The Convict

                                                                                       Photo prompt © CEayr 

Surprisingly they were all there; wife, two boys and their wives. He wasn’t sure if they would all come.

But their eyes were as bleak and grim as the prison cell he had just left.

‘They don’t believe me. And why should they? Am I not a convict who spent ten years in the prison?’

He had desperately wished that at least his wife would believe him. She had sometimes said that the judge had been unjust. But he thought her protestations were weak.

He wanted to ask her if she truly believed that he was innocent. But he didn’t.

He felt he was only moving from one prison to another.

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A post for Friday Fictioneers

Word count 111

A Mercy Plea

The sky was ablaze. Everyone thought that it was just an unusually magnificent sunset.

But people were in for a shock. Weird flying objects emerged from the flaming sky and began hovering over the city. It was a terrifying scene.

Rongen was not scared. He had all along believed that there were hundreds of alien civilizations out in the universe. He had secretly invented a radio telescope and had been communicating with some aliens. But the poor man did not know that his messages were sometimes getting distorted and garbled versions were reaching the aliens.

Suddenly the sky turned black and the lights went out; it was the beginning of a long, scary night.

The sun rose. But the day was no less terrifying. Dinosaurs were roaming freely everywhere in the city.

Rongen woke up as if from a nightmare. He rushed to his radio telescope; he had got an alien mail, ‘Please do not attack us. We accept your demand. We are sending these creatures back. Please have mercy on us.’

Rongen stood paralyzed; the nightmare had in fact just begun.

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A post for Flash Fictionfor Aspiring Writers on a picture prompt

Word count 179

The Clouds

As a child he was fascinated by the clouds. He believed that clouds were living beings; he always had a running argument with his grandpa.

‘Grandpa, that cloud over there looks like an elephant and it just moved its trunk.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish; that’s just a cloud and not an elephant.’

‘You never seem to agree; look there, it surely is a baby dinosaur........its crawling.’

‘You keep imagining things; I think when you grow up you must study the clouds.’

He did choose to study the clouds but his imagination never left him.

He woke from his slumber. He had been traveling for hours and journey seemed endless. It had been a hectic week; he had spoken at ten different venues on ten different topics. He looked through the window and thought that there was giant baby somewhere out there.

Soon he realized that he was looking at a cloud. He smiled; the grandfather would have made fun of him.

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A post for Sunday Photo Fiction. 

The Master

                                                                                  Photo prompt © Bjorn Rudberg

He had not touched a musical instrument in last five years. But the music had never deserted him.

Sometimes he wondered that it was idiotic of him not to accept their proposal; they would have made him rich. He had to just tinker with his compositions. But he was fiercely passionate about his music; he had declined.

‘What a harebrained person I am?’

He was walking past the restaurant in a lackadaisical manner when he heard the sounds. Someone was playing his composition; a composition that he would not tinker with.

He felt sad for the composition; it had been mutilated.

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A post for Friday Fictioneer and Three Word Wednesday.

Word count 101

The Trading Post

                                                                                         Photo prompt © Jean L Hays

‘Grandpa, are you sure we are at the right place?’

‘I think so. But it seems so unfamiliar.’

‘We have been driving around for eight hours. Let’s turn back; it will be dark soon for we won’t find any place here for the night.’

‘But he had said that he will be there at the trading post, come what may. I too had promised that I would come.’

‘When? Fifty years ago? You never even talked to him all these years. And you think he would be there.’   

‘I think so; he is a man of his word.’

Out of nowhere an old man appeared and slowly approached their car.

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A post for Friday Fictioneers

Word count 108

A Muffled Cry

He was surprised that he could finish the job without losing his nerve; he was composed even when he had slashed her face.

It was a perfect murder; he was sure of that. No one would ever come to know as to what had happened to her. In this city no one really cared; they had been living together for three years but very people knew her. No one would miss her.

He was anxious to call Ann; they had to get married before she left for France.

As he entered the room he was unnerved for a few moments; a mystifying emptiness enveloped him.

“I must quickly get rid of everything that belonged to her… and that doll… that disgusting doll…I would burn it to ashes. How could she even like that abominable thing?”

He searched every nook and corner of the flat but the doll was nowhere to be found. He was certain that it was lying on the bed when they had left in the morning.

He heard a muffled cry; it stunned him. He thought someone was crying in the bathroom. It terrified him; she was in the habit of locking herself in the bathroom and crying for hours.

He entered the bathroom. The doll was in the bathroom; it had two deep scars, as if someone had slashed its face.

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A post for Sunday Photo Fiction

Word count 228

The Magic Bridge

‘You will have to calculate the path you can take to cross the bridge.’

‘Why?’ I felt amused; grandpa had not stopped treating me as a little kid. I was grown up; I was fourteen.

‘It’s a magic bridge; if you are erratic in your path you will face dire consequences.’

‘Grandpa, there are no magic trees and magic bridges in the real world.’ I was proud of my awareness.

At that moment a young man came on his cycle; he was headed for the bridge.

‘You don’t believe me; just wait and watch. That fool of a boy will regret crossing the bridge on a cycle,’ grandpa said with some flourish.

I looked at the man on the cycle; he was half way through and nothing untoward had happened.

Suddenly the cycle overturned and I missed a heartbeat.

The man got up and laughed a bit loudly.  He had hit a stone lying on the bridge. No damage had been done. He rode away on his cycle.

The grandpa pouted at me and said almost is despair, ‘It never happened that way.’

I felt sad for the old man and hugged him.

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A post for Three Word Wednesday and FFfAW

Word count 193