Image © Jean L. Hays

‘Has she been through here? Yesterday? In a station wagon?’ Nina flipped open her wallet and pointed at the photo of the white-haired lady. ‘She’s got Alzheimers. She shouldn’t be driving. But-’

The mechanic bent over and squinted. ‘No, but I’ve seen this dame.’ He tapped a finger, its nail rimmed with black grease, over another photo. ‘The car, too. Couldn’t forget a car like that. Yesterday, like you said.’

Nina stepped back. In the snapshot, the same woman, forty years younger, her hair still red, leaned against a Model T Ford parked under an acacia tree somewhere very far from Route 66.

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If you’d like to write your own 100 word story inspired by the picture, click here, or here to read other people’s.

Image © Claire Fuller

When I was seven, we found a mermaid. Right there on the beach, forgotten by the tide, tiny and curled up asleep inside a cockle shell. We couldn’t wake her, though we tried.

She came home with us and lived on a shelf in our bedroom, with the shells and sponges, the driftwood and sea beans. We didn’t tell anyone what she was. She was ours.

Yesterday, my daughter showed me a mermaid she’d found on the beach.

‘Look after her,’ I said and then, too quietly for anyone except the mermaid to hear, ‘while you still believe in her.’

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If you’d like to write your own 100 word story inspired by the picture, click here, or here to read other people’s.

Inspired by my friend, Claire, I’ve decided to have a go at the Friday Fictioneers. This is a long-running project, hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The challenge is to write a piece of flash fiction, complete with beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or fewer, following a photo prompt. This week’s photo is supplied by Rochelle.

Image © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

‘We have light!’ She set the hurricane lamps on the table, one either side of the tiny shopping trolley the children had filled with bottles of sugar sprinkles and cinnamon (‘See, we won’t starve,’ they’d said). ‘I found them in the attic. They were Violet’s, I suppose.’

He shrugged and ran his finger over the glass of the nearer one, liking the burn. ‘Guess so.’

‘Lucky she never threw anything away.’

His finger was too hot. He counted to five and pulled it away. ‘No. You’re wrong there. She did. She threw people away all the time.’