“I’m Cinderella’s wicked stepmother,” the horribly stern, unyielding woman explained to the journalist who interviewed her.  It’s my place in folklore to represent mankind’s dark side, in government and authority in general.  I’m what happens when people abandon all notions of a rightly ordered system of governance and allow their lives to be taken over by a Frankensteinian counterfeit, with my apologies to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.”

“Continue, please,” said the interviewer.

“It all started with Adam and Eve’s Apple, or was it a pomegranate?” she went on. “Pandora’s Box and Prometheus explain it so well too.  Mankind has always been quite the sucker for power, a need to reconfigure the world in his own image and likeness.  I, as Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, represent the way in which the world is understood when mankind abandons all responsibility for his actions.  Her ugly stepsisters, of course, represent the malevolent fruits of…

The young man lay on the dock, chin tucked nicely in his fingers at the edge of the wood.  “What’s it look like, under the ocean?”

A mermaid held onto the buoy just off the edge of the dock, anchoring herself in place.  “The water distorts the comings and goings of light in a different way from the air.  The deeper I plunge into the ocean, the darker everything seems, the stranger the colors.”  She held out a hand.  “Would you like to see?”

The man shook his head.  “Nah.  I couldn’t breathe under there.”

The mermaid chuckled, put the hand up to her mouth to hide her giggle.

“Maybe you do have all the colors in the universe, but I bet we got something you don’t.”  He turned around, grabbed something out of a pocket, and showed it to her.

Her eyes widened.  “Oh!  It’s so yellow!”

The man…

Feel free to join in and respond to the prompt. Please try to keep your response between 200 – 250 word (recommended, not law). You can write a story, poem, essay, anything which strikes your fancy! Link your work back to this post so people can read it.

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Picture by csknotts 2019

PHOTO PROMPT© Sandra Crook For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Other stories featuring the prompt can be found here

“You have to be kidding me!”

The fates needed an upgrade but this bordered insanity. A few threads at a time allowed them the opportunity to monitor the mortal souls. Now they were to dish destiny on an industrial scale? “Population explosion” the given excuse.

She rolled her eyes. Nothing a little war or two wouldn’t fix. The plague? STDs and other nasty diseases? Builds character. No wonder the union organised a strike, fate worked over time. The webs between souls more complicated. The machines of life rumbled as they processed thread.

“What happens if there is a jam?”

“ Cut the threads amass.”

Set in the same story world as an earlier Flash Fiction: Thread!

फिर यादों की हवा चली है
कैसी फिर यह आग लगी है
दिल में होली जल रही है ।१।

नशा है कैसा खुली ज़ुल्फ़ का
हुई है मुद्दत पर जाने क्यों
सांसों में भंग सी घुल रही है ।२।

बैठे हो तुम सामने मेरे
समंदर किनारे अल्हड़ शाम
गालों पे लाली मल रही है ।३।

किसने दी है थाप अमित
किसकी पायल की मधुर तान
ज़ज्बातों को यूँ छल रही है।४।

In response to: Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 79

Lakshmi sat beside the social worker in the central court’s waiting room, while the gods of Canada’s justice system divined her fate. The social worker tapping away on her iPhone paid little attention to her eight year old charge. Lakshmi sat there, disconsolate, drowning in waves of sadness, her mother’s screams continuing to echo through her head. She wondered how it was possible, that her mother had died in the car crash while she had not received even a single scratch. Lakshmi’s future was now up in the air, under negotiation with the judge, a choice of foster care or auntie.

The social worker pocketed her iPhone as auntie accompanied by a lawyer entered the waiting room. Auntie embraced Lakshmi with a glowing smile, ” You will live…