Rochelle Wisoff-Fields has a challenging prompt for us this week. The Friday Fictioneers are being asked to build a 100-word story around a photo of a jar full of batteries. Who collected them? What for? Now what?
Well, here’s my answer. I’d love to know what you think of it!
Moving On
I didn’t think it would stay like this so many years.
It was awful when half the population just vanished, who knows where. Hardly felt worth going on, but I went around and scavenged all those batteries, enough to fill a jelly jar. Enough for a flashlight now and then.
We’ve come far. Learned enough old-timey stuff to know we’ll survive. Even make parchment and quill pens to pass it all down to the kids. But these batteries, they’re too old to work any more.
Time to throw them out. It’s a new day. I’ve got some spinning to do.
A Number of Things 
Nice topsy-turvey time story. What goes around comes around.
It sure does! Glad you like it.
So it’s no good keeping my batteries for after the apocalypse? Another fab write 🙂
Depends – what’s the expiration date on the batteries? 😉 Thank you!
Wow…we’re back to spinning, are we? Making our own clothes, etc. I guess it will be making candles as well. I’m glad I won’t be around for Tribulation…although it’s pretty scary seeing what’s happening in Israel today. Nice work. I’m #49
Spinning, weaving, hand sewing, candlemaking, farming, butchering, preserving, blacksmithing….so very much hard work to stay alive the preindustrial way! Glad you like it.
Original take on the prompt there Sharon, enjoyed it
Thank you!
I had to look at this twice. Spinning and batteries? Great job. Very clever.
Now that there aren’t any more working factories, she has to spend a lot of time spinning yarn / thread by hand – and expired batteries won’t help at all. Glad you like it!
A bit of a bleak commentary on what goes around come around. I like this one, Sharon. In a few words you set an apocalyptic stage.
Thanks, Rochelle. We often forget how easy our lives are compared to our ancestors’, don’t we?
Very atmospheric from so few words – well done. I’ll keep my wind-up torches handy, I think . . .
Thank you! I think the narrator has accepted, with regrets, that she’ll just have to live the new / old way from now on.
Sure she also lacked things to use the batteries with. Let us use oil-lamps and candles instead.
Well, my experience is that old-style flashlights outlive their batteries, but you’re right, all technology wears out or breaks eventually. I suspect that, only a handful of years after disaster, their best bet would be either candles or Roman-style oil lamps to give feeble glimmers of light, enough to avoid falling down the stairs. They wouldn’t have enough of a surplus to try to take up whaling for oil* (and not nearly enough to drill for petroleum and refine it), so nineteenth-century style oil lamps are out.
* Besides, in the world of the story humans are probably nearly as much of an endangered species as most types of whales. And whaling is a dangerous business for the whalers as well as for their prey.
ooh, so much more to this story than this nice bit of writing.
Aw, shucks, Blush. Thank you!
an interesting mix. quill pens. parchment. batteries. spinning. nice job.
Hey, they’re just cobbling together a life (Oh! They’ll need some cobblers too, to fix the shoes!) the best way they can 🙂 Thanks.
I love the way you are able to get a twist into a story of a mere 100 words. Genius 🙂
Thank you so much! Part of the secret, I think, is that the first draft versions of these stories start out closer to two hundred words – then I start chopping out everything that doesn’t seem essential. 😉
You used the 100 words so well. Very unique take on the prompt
Oh, thank you! This wasn’t my first idea, but I didn’t like the first couple of plots I came up with. And then this story turned up.
We can never imagine a time that that may happen but you never really know. Moving on – it was really good.
Yes – life takes us by surprise. Glad you like it!
Totally love this. Short and smart commentary in a story. Thanks
Aw, thanks. 🙂
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