They said that God wanted him to be president, that he was a gift to America from Jesus, and they began to worship him. As he achieved his political zenith, he declared it to be a crime to openly criticize him. It was considered blasphemous to even speak his name in any negative sense.
As a blogger, I thought I would be safe. But then some of my more outspoken fellow bloggers began to mysteriously disappear. Through April, May, and into June there was no word of John, Ross, Giles, and the others. They simply vanished from the face of the Earth.
I knew that if I wanted to avoid that same fate, I would have to be careful. I didn’t want to be labeled a heretic, which is punishable by imprisonment and possibly death. But I still needed to speak my mind on my blog. I would just need to camouflage my messaging in such a way as to avoid detection by the ever present thought patrol who searched the blogosphere for any blogger who dared to stand up to him.
A week later I was arrested for a critical post I wrote. I’m now in jail awaiting trial.
(200 words)
Written for this week’s 50 Word Thursday prompt from Kristian. Kristian’s rules:
- Completed piece must be in multiples of 50 words – maximum of 250 words. Anything is acceptable – poetry, story, anecdote.
- There will be a photo and a random phrase that I will take from the current book I am reading – you can use either or both
- Please pingback and tag 50 word Thursday, so I can do a summary.
The random phrase Kristian chose was: Through April, May, and into June there was no word of John, Ross, Giles, and the others. It was taken from “Outback Heroes” by Evan McHugh.
Here is the picture that was included in the prompt:
I couldn’t figure out a way to fit this into the story, so just imagine that this is the alley the narrator lived next to before he was hauled off to jail.
I also managed to fit in three daily prompt words into this dystopian tale: Word of the Day Challenge (zenith), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (heretic), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (camouflage).
Oh my goodness. Today is the very last day of January, which means that today is also the very last 
She is my 
Written for the In Other Words prompt from Patricia’s Place. The challenge this week is to write a story or poem of five lines or fewer using the words “secret treasure.” I also included these one word prompts: Daily Addictions (furious and inspire), Your Daily Word Prompt (dainty and glamorous), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (wanderlust).
Welcome to January 31, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.
Now, my trash folder is filling up, while my spam folder is practically empty. How cool is that? I feel much more comfortable doing a bulk delete of the items in my trash folder than doing so in my spam folder, where some valid comments might get incorrectly tagged as spam.
“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.”
All of them were the same kind of spam — about something called CBD — as the ones I suddenly started receiving out of the blue four days ago and which I posted about 
The book I chose for this exercise is “O Little Town” by Don Reid. Line 4 on page 173 reads, “They sneaked around a lot down here behind her husband’s back.” So given that line, here’s my story.
Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
Facts, Fictions & Fantasies 