Alone in the Spring House

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers19 Comments71 views

The walls and floor are of fitted stone, the elm ceiling beams adzed from trees long perished. In a corner is a basin chiseled from river rock. An iron pipe juts from the wall and drips into the basin, each drop a musical note in the stillness.

The silence is immense except for the basin’s drip and the sometime  whisper of a snake moving across the floor.

The boy knows from books that snakes are creatures who wish only to be left alone. They will not trouble him here. This has become his place. He will tell no one about it.

 

Friday Fictioneers

The Mountain of Light

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw7 Comments37 views

You have of course heard of the Koh-i-Noor, the famous Mountain of Light. It is said this diamond was carried through history on a torrent of men’s blood, and that any male who possesses it will add his own to the river.

Legend tells us the stone was mined from Galconda by King Alauddin Khalji. Babur the Mughal received it as a spoil and was assassinated by a rival. His great grandson presented the stone to the Afghan Shah Durrani, who wore it as a bracelet while losing his life in battle. Son to son it passed, each new owner meeting a grisly fate.

The defeated  Maharaja of Lahore presented the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria as a peace offering. She commanded it be set as the centerpiece of the Royal Crown of Great Britain.

Is it mere coinicidence that the only two long-reigning British monarchs since this event have been women?

 

What Pegman Saw

This story is inspired by a novel I am reading, George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and the Mountain of Light. In this book, the narrator recounts how Britain barely retained possession of its chief colonly during the 1849 Anglo-Sikh war. The Koh-i-Noor serves as a touchstone for his recollection and is glimpsed throughout the story.

Grand-père Jacques

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers24 Comments86 views

“Who is that man in all the pictures, Mama?”

“He was your grandfather.” She grips her purse. “My father.”

“Your daddy?”

“Not exactly. He was with my mother for a while, when she was young.”

“Did I ever meet him?”

“No. He died before you were born.”

“But you knew him.”

“A little. He wasn’t around much.”

The boy glances about the gallery. Scuba gear, a model ship, a red wetsuit. A TV  plays a continuous loop of The Silent World, a man’s soft French voice narrating the wonders of the ocean.

“I wish I’d met him,”  said the boy.

 

Friday Fictioneers

A reporter from an anti-establishment newspaper in Seattle once asked a 67-year-old Jacques Cousteau if he had faith in anything. Cousteau gave a strange reply: “I believe in the instant.” Cousteau’s wholesome public image was at odds with his private conduct, which included a taste for fame, multiple mistresses, and at least two illegitimate children he refused to acknowledge. 

 

Log Entry: Wayfarer, At Sea

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw9 Comments47 views

May 24th
After thirty-six hours on deck, I set the drag anchor and turned in below.
Worst mistake of my life.
The storm drove me onto something in the dark, an uncharted reef or maybe a shipwreck.
Whatever it was, it tore a three-foot gash in the starboard hull.
I set the pump working and tomorrow I’ll try to heel the boat so I can get at the leak.

May 25th
The hole is patched as well as I can do it, but I ran out of resin.
It’s a botch-job, and I doubt if it will take much sea.
The bad news is that whatever I hit tore the wheel off the starboard motor.
To make Djakarta I’ll have to rely on sail alone.

June 18th
Not a breeze since the 30th.
GPS nonfunctional.
Running short of provisions.
Mariners called this “the doldrums.”
I have another name for it.

 

What Pegman Saw

Everybody Has a Talent

Fiction Prompts, Friday Fictioneers26 Comments104 views

Mrs. Stouffer fussed around the dessert table with shakers of Christmas glitter-candy, liberally dusting everything in sight with red and green sparkles–– a chafing dish of cheese blintzes, an apple tart, Mrs. Glück’s “famous” chocolate torte. Finally, the glitter ran out.

“Thank God,” muttered Mrs. Dogsbill. “That table looks like a kindergarten art room.”

“She can’t bake to save her life,” said Mrs. Cragsmorton. “So she does this.”

Mrs. Stouffer looked at her shakers and realized the glitter was gone. She went over to where she’d set her handbag and produced two more jars, one of blue, one of yellow.

 

Friday Fictioneers

Kakamutiko

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw7 Comments38 views

The old smuggler hoisted the xahako and arced a hissing stream of wine from the goatskin into his open mouth without a wasted drop. Whether this was a display of skill or frugality was hard to say; he was said to have ample amounts of both qualities.

He wiped his beard with his hand and smiled. “You, Kakamutiko! Did you in your indolence forget the bread? God help us if we starve to death.”

“No, Uncle,” said the young man. He produced a squat loaf from his satchel and handed it across.

Outside the hut the wind moaned through the passes, giving the mountains a voice. The fire danced in the hearth, throwing queer shadows on the ancient stone walls.

“And the sausage, for the love of God?” said the old man. “Please tell me you did not neglect that.”

The boy produced a string of blood-red chorizo and a clasp-knife.

“Arraioa!” exclaimed the smuggler. “You’d make a good wife!”

 

What Pegman Saw: Pays Basque

 

The Basque have lived in the Pyrenees for centuries, inhabiting villages in the forbidding mountains that straddle France and Spain. Their language is the most ancient in Europe and is unrelated to any other tongue.

A fiercely proud and strong people, they have long struggled for national independence, sometimes violently.

Their contributions to culture include the “Spanish” goatskin wine bag and the “French” beret.

Those Same Reasons

Fiction Prompts, Friday Fictioneers16 Comments101 views

I swore as I walked in that this would be the last time.

I’d sworn this before, of course.

Last year.

But it had not been the last time, nor even close.

But last year we were still getting away with it.

Neither his wife nor my husband had any idea.

Well, maybe an idea, but nothing like now.

Besides, it was getting tiresome.

Another thing I had to do, like a second marriage.

All the same reasons I’d strayed in the first place reasserted themselves.

That restless feeling of vague dissatisfaction.

That unanswerable question is this all there is?

 

Friday Fictioneers

 

With God All Things Are Possible

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw14 Comments58 views

That shop? Well, now. I tell you a story.

Chinleyuego Aboagyem was born without eyes. A curse to his parents, though they loved him.

The young boy perfectly remembered everything he heard. By the age of five, he could speak as well as any adult in English, Akan, Dagaare, Twe, and Ewe. After a single hearing of a book of Scripture, he could repeat it letter-perfect. By the age of seven, he could recite both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety without a single error.

One day his cousin Ade brought Chinleyuego a small engine to play with. Without sight, the boy disassembled the motor, repaired it and put it back together in the space of an hour, his hands seeming to move of their own accord.

His reputation spread. Others brought their motorcycles, their cars. He repaired them all.

Miracles are everywhere if we will but look for them.

 

What Pegman Saw: Ghana

A Last Visit

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I talked to him as he was secretly dying
and I did not listen
so there is little to say now
that it is all over.

His gaze, I thought,
skipped over my face
tapping my hands and the table,
a stone thrown indifferently
into the flash flood.

When he died, he importantly
was absent, a first, for he
had held us solid in his smoke
year after year.

And so, they wept, trying
to please him still, burying
a sad cardboard carton beneath a tree
with no marker but memory to name it.

Not For Sale

Fiction Prompts, Friday Fictioneers35 Comments118 views

He was thin, the black coat so stiff it might have been snipped from tin. Wiry like her uncles, but with bright bird eyes. He stood staring at the clocks, always coming back to her favorite, the one with all the faces and figures.

“How long you say it took to carve?” the man asked Uncle Frank.

“We don’t keep track,” said Uncle Frank. “We finish when we finish.”

“Well, I like the craftsmanship. I’d like to buy it.”

“Not for sale, Mr. Ford.”

“How about a million dollars?”

Uncle Frank smiled. “What would I do with a million dollars?”

 

Friday Fictioneers

 

Note: This photo was taken at the Bily Clock Museum in Spillville, Iowa. The museum building was the residence of Antonín Dvořák during the summer of 1893 where he composed his String Quartet in F (also known as the “American Quartet”) and his String Quintet in E-Flat.