Friday Fictioneers: All These Dusty Miles

It is time for Friday Fictioneers again. This week my story is going out ahead of time! Even I cannot believe it.

Let me encourage you to read my story and then to hop on over to Rochelle’s page and follow the little blue frog to lots of other stories. Here is our prompt for the week

PHOTO PROMPT - © Connie Gayer (Mrs. Russell)

PHOTO PROMPT – © Connie Gayer …(Mrs. Russell)

All These Dusty Miles

by JE Lillie

“Just a little further.” Momma says.

Those words are her mantra. I know she is frightened, so I will not complain even though my feet bleed and my shoulders ache with the weight of the pack.

“She knows the way” I say under my breath. Still she has never walked the distance. We were city dwellers. Then the bombs fell, the soldiers came and we ran with nothing but these bags slung from our shoulders and the clothes on our backs.

“We are here!” Momma says.

The ocean opens before me. Suddenly I wish to go back to the desert.

Friday Fictioneers: Leviathan Lives!

PHOTO PROMPT - © Dale Rogerson

PHOTO PROMPT – © Dale Rogerson

It is time once again for Friday Fictioneers. 100-ish writers gather from all over the globe to write 100 words on a photo prompt supplied by our hostess Rochelle. You can find the other 100-ish of us by clicking on the underlined link which will tak you to Rochelle’s blog. From there follow the little blue frog.

My piece this week is a bit conceptual. I looked at the prompt without my glasses and saw a snake. From that point on this idea was stuck in my head.

Leviathan Lives

by JE Lillie

This was Eden. That stupid girl, that foolish boy ruined everything. Yet, I am the one left slithering on my belly in the muck.

Even “He Who Shall Not Be Named” was against me that day. He saw my glory and demanded it be taken away. As He did in Heaven so He has done on Earth.

“Thy will be done!” they pray!

“Enough!” I say!

He has had His way for far too long. It is time for me to crawl from these tidal waters. It is time for the sons of Adam to behold the beast that restores the world.

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Friday Fictioneers: Leaving the Slow Lane

It’s time for another episode of Friday Fictioneers. Our hostess Rochelle is celebrating three years of fictioneering. To join in the celebration pop on over to her site by clicking HERE

Here is the weekly photo prompt and my story

copyright-Ron-Pruitt

Photo Prompt by Ron Pruitt

Leaving the Slow Lane

by JE Lillie

The bus had stopped just outside her bowling alley for years. Jessica had never minded. It seemed almost like free advertising. After all few things drew a crowd in Jefferson like the bus out-of-town.

Today was different though. She stood at the glass door and cursed the bus outside. She cursed the big man in the brown Stetson.

He was going to make his fortune, he said.

He was leaving her behind is what he meant.

He turned one last time to wave good-bye. He blew her a kiss. She caught it and nestled it to her heart. The tears fell and she turned away.

Friday Fictioneers: Bazoom and the Dangerous Waddle Boxes

PHOTO PROMPT - © Marie Gail Stratford

Copyright – Marie Gail Stratford

Well it’s time for something a little lighter than my last entry “Kicking the Dust Off”. I am going totally Sci-fi, Hitchhiker’s Guide on this one folks. Also by way of explanation when I first wrote this piece I saw the mouse as a Zoomba automatic vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t until reading several other posts that I realized I was dealing with a remote mouse. Anyway rather than change the story I went with my original interpretation of the picture. Thanks as always to Rochelle for providing the inspiration. Check out her site when you’ re done here to see what other stories this photo prompt inspired.

Bazoom and the Dangerous Waddle Boxes

by JE LIllie

When humanity created the waddle boxes no one thought they could be dangerous. After all they were only supposed to be automated mail delivery systems for interoffice communication. But give a box a brain and they think it’s the green light to take over the universe. It’s always been that way with squares. Think about it.

All it took was a simple adjustment to their vortex transceivers  and the waddle boxes went from teleporting mail between Ciprotech and Genofirm to transporting humans into the eye of Jupiter.

That’s when the humans made me. I’m Bazoom. If mailboxes can take over the world, vacuum cleaners should be able to take it back. Think about it.

Friday Fictioneers: Kicking the Dust Off

PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman

I haven’t participated in F.F. for several weeks/months. Ministry had kept me busy. But I am jumping back in this week to tell a story in 100 words from the photo prompt above. If you would like to participate in Friday Fictioneers or if you would like to read other takes on the prompt click on the underlined link and it will take you to the F.F. home page.

Kicking the Dust Off

by JE Lillie

Sam eyed the cars behind him as he slowed down at the edge of the bridge. He half-expected them to slow down and park too. None did. The traffic continued on oblivious to the man with the cardboard box.

“It should be different,” he thought. There should be a funeral, a luncheon; But Bridget had no friends. She had lost Sam all his.

She got cancer.

He stuck by her.

Her dying words… “You’re worthless!”

Sam put the cardboard box down on the edge of the bridge.

He kicked.

She was gone.

Sam Cried.

“It should be different,” He thought.

Friday Fictioneers: Letters From Malta

PHOTO PROMPT - © C. Hase

photo by: C. Hase

It is time once again for Friday Fictioneers the flash fiction writing group led by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Click the word “Fictioneers” above and it will take you to her site. A quick click on the little blue froggy and you will be deluged in a sea of stories based on the photo prompt above.

Here is what I took from the picture.

Letters From Malta

by JE Lillie

 What’s left of the ship still surfaces during low tide. I come to see it everyday, still amazed we all made it out alive. Paul said we would. God tells Him things and no one doubts that now.

When he got bitten by the snake after the shipwreck everyone was sure it was the gods’ judgment, but the man walks in the miracle. He didn’t even swell.

Now he’s been invited to the magistrate’s house. We hear there is dysentery there so of course off we go. Paul says “Every problem is just a miracle in disguise.”

This is a snapshot of Acts 28, Paul’s time in Malta.

Friday Fictioneers: Boys Must Play

Time once again for Friday Fictioneers hosted by Rochelle at Addicted To the Color Purple.

Each week our hostess challenges us to write a story in a hundred words based off of a photo prompt of her choosing. That prompt is below and you can go to Rochelle’s page and find her other contributors’ stories on the  blue frog link.

photo prompt: @Madison Woods

Boys Must Play

by JE Lillie

The two boys danced around the spigot cups in hand. They had worked hard all morning and figured they had earned a break.

 Heedless of the gathering crowd,they filled and tossed water at one another until their shirts were drenched.

Sister Amelia stormed through the press and tore the cups from the boys’ hands. The youngsters’ laughter drained into the scowls of the Mexican crowd.

“We came to minister to these people.” Sister Amelia hissed into the oldest boy’s ear.

“Instead you waste their water.”

The desert wind howled the lesson.

Friday Fictioneers: Leonor

It’s time once again for Friday Fictioneers. This forum consists of 100 plus writers who share in 100 ish words stories based around a photo prompt chosen by our fearless leader Rochelle. Click on the photo below to go to Rochelle’s site from there the little blue frog will lead you to stories a-go-go!

PHOTO PROMPT - © Dee Lovering

Photo by: Dee Lovering

Leonor

by JE Lillie

They told me Antonio had recanted. I should have known better. The great Herezuelo would never have bent the knee. But I was a weak woman too concerned with my position and the comforts of this life. I feared the arm of the inquisition and forgot the promise of greater things. I traded my faith for the dusty trappings of religion once again.

It has been ten years since they burned my love at the stake. All those years I have spent working up my own courage. Today at last the flames lick my feet.

Leonor De Cisneros burned at the stake in 1568 for embracing the Protestant faith.

Friday Fictioneers: What Remains

PHOTO PROMPT - © Douglas M. MacIlroy

Photo Prompt by: Douglas M. Macilroy

Every week 100 fictioneers gather around the water cooler at Rochelle’s place to share their scintillating stories based on a photo prompt chosen by Rochelle. This week I have a feeling the stories may take on a more frigid overtone but you be the judge! Click on the photo above and it will take you right to Rochelle’s site and the rest of the stories!

What Remains

By JE LIllie

Proctor Johannes’ voice boomed out across the silver dome, “The Scripture has taught us that in the end  all of creation would be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things would remain.

“We are that unshakeable thing! Look at us! What calamities have we survived? The Earth has spurned us and the sky has frozen us out, but we have not shaken!  We are greater than the wrath of the Lamb.”

The congregation shrieked in approval. I stood in my usual corner as far from the proctor as I could. Meanwhile, the asteroid above moved into position to drop more of the wrath we were supposedly greater than.

I chose that day to flee to the mountains.

Things You Should Tell a Ten- Year- Old

Rochelle hosts a group of some 100 writers weekly to tell tales from a picture she posts. The stories have to float around that magic number 100. So they don’t take too long to read. If you will click on the picture below it will take you right to Rochelle’s site and you can read all 100 or so stories there.

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Photo by: Roger Bultot

Before you go here is my 100-word story.

Things You Should Tell a Ten -Year- Old

by JE Lillie

My mother was one of them helicopter moms.

I didn’t mind her cutting the crust off my sandwiches or ironing my underpants. I guess I didn’t even mind her brushing my teeth but she never even let me play outside. She said it was too dangerous.

Here’s a heads-up hover moms, boys need to play. She may have locked up her gun, but the bullets she kept in her top drawer.

How was I to know you shouldn’t bake gun powder? The explosion was epic!