challenge

Silver Lining — Thursday photo prompt

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 18 Comments

Title: Silver Lining
Source:  Thursday photo prompt: Clouds #writephoto
Word count: 230 words

the image shows the sun behind the bare branches of winter trees in a blue sky darkened by clouds.

Jessie raced outside, stopping to shove her feet into her shoes before letting the door slam behind her. At the end of the driveway, she realized she her coat was inside. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going back. She was never going back.

The icy wind knifed through her wool sweater, finding the spaces in the closely knit fabric. Jessie pulled the sweater closed around her neck and remembered what she left in her hasty exit.

Her coat was one, she thought and shivered. There were clothes in the bedroom closet, her favorite pair of jeans among them. She hated leaving them, and the toiletries in the bathroom.

Jessie stopped suddenly, grasping at her throat, her fingers probing until she touched the sterling silver chain.  She wound her fingers around the chain, tugging the pendant free. She clutched it in her fist and closed her eyes. Thank God she thought.

Jessie heaved a sigh of relief, tucked it under her shirt, and continued walking. There was more, she knew, but she didn’t want to think about that yet. Jessie wondered if she could block it forever.

She glanced around to determine how far she had come and which way she needed to go. She blinked as the sun struggled to escape its gray shroud. A thin ray touched her face and Jessie smiled. She knew exactly where she was going.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Undying Love — Friday Fictioneers

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 21 Comments

Title: Undying Love
Source:  Friday Fictioneers sponsored by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple
Word count: 100 words

goats_and_graves

PHOTO PROMPT © Randy Mazie

Javier sat on the cemetery wall, checking his list, and tried to ignore the bleating goat.  He promised Alma he would follow her instructions tonight and he couldn’t disappoint her. Long ago, he had pledged his love and swore to protect her with his life. She said it would never come to that.

That night the cemetery lay shrouded in eerie silence. The full moon illuminated the goat and voodoo relics swimming in a pool of blood on the discarded marble slab.

Javier knelt, marveling at Alma’s pale skin sparkling in the wan light and raised her from her slumber.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Into the Light

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 3 Comments
person-standing-in-front-of-oval-window-with-an-eerie-green-glow-hands-pressed-to-the-window

Photo by Mario Azzi on Unsplash

I stepped away from the console, rolled my shoulders and rubbed my neck.  The three of us had been working without speaking since dusk. The lights blinked on my panel and I waited.

Sister Minette glanced at me, pressed two more indicators on her screen, then turned her full attention on me.

“It will work, you know,” she whispered.

“I know.”

We turned to stare at Sister Prudence. Her face, illuminated by the lime-green glow of the screen, almost looked familiar.

She finished the sequence, then looked at me.

“Unless it kills you,” she said.

“Sister, we talked about this. It will work,” Sister Minette chided.

“You’re confident considering what you did to Alfred.”

“Alfred may be fine,” Sister Minette said.

“More likely he is dead. If it had worked, we would have heard. You and your damn optimism killed him. And you’re going to kill tonight,” Sister Prudence said. The veins in her neck popped as she spoke.

Sister Minette only started at her sister.

“This is foolish, and it’s your fault,” Sister Prudence continued.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. I could tell she had forgotten my presence as she jumped and turned ready to attack.

“Listen,” I said, “I know you have your doubts, but I don’t. If we don’t do this now, we will lose our window. Besides, didn’t you say this was my destiny?”

The console pulsed, lights flashed, and alarms sounded as a light filled my vision and the sisters faded from view.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Day of Blood

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 8 Comments
Red clouds

Photo by Laura Vinck on Unsplash

Crimson robes fluttered, flowing behind Bellona like a boiling sea. The doors of the great hall slammed, and Lucina ran to keep up with her sister.

“What are we going to do?” Lucina asked.

Bellona didn’t respond. She wished she had worn her breastplate and whip to the audience. Still, her tongue had provided a brutal lashing.

“Did you have to provoke him?” Lucina panted, intercepting her sister on her march through the palace corridors.

“What?” Bellona’s voice echoed on the marble walls. She stopped before colliding with Lucina.

Lucina trembled as her sister’s proud anger pounded on her soul.

“Bellona, he means to kill you,” Lucina whispered. She clutched Bellona’s sleeve and saw the fire in her sister’s eyes ebb.

“Believe me, I know it. If he wants war, then he has pissed off the right girl.”

Bellona petted Lucina’s hand and attempted to smile. But the anger won.

“Genius thinks he is a special god, but he is a snake. I will chop off his head and condemn his writhing body to the eternal flames of hell.”

Lucina flinched and clenched Bellona’s sleeve wadding into a crumpled ball.

“I will not allow him to continue his assertion that genius is only within the domain of men. Tradition dictates we bestow genius on every human being.”

“What will you do?”

“We are going to the Field of Mars. There we will assemble the Bellonarii and send a messenger to mother. I swear. He will have his day of blood.”

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Until Death — Flash Fiction Challenge

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 7 Comments

Title: Until Death
Source:  Flash Fiction Challenge
Prompt: Write a story about Cora Kingston.
Word count:  99 words

Weeping-Angel-statue-grave

Photo credit: Canon Fodder on Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Cora read Papa’s letter again, hoping the words would change, knowing they would not. Her beloved John had succumbed. Typhoid. She pressed the letter to her heart and closed her eyes, remembering the last time they had been together, the day they said goodbye.

She was excited. Papa arranged for her to accompany cousin Olivia on her Grand Tour. They would be gone a year and when she returned, she and John would marry.

The thought grabbed her heart, squeezing, constricting, making her wish for death.

She sat, immobile, cold, her life disintegrating. Papa’s letter fluttered to the floor.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Write

Diamond Dust — Thursday photo prompt

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 10 Comments

Title: Diamond Dust
Source: Thursday photo prompt: Beneath #writephoto
Word count: 110 words

the image shows a gnarled, winter tree, and the sun glowing behind the hills, reflecting in the waters of a clear lake.

I dipped my toe into the icy cold water and felt the chill spread through my body. The weak warmth of the winter sun would soon slide below the horizon and allow me to advance my work.

Father Boreas raced ahead of me, preparing the way for my transformation. Reaching, slowly growing, my touch crept forward in geometric progressions. I inhaled gasping gusts of air, harvesting heat from every surface, and exchanged the gift with crystalline beauty.

The sky devoid of sun, the deep darkness of the void reflected blackness and despair. But hope ascended with Sister Selene’s silver chariot and she smiled at me through falling flakes of snow.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Art Depot — 3 Line Tales

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 5 Comments

From Sonya’s 3LineTales at Only100Words.
You can find the original prompt here. Thank you, Sonya.

photo by Jan Genge via Unsplash

Otto knew he would never understand the newfangled galleries.

Corrugated metal, curved plastic baffled walls he thought looked more like grain silos than repositories for great art.

He visited intending to condemn, to demand a proper exhibition space, but his opinion changed when he walked in the door.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

O Tannenbaum — 100 Word Wednesday

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 7 Comments

Title: O Tannenbaum
Source:  100 Word Wednesday: Week 100
Word count: 100 words

We passed the tree lot as we were finishing our Christmas shopping, and Sissy begged me to stop.

“Can we get one?” she pleaded, painting on her ‘Daddy’s best girl’ smile and clasping her hands under her chin.

Who was I to say ‘no’? Besides, it brought back memories of my childhood.

We loved it.

“It is a Charlie Brown tree,” my wife stated.

“It is full of needles.  They’ll drop and make a mess,” she proclaimed.

She banished the tree to the den, far from her picture postcard perfection.

Christmas morning, we discovered Santa’s gifts under our beautiful tree.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

What the Butler Saw — Weekly Writing Challenge

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 3 Comments

Title: What the Butler Saw
Source:  Weekly Writing Challenge #170
The five words: LIVE, KNEEL, PLAN, EGO, LINK
Word count: 150 words

lady-colin-cambell-(1897)-by-Giovanni-Boldini

Lady Colin Campbell (1897)
by Giovanni Boldini

This was no way to live. Her marriage was a sham, orchestrated by her mother to raise her social status. Her mother insisted the wedding would take place even though her husband was not suitable. The road brought them here.

Gertrude watched the jurors kneel on the floor and peep through the keyhole of the dining room door. The judge charged them with determining the accuracy of the butler’s testimony. Could the butler, peering through the keyhole, see Gertrude In flagrante delicto with Captain Shaw?

The plan, of course, was a divorce. Prove the infidelity of a wayward wife, establish her dubious moral standards and suspect character, and sooth the great lord’s ego.

In the end, the judge denied the divorce refusing to sever the matrimonial link. Ostracized by society, she forged a new path, gaining acclaim and genuine friends. But, still, each day she prayed for her husband’s death.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Countdown — Friday Fictioneers

/ JoHawkTheWriter / 46 Comments

Title: Countdown
Source:  Friday Fictioneers sponsored by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple
Word count: 100 words

Copyright –Douglas M. MacIlroy

During the previous window, there was a moment, when it almost connected. Since then, the sisters had been working ceaselessly. They consulted the ancient texts, checked the schematics and reread the prophecy.

Sister Minette insisted they were close. She felt the equipment only needed minor tweaking. Sister Prudence demanded they pull it apart, dissect and question everything they believed.

They had been pursuing the answer for centuries, and in recent years, technological advances had given them new hope. It was hope they needed.

Sister Minette was giddy when they loaded the equipment into their cars and headed for the rendezvous.

 

***Note: Read about The Rendezvous here.

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer