RELATIVES - a hundred word story

RELATIVES

All the other kids in our neighbourhood had hordes of relatives. Christmas, weddings, christenings and even funerals were raucous affairs that often spilled into the street, sometimes ending in fisticuffs.

Once I asked Mum where our family was, but she yelled, “We have no-one but ourselves,” and then hugged me. She sounded so sad that I never asked again.

After her funeral I drank a large whiskey before I tackled her bedroom. One drawer was crammed with photographs – her parents, perhaps, uncles, aunties and cousins. My family.

 I searched every face but not one was brown like me.

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Families are strange creatures - a tower of strength for some, a pain in the butt for others. Some people, like me, have such a ream of cousins that they can't keep track, others can count their family members on one hand. And there are always secrets, some small, some so enormous that they remain hidden - until after the funeral.

Thanks to Ted Strutz for this week's Friday Fictioneers photo prompt, and to Rochelle for hosting this bunch of diverse writers on her blog.  https://rochellewisoff.com/

STILL LIFE - a story in 100 words

STILL  LIFE

The books, vase and shoes had adorned Helen’s desk for so long that they became known as ‘the still life’.

Even after her husband William died, as unobtrusively as he had lived, she met any suggestion to move them with an obstinacy that intrigued her children while also exasperating them, so after Helen’s own funeral they demolished the pile with almost indecent haste.

Pressed inside every indented section of the book Lily discovered a faded rose, Henry tipped a champagne cork from each shoe, and hidden inside the vase Georgina found a bundle of love-letters, all signed, ‘Eternally yours, George.’

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All that weight had to be crushing a secret, didn't it? Thanks to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers on her blog  https://rochellewisoff.com/ and to Magaly Guerrero for her photograph of the lovely flamenco shoes.

If you enjoyed that story, check out a slightly longer one, also written to a visual prompt, and published on Friday on this site -  http://visualverse.org/submissions/minotaur/