The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: Picture Prompt

  • The Stork’s Feather

    The fortune teller studied the side of my palm. Her slender fingers traced the lines of my calloused hand, turning it this way and that to catch the light. I kept my eyes off of her, concentrating on the colorful tapestries on the wall. I knew what she was looking for. And I already knew what she would find.

    “You’ll never have any children,” she said.

    “I know,” I replied.

    Those lines had been scraped off of the side of my hand years ago. She must have seen the half line. The faint, broken line that signified my unborn child. She was tactful not to mention it. Most practitioners loved to bring it up. They liked to play it up to prove that they knew their business. But she sounded like she was giving me the specials. ‘You’ll never have kids, oh and the soup of the day is broccoli cheese.’ She didn’t even sound sad about it.

    “It doesn’t have to be this way if you don’t want it,” the woman said. (more…)

  • When Dawn Breaks

    She sat in a stained cotton chemise, half a moth-eaten blanket wrapped about her shoulders for warmth. Outside her cabin, the wind gusted, pulling free the reddening leaves and leaving bare branches in its wake. Her dress lay crumpled in her lap as she carefully stitched sleeves onto it. The worn fabric tore from too many years of carefully removing and replacing the sleeves. Each rip brought with it a fresh wave of tears.

    Her sister fell ill at winter’s end last year and she wasted away for months before succumbing to death’s embrace. When the flies brought summer’s plague, she lost her mother who had never quite regained her will to live after burying her eldest daughter as she had her youngest years before. This winter she was alone. This winter she had no one to huddle against for warmth at night on her lumpy, straw mattress. (more…)

  • May Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    The Confabulators are always looking for different types of prompts to fuel our creative endeavors. Thus far, we’ve used both themes and specific words for our stories. We thought we’d try something different this month. For May, we are using a photo prompt.

    The Confabulators have played with the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words before. This time, we all wrote a story in response to the same picture. The internet fairies chose this photo for us to write about.

    Enjoy this month’s stories, and think about where you might have taken a story based on this photo.

    Join us for new fiction using the schedule below:

    Monday, May 11: “One Last Harvest” by Jack Campbell, Jr.
    Monday, May 18: “When Dawn Breaks” by Eliza Jaquays
    Monday, May 25: “The Boy with the Golden Eyes” by Sara Lundberg