Canal

Photo by Reno
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Suggested Prompt...
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Standing at the edge of the canal I was where I belonged...

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It had been a long time coming. The lure of having the chance to finish a life started 30 years ago continued to haunt me until I returned. Now that I am here, the outside world...my past life ceases to exist. I paid my debt to society as they say and the final chapter of a life disrupted in mid stream will begin tomorrow.

It still looks the same as it did 30 years past. Small villages in Southern Switzerland are like that...no need to move forward when life ends at the outskirts of the village. The shop I worked in that summer is gone but the building remains...I will bring back life into those walls again.

After staying in contact with the family over the years, they left me with their legacy and I will finish the life I started in 1979. The family knew even though I was convicted, I did not...I couldn't take a life. The judge and jury felt differently.

I am free and my life will begin where it stopped 30 years ago in Deuxieme Chance, Switzerland.

Dan Felstead

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE! If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.

The Square

Photo by Reno
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Suggested prompt...
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I stood in the square alone...

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Direction

I stood in the square alone, but you already know this. After all, you were the one who left me there, your fingers slipping through my own, your mouth brushing softly against my ear. You left me with words, but the rain was too heavy and swept them away. I never heard you. I just felt the hot breath of your intentions. When I turned my head to ask you what, you were already gone.

I didn't understand then. You were right there. I could still smell you, aftershave and tobacco smoke, still curled around my being. You were there, and then you were gone. Like a ghost, a spirit, but you were real. I could have sworn that you were real.

But then my eyes opened, and I think it must have been for the first time, because I saw things in such clarity that it made you transparent in retrospect. Bright electric bulbs. Black puddles of hot spring water. And the people, oh, the people, surrounding me in a press of late-night bargaining, their voices rising and reverberating against the stone walls with a strength you never had. They were real that night, so real it actually hurt, because it made me realize that you were never there at all.

I didn't look for you. I knew there was no point. You were a fantasy, a figment of my wildness. You were something I fell in love with when the world was too big for me to comprehend. Even if I'd found you in the crowd that night, I don't think I would have followed. You wouldn't have wanted that, anyway.

So I opened my eyes. I breathed in, breathed out. I asked a man wearing an old trench coat where I was.

He smiled at me and it was shiny like gold. "Don't you know, sweetheart?"

And I did.

PersicaPit

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE! If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.

Ancient Stones

Photo by Reno

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Suggested prompt...

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Tell an ancient tale inspired by the Colosseum.

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Gordianus blinked rapidly in a futile attempt to rid his eyes of sand. Full summer in Rome and the white-hot disc of the sun was just past the zenith. The buzzing of flies was thunderous in his ears, almost drowning out the roar of the cheering crowd. Gordianus could feel the flies crawling over his chest and belly. Their feet were like feathers on his blood-streaked skin, and he thought it would have tickled if he hadn’t been in such agony.

Gordianus corrected himself: part of him was in agony, the part where a huge tiger had mauled him, shredding the belly flesh. He could not feel his legs. He realized he could not move his legs. Judging from the unnatural twist to his abdomen, Gordianus thought “I must have broken my back when the tiger pushed me backward over the rock that had been behind me”. His throat spasmed as he sucked in a wheezy lungful of air, grit scouring his raw windpipe. Gordianus coughed weakly and spat into the sand under his right cheek. It felt warm and wet. He could see four fat drops of blood beading up on the sand, hard and bright in the unforgiving sun, like the eyes of a tarantula.

Gordianus felt a wave of dizziness was over him. He was beginning to feel cold as the blood leaked out of his ruined abdomen. He became aware that his left arm was pinned, held under something large and furred. Swiveling his head, he turned to find his face mere inches away from the enormous fangs of a dead tiger. The mouth was gaping open slightly, a thin foam of bloody spittle trailing out onto the sand. Gordianus could smell the remains of its breath, a steamy combination of wet iron and rotting meat. A huge paw rested on the sand between them. He resisted the urge to reach out and shake it. The eyes of the tiger were half closed as if awakening from a pleasant nap. Just beyond the thickly muscled shoulder the blade of a heavy sword jutted out from between two ribs, its hilt against the sky like the mast of a macabre ship. Gordianus realized his last blow had been lucky. He must have hit the lungs even as the tiger was ripping into Gordianus’ belly. “My friend”, he thought, “If only we had been sleeping, lying on the plains of my homeland. I am sorry you and I have come to such an end.”

The gladiator’s eyes began to dim, and he knew he was dying. He lolled his head back, seeking one more glimpse of the Colosseum that had been his second home. He waved his right hand feebly in goodbye; the approaching slaves thought Gordianus was trying to send them away. They hesitated, in awe of the fighter. Gordianus’ mouth twitched up in a small smile, shuddering as the final breaths left his lungs. As his vision went black, he mouthed a prayer, beseeching the gods to allow his soul to rest with all the others trapped among the stones of this arena.

The tiger said nothing, mute and unseeing, Gordianus’ hand resting on its massive paw.

~ Irish Gumbo

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE!If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.

Gondolas

Photo by Reno

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Suggested Prompt...

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Take a gondola ride into the mist.

Write in any way you are inspired.

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"Step this way," said the smiling tour guide, as he held out his hand to assist me into the little boat.

As I sat, I arranged my sweatshirt, tucking my hair into the hood, and tugging on the lace to tighthten it.
It wasn't that it was extremely cold, but the mist crept over me, slithering its soft fingers over my skin. I shivered involuntarily.

As we glided over the water, the tour guide spoke about the history of the buildings. Including myself and the guide, there were four people balancing the boat. The woman asked the guide something about ghosts, as she did she laughed nervously and glanced at her companion.

"Oh, yes," he replied, "these waters are indeed haunted."

He smiled impishly, then continued with the usual historical information.

I took my camera out of my pocket, and took some snapshots. As we floated around a bend, I scrolled through what I had shot.

One photo made my heart skip a few beats and my hands turn to ice.

There was a woman in the water.

I looked up to see the guide watching me.

"You saw her?" he quietly asked.

Instead of answering, I looked behind us, where there was nothing but water.

~ Jen


One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE!

If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.