Every Friday, writers from around the globe join to write tiny tales in response to a photo prompt posted on Rochelle’s blog. This week’s photo has been supplied by Rochelle herself! Congrats, Rochelle, on completing your first year as driver on the Fictioneers bus 🙂

dismantled keyboard
Image (C) Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Joanna’s story ~Please don’t stop the music

Marie’s fingers worked at the door’s handle. Eventually, it opened.

Inside the abandoned room lay her piano, dust icing its once-glossy black surfaces. She limped into the room and lowered herself onto the stool.

Pain shot through her hands as she lifted the instrument’s lid. Beneath, the white and ebony keys stretched before her.

Closing her eyes, she settled her twisted hands onto the keys.

Once, she had dazzled concert houses.

Once, she had played delicate sonatas and rousing concertos.

Now, all she had was memory. She needed to anchor the past before her fragmenting brain forgot the music altogether.

[100 words]

Ron’s poem ~Life’s Reconstruction

it lies in pieces at my feet
dismantled by the tools of discontent
whilst once joy flowed from the whole
now there is nothing, not even silence
can I find the missing unit
to make complete, the means, the time
will the fingers of my mind still work
on the schematic of the build
screw and clip that held as one
the wires that connected the components
stripped naked, loose and bare
nothing there but the memory of cohesion
will anything bring her back

[84 words]

The tales written by other writers who’ve taken part this week can be found by clicking the blue frog below.

Our earlier stories can be found here and on our old blog.

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Crystal, Fire and Water.

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