly the truck’s driver talking.
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The UPS truck wavered and climbed up the grassy hill before coming to a halt. Peter was aghast at the accident and the heated arguments that were taking place behind him.
Luckily the photographer had taken the shot before he became aware of the drama behind him. He turned around and handed the sowing machine to an assistant and asked the photographer if they had to do the shoot again. The photographer was happy with the results and said that he could photoshop the extra people out of the shoot and Peter was free to go.
Peter turned towards the arguing parties and added his penny’s worth of opinion to the whole cacophony. He enjoyed arguments and this seemed a very interesting one.
This week’s prompt is a post with a difference – our September guest photo!Emerging – Image by Geoff Le Pard
For visually challenged writers, the image shows a green man (with the traditional leaves for his hair) emerging from a bricked up tunnel.
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Albert didn’t believe in fairytales or any other magical creatures. He would stoutly deny that any such creature existed, but one day all his beliefs were turned upside down. And now………
It was a late autumn evening when Albert was heading home from work. He had had dinner at the pub before heading homewards. He lived alone and his days were spent working at the solicitor’s office as a clerk. After work he would eat at the pub and then go home to sleep. He never married and was reasonably happy with his life.
As he neared the park in the center of the village, he saw something twinkling in the hedges. He thought they were fireflies and went onward. There was sound of someone whispering and laughing coming from the bushes and Albert stopped to listen.
“Hurry up before Simon sees us. You know what he’ll do if he finds us”
There was some movement and suddenly a small exquisite fairy came out of the hedge. When she saw that Albert was there and was in fact looking directly at her, she stopped and was about to cast an oblivious spell when someone bumped into her from behind. It was another fairy who was in a great distress.
“Please Marigold, do hurry up, I think I can hear Simon coming”. With this both the fairies flew into the dark leaving a fascinated Albert behind them. But more was yet to come.
From the deepening dusk, a green creature emerged. His hair were made of leaves and he had the most sinister expression Albert had ever seen.
“Where have they gone?” He asked Albert loudly. A bamboozled Albert could just stare at him. “Never mind, you’re just a human, I’ll look for them myself”
With this threat, the creature, Simon turned towards the side wall when suddenly there was a loud bang and a bright flash. Simon turned into stone and was embedded half in and half out of the wall. The two fairies came out from behind the trees and gave each other a satisfied look. “Now that one won’t bother us again, ever. And what about this one?” said the second fairy to the first one, looking dispassionately at Albert.
“Oh he looks like a nice guy. I think he’ll keep our secret, won’t you sir?” Albert enthusiastically nodded his head. He didn’t want to turn onto a wall decoration as well.
So now Albert believes in magical creatures, but he doesn’t say much.
Fandango is the host of Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge
Welcome to Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.
The image below is from Sarolta Bán Photography.
For the visually challenged writer, the surrealistic image shows a man and a boy walking among large trees that are crowned with paint brushes with bristles covered in white paint dripping from the clouds above.
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“Drip drop the clouds bleed
The trees like paintbrushes catch their colors
Father and son marvel at this wondrous sight
Taking heed from this unique spectacle
They decide to paint the canvas of life
With colors of nature, blue grey, and white!”
“Do you think this will inspire people to buy our paints?” Susan asked her friend and colleague as she showed him the new ad for their latest range of paints.
“I like your poetical take Susan”, said Josh “and it sorts of entices the viewer to try the paint at least once”.
“That’s all we want. The rest will be easy as the paints are very good quality”, said Susan with a grateful smile.
Easy. Each week I’ll provide a prompt to inspire you to write a very short story. The idea is to manage to type your whole story in a minute or less. Of course, you can think about it before hitting the keyboard, and you can take all your time to edit it afterwards…
Just make sure to tag your story with #1MinFiction, and create a pingback to my week’s challenge post, so I can easily find it!
So, here is this week’s picture;
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Whenever I passed by this little house on the hill, I wondered who lived there. The house seemed empty and I never saw anyone coming or going, yet it appeared well looked after.
One day I ventured to the front door to satisfy my curiosity. As I knocked, no one answered. I opened the door and there I saw myself sitting at the table, reading newspaper……..,
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