THUNDER OF WAR

Jean L Hayes's photograph for Friday Fictioneers looks like a war-ravaged landscape to me, and as I am in the throes of rewriting my next book, I am reprising a story I wrote four years ago that seems to fit the bill. 
Thanks to https://rochellewisoff.com/ for hosting Friday Fictioneers - if you follow the Blue Frog link from her blog you can read other stories.
I am also gardening, of course, and once I put that hat on I can be engrossed for hours!
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 THUNDER OF WAR

After months of hiding in the cellar, trembling at each explosion and venturing out only when driven by hunger, Shira crept away through the ruins.

Carrying her daughter through the broken timbers and glass shards, she dodged from shadow to shadow until they were in the fields.

They dropped flat every time a bomb fell, but when they reached the hills the sounds of war were mercifully distant.

Sheltered beneath a tree, they slept until woken by a crash directly overhead.

The child screamed, but Shira said soothingly, “Hush, it is only thunder. See, here comes the rain.”

CONCERT - one hundred words - a story for this week.

CONCERT

They spent hours getting ready, filling her bedroom with perfume, laughter and excitement. Sophie borrowed my purple earrings.

Chloe’s dad dropped them off, their precious concert tickets tucked into tiny handbags, mobile phones as fully charged as our girls. They promised not to get separated, not to drink, not to take drugs – all the usual things parents worry about.

Later, I waited outside as instructed – apparently it’s embarrassing being met. I’d been there ten minutes when the bomb went off, and the world was nothing but blood, nails and screams.

I only recognised Sophie by her purple earrings.

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Looking at J Hardy Carroll's photograph of devastation, I could only write about this week's dreadful happenings in Manchester. How other writers interpreted the image can be found by following the link from https://rochellewisoff.com/
ps. if you would like to read another of my stories, I'm on p68 of Visual Verse at http://visualverse.org/

SOUL CLUSTER - flash fiction in 100 words

SOUL CLUSTER

“Fifty people lived there,” the man said, “Including my family.”

The camera crew began filming as the reporter asked, “In that small house?”

“We couldn’t use the house – we lived in the cellar. “

“All those months?”

“More than a year.”

“What did you eat?”

“Dogs, rats, even grass. And there are always cockroaches.”

“No-one can live on that.”

“Many didn’t. My mother died first, and then the babies, but a bomb got them all in the end.”

“All except you.”

“I was fetching water. It is a small comfort to know that their souls reached heaven together.”

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Thanks to Rochelle for posting Vijaya Sundaram's photo on her blog  https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/  To read other interpretations of this photo, follow the blue frog link from there.