WEEKLY-ISH CHALENGE #8

[Vay]

Benn out for a while but I'm back. You though you'd gotten out of writing for me didn't you. But no, I'm still here to give you an excuse to impress us all with your creativity or just write for the joy of tapping keys. Here is your next challenge!

For those new to these, just trike a paragraph, or two, or three, to the theme , its that easy!

This weeks theme: A 50 year old photograph.

 

[Hydronine]

Samantha had never asked her father about the photograph that she had always seen poking out of the top of his breast pocket. It was old and faded, torn and worn, yellowed in some spots, stained in others. But the oddest thing was, it was just a picture of a ring. A regular silver band, nothing special about it.

But whenever she had broached the subject of the picture, her father had led her away from the subject before she could even notice.

Now, sitting at his grave, with picture in hand, tears came down her cheeks, unbridled and confused.

What was the purpose of this simple little picture? Why had he carried it with him for so long? Among everything else, it was the one thing he truly wouldn't leave the house without... he had always had it on him...

He had forgotten keys and wallets, pants, even, at one time. But through it all, he had always had that picture.

Her mother had died when she was very young, he was all that she had left... and now there was nothing but this picture....

So, even though she didn't understand, she slipped the picture into her breast pocket, feeling a little closer to her father than she had in years.

 

[noodle]

The lights of the police cars painted the darkened living room with flashes of red and blue. It was a familiar sight, and one that usually comforted Samuel. But this was something new- something that made even his stomach turn.

He'd seen his fair share of gruesome murders in his long career as a police detective...but this?

What kind of sick freak did this?

The old man was barely identifiable. Blood pooled under his mangled body. His hands and eyes were gone. His legs had been hacked off with some kind of knife and crossed in an X over his bullet-ridden chest. The left side of his face was shaven, as was the right side of his head, and they were striped with blood.

And...wait. Samuel frowned as he crouched down next to the man. There was something shoved in his mouth.

The detective reached down, and, with a grimace, pulled it out. A photograph, bloody and water- damaged. It was black and white and on old paper. He could barely make out what the picture was of, but he could at least see the figures of three people. With a sigh, he slipped it into an evidence bag and handed it to a forensics worker. "See if you can clean this thing up."

 

[Doctor Jax]

"Radford."

He looked at the photograph in his hand. The last time he'd been here, he had left it as a joke. His wife had told him that it was stupid, that he would get into trouble. His brother and his father, dressed in drag at his bachelor's party, grinned at the camera while he - the man of the night - put his head in his hands with mortification. Fifty years on the moon had sun-bleached.

"Radford. We have to go back. Air's tight."

He had never thought that he'd be coming back to get this photo because it was the last that existed of the two men in the photo. He'd thought that the thing would be here forever, until the moon finally crashed back into the Earth, or the sun scorched them both. It would be a piece of debris, an archaeological wonder for whatever extraterrestrials would land on this dustball to find remnants of the people who'd been on its mother planet.

Instead, Earth and the moon were left in tact. And here he was, Benjamin Radford, with a photograph that was supposed to last forever here, and instead, he was going to have to pocket it.

"I'm coming."

The older man stuck the photograph in a zippered pocket slowly, looking up at the planet that had abandoned his race. He idly wondered if someone else would come after them to find the bones of his wife and brother and father. He wondered if they would be dust by the time someone else set foot on his former home. He turned his back on the Earth and began towards the ship, taking the last vestige of his home with him.

 

[PoetLore]

((Totally true story!!))

She opened the thick white envelope from her father and smiled when a ton of old photograph spilled out all over the table before her. "Oh ..." Was her only reaction at first but soon there were tears and smiles and giggles as she sorted through the pile of family memories.

there was s very small black and white Polaroid picture stuck to the back of another and when she carefully peeled them apart her hand came up to her mouth in shock. It was fifty years old, and showed her and her brother sitting on the floor in front of the Christmas tree playing with toys. the carpet was a busy paisley pattern as was the furniture, though there was no color to give clues as to how much of a clash that might have been. What caught her attention though was her young image in that photo with her hair every which way in wild abandon. Her gaze lifted to her three year old granddaughter playing a few feet away and then back to the photo.

The resemblance was uncanny to say the least, even the crazy hair everywhere. The major glaring difference was that she was pale complected and her granddaughter, being half Hispanic, was of a beautiful bronze one. Other than that the two could be twins. "Huh..I have a clone...who would have guessed!"