Friday Fictioneers – Alien Turf War

/ Rachel Bjerke / 21 Comments

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The homeless people poked the glob with a stick, “never seen anything like this before,” they said. When they left for the soup kitchen, the glob began to grow, doubling in size every half hour. Soon it covered the whole park.
Far above, on Rigel 7, the alien inventor’s watched the progress with their boss. “That glob is our new turf and it will dissolve the humans,” they said, “and soon it will make earth just like our planet and we can move in!”
But the turf didn’t dissolve anything, instead it sprouted grass, and the homeless people packaged the turf up and sold it as lawn fertilizer, making millions of dollars.
On Rigel 7 the turf inventor’s were out of a job. “Stupid humans,” they said, as they made their way to the alien soup kitchen.

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I’ve been away for a few weeks and, well… what a photo to come back to! Not yet back in the writing groove yet, but I’m working on it.

Friday Fictioneers: a story in 100 words prompted by a picture that Rochelle Wisoff-Fields posts every Wednesday. Here’s the link to the other stories posted about this photo.

Friday Fictioneers – War Is Hell

/ Rachel Bjerke / 42 Comments

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He wore his fatigues on the plane and thought about how he would have to listen to his mom talk about the price of milk at the grocery store. He would have to listen to his dad talk about golf clubs. He would have to listen to his girlfriend talk about The Bachelor. It was all he had wanted for the whole last year, as he fought, as he killed people, as his brain normalized the sound of gunshots and the constant threat of attack. But when the wing of the plane tipped over his hometown, he felt the squeeze, he had to act normal now, and he didn’t think he could do it. Afghanistan had wiped out normal for him, and the thought of having to float through his society again made him wish he had died with his friends.

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A little long this week, sorry. Friday Fictioneers: normally a story in 100 words prompted by a picture that Rochelle Wisoff-Fields posts every Wednesday. Photo Credit: ©Rochelle Wissoff-Fields

Friday Fictioneers – Savior From The Sun

/ Rachel Bjerke / 35 Comments

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The sky today
is covering
hovering
a dark grey blanket
that smothers, hanging low.
And the people in the streets
stoop, afraid to scrape their heads
to scoop out gooey fluff
in their hair from the sky.
So they go back inside
to keep their heads clean
and they whistle
and they wait
for the sun to return
to burn away the grey.
But when the sun comes back
they’re afraid of the heat
and though it’s not so bad
it makes them think of baking buns
so they run back inside
and they whistle
and they wait
for the blanket to return
their savior from the sun.
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Friday Fictioneers: a story in 100 words prompted by a picture that Rochelle Wisoff-Fields posts every Wednesday. Here’s the collection link.

Friday Fictioneers – King Of Thieves

/ Rachel Bjerke / 33 Comments

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He put the statue on the lawn 24 years ago and she hated it. They were middle-class people in a middle-class neighborhood. The giant king on her lawn was embarrassing, it was boastful, tacky. But she had a stubborn husband, there was nothing she could do.
When her husband died, he left a will telling her to smash the statue.
So their son hit it with a sledgehammer and out fell thirteen rolled-up paintings, masterpieces, stolen 24 years before.
A note inside the roll said, “Turn them into authorities and go to heaven or sell them for money and join me elsewhere.”
And with tears rolling down her cheeks she turned to her son, who looked so much like her husband, and said, “Go find a buyer.”

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This week’s story was inspired by an actual art robbery. It happened in 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum near Fenway in Boston. Two thieves disguised themselves as police officers and made off with 13 paintings, including a Rembrandt, Manet, Degas, and a Vermeer. The thieves were never caught and the paintings are still missing.

Friday Fictioneers: a story in 100 words prompted by a picture that Rochelle Wisoff-Fields posts every Wednesday. Photo Credit: Claire Fuller

Friday Fictioneers – The Cell

/ Rachel Bjerke / 32 Comments

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She hated it, her tiny prison cell. No friends could visit, she could never use a bathroom in private—she was forced to use a communal one. No sunshine during the day, no moonlight at night. No bedroom. She slept in a chair. No closet. No kitchen. Just a 5×4 room. Smaller than her dorm room bed, smaller than her closet back home.

But it was the only apartment she could afford in Brooklyn. And she just had to live in Brooklyn, it’s where all the cool people lived. So she suffered in her cell, and smiled as she wrote the address on her $1000 rent check.

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Rent in Brooklyn NY is ridiculous—Worst Room comically documents the tiny closets they rent out for hundreds of dollars a month. The site is a good for a laugh (as long as you aren’t apartment hunting there).

Friday Fictioneers: a story in 100 words prompted by a picture that Rochelle Wisoff-Fields posts every Wednesday.

Grateful

/ Rachel Bjerke / 6 Comments

 

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Sometimes I get sad, when I think about my old, dented, un-cool car, and my ratty clothes. I feel bad that I only have one child (even though people think I should have two), I get depressed when I think I’ll never be rich, I’ll never be famous, I’ll never drive a ferrari.

And then I see the sprinkler—the one my daughter plays in—and I think of the gallons of clean, drinkable water that I am wasting just so my daughter can play.

And I remember that millions of people haul their water on their backs for miles, I remember that millions of people drink water scraped from muddy, diseased puddles. I remember that factories dump toxic chemicals upstream from untold numbers of human being’s drinking water, that water in some places will kill you, that some children don’t bathe, don’t brush their teeth, don’t drink their water because they know it will make them sick, and millions of others are literally dying for clean water. I remember that even in my own country clean water isn’t abundant everywhere. Clean water is a treasure denied to billions…

…and my daughter has the privilege of running through streams of clean water, just for fun, just for nonsense, just to make her smile.

And then I can’t think of a single thing to be sad about.