One photo prompt is worth a hundred words. Here’s my story for this week’s Friday Fictioneers. Thanks Madison Woods.

When my mother was pregnant in 1958 she took an experimental drug to quell morning sickness. Seven months later she delivered a daughter with limbs too small to ever be useful.

Leslie never complained about her deformities. Instead she made jokes about them and dreamed of flying.

Once we took a hot-air balloon ride. She tossed sequins over the side. They glittered to the water below.

“In my next life,” she said, “I want to be a bird.”

From the same balloon I pour out her ashes. Mixed with sequins they spangle the sky.

Today my sister is free!

Another Friday has come. I found this photo prompt the most challenging one yet. Thanks, Doug and Madison. I love a challenge!

After a forbidden night in heaven Daniel stretched in the down sleeping bag. The mountain air chilled his face as he watched the sun rise over the snow-dusted volcano.

Loath to wake her, he filled his eyes with her image for just another breath. Ebony hair haloed her high-boned cheeks and full lips.

Self-satisfied, he grinned. Sooner or later the army would be sent to fight the Krauts. Not him. He couldn’t wait for Christmas luaus in paradise.

“Kiss me, sailor,” she whispered.

“Okalani, it’s 6:30. I gotta get back to Pearl before Skipper realizes I’m AWOL.”

This is truly habit forming. Here’s my weekly installment for Friday Fictioneers. Thank you Madison Woods!

Golden arches and a drive-through replaced the baroque beacon on the hill. The French restaurant where we often rendezvoused is gone.

At our special table we shared crème brulée, class notes and anecdotes.
Our careers left no room for marriage. He went his way and I went mine.

Two years later the embossed invitation came. Birth announcements and commencement notices followed me around the world.

When I read his wife’s obituary I wept.

Thirty summers passed. I reminisce in McDonald’s parking lot. Someone taps my windshield.

Ink-black hair turned bone-white, Bordeaux in hand, he grins. “You saved our table.”

What can I write about a rainbow? Here’s my take on the picture for Madison Woods’ Friday Fictioneers.

Merciless rain pelted the Conestoga’s canvas roof. Tildy’s stomach swelled and roiled with each pitch and sway.

Three-year-old Jonas whimpered in her arms. Like periwinkle marbles, his eyes rolled in aimless delirium. She almost welcomed his fevered warmth in the penetrating damp.

The wagon lurched and stopped. Smelling of horses, leather and wet denim Noel slipped through the narrow opening. In silence, his vigilant eyes on his son, he nestled under the blanket beside her.

Tildy woke to hushed sunlight. Her baby was gone.

Outside, naked as dawn, Jonas hopped and pointed at the rainbow. “Ma! Pa! Angels came!”

Here it is! My Friday Fictioneers offering for the week. Special thanks to Madison Woods for the challenge.

Like a pearl brooch pinned to mottled velvet, the moon glistered through a web of tree branches. A desperate voice yelled her name.

“Kanzie.”

With a scream, she woke to every dayshadows. After twenty years, she accepted her somehow comfortable blindness…until bedtime.

Always it was the same dream. Then one night she woke up outside. Mississippi air stuck to her skin like a damp cloak. Trees rustled in the hot wind.

Suddenly she could see! Six-years-old again, she remembered. Why did white-robed ghosts put that rope around her gentle Daddy’s neck? His terror-filled eyes drilled her.

“Kanzie, don’t look!”

Here’s my response to Madison Woods’ photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers. Also check out Friday Fictioneers Facebook Page.

In 1901 taxidermist Jefferson Thomas constructed a home and a thriving business. His petulant mail-order bride hated rural life.

One day her prized ruby from a former suitor disappeared. Blaming Jefferson, she demanded a divorce. Tongues wagged when she abandoned both her husband and child.

A century later a tornado devastated the house to a pile of clapboard. Amid the rubble, Jefferson Thomas III, found nothing left of his heritage save a lone wall. He tore off a length of wallpaper and yelped.

A glass eyed, mummified woman stared back at him, a ruby ring clinched between her teeth.

Thanks to Madison Woods for the photo prompt and Friday Fictioneers to keep us on our writing toes.

Through vicious barbs and twisted wire the sun had the audacity to shine. Marushka licked the dregs of a discarded sardine tin. Her disappointed stomach howled its outrage. She sank down on the stony ground. Stretching her rawboned legs in the dust she longed for silk stockings to hug her once shapely calves.

From her torn pocket she pulled a mirror-shard and glowered at her reflection. Who was this bald hag? Murderer! No! She’d only covered his mouth so they wouldn’t hear.

“24682.” She slashed a trail, long and deep, through the tattooed number to her wrist.

“Mama’s coming, Dovid.”

Yesterday, April 19, was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. In honor of the 6 million, some of them family I never knew, I offer this piece.

“You see this rock?” Zipporah asks her thirteen-year-old great-granddaughter.

“What’s so special about it?” Anya yawns.

“Underneath this rock…half your age…I hid from them. Papa told me not to move or make a sound, no matter what.”

Anya’s half-closed eyes snap open. “Then what happened, Bubbie?”

“Blam! I held my breath. Mama fell. I didn’t cry. Mud filled my nose. Dear God, I wanted to cry.

“Papa sang a prayer, ‘Magnified and Sanctified be His Great name…’

“Bang! Papa never sang again.

“Today only water drips off this rock but on that day, my child, it dripped with something else.”

Last Friday I went with my husband to Stockton MO. Our nephew who is a high school English teacher at Stockton High School had invited me to read some of my stories to his classes.
Ham that I am, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. For the most part I think the kids did, too.
To be introduced as a published author is pretty heady stuff. The questions were challenging and it was interesting to see which stories sparked their interest and which ones fell flat. As in any classroom situation, some students show interested while others merely fill a desk until the bell rings.
Then there was that sparkling moment when I truly felt I made a connection! That one student who related to a particular story with tears and smiles made the whole trip worthwhile.

Jenna asked her mom why there were no baby pictures of her in the family album.
“We adopted you when you were three. Your real mother didn’t want you.”
Until she turned thirteen she accepted Mom’s explanation. Then the dreams started. A tunnel. Benches.
“Stay here, Tracy,” said the black-haired lady.
But rough hands came out of the tunnel and carried her off.
Today as she rode her bike Jenna found the same tunnel.
On the bench a lady with black hair wiped tears from her eyes and stared at Jenna.
“Tracy?”
“I’m sorry, Mommy. I went away.”