RENDEZVOUS

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.”

MIRACLE

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!”

Sleepwalk

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 day shadows. 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!”

Simple House

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.