Category: stories

Posted in stories

The Silent Portrait: A Tale of Artistic Horror

Posted on by Mike

For this story I thought I would begin by seeing what image Midjourney would conjure up with the single-word prompt ‘Art’. It gave me a few but there was something abut this one that intrigued me.

I put the image into Claude with the prompt, ‘Use this unusual picture as a prompt for a somewhat eerie 300 word short story.’ I used the latest version of Claude which is Opus 4.6 and it took a while ‘thinking’ before it actually produced this story.

Continue reading “The Silent Portrait: A Tale of Artistic Horror” →
A dystopian shop interior where a young child in a worn green jacket stands at a counter, placing coins beside a bruised apple on a glowing digital scale that reads 20. A tired shopkeeper looks at a computer screen while a silent queue stretches outside towards tall grey tower blocks. A wall display behind the counter shows vertical crops under purple light, suggesting controlled food production and rationing.
Posted in stories

The Cost of an Apple: A Story of Transactions

Posted on by Mike

The child places the coins on the counter. Copper, not credit. The shopkeeper doesn’t look up from her screen.

‘Just this,’ the child says.

The apple sits between them, bruised along one side. Through the window, the grey towers catch the afternoon light, their upper floors bright with panels that drink the sun. Down here, the queue stretches into the street. Nobody speaks. The shopkeeper’s fingers move across her screen, logging, calculating.

‘You’ve got nineteen,’ she says.

The child nods. The coins stay on the counter, warm from being held. The shopkeeper weighs the apple without touching it, the scale glows blue beneath the fruit, numbers flickering upward. Her mouth tightens.

‘Twenty-two.’

The child’s hand moves to her pocket, comes out empty. She tries the other pocket. Finds another coin, smaller. Puts it beside the others.

‘Twenty,’ says the shopkeeper.

The child looks at the apple. Outside, someone coughs, a wet sound that carries. The queue shifts forward slightly. On the wall behind the shopkeeper, a screen shows crops in vertical towers, perfect rows of green under purple light. The caption scrolls past: Sector 7 exceeds quota.

The shopkeeper’s hand hovers over the apple. The child’s fingers touch the coins, pushing them slightly forward, as though those extra millimetres might matter.

‘Got anything else?’ the shopkeeper asks.

The child shakes her head. The shopkeeper looks at the screen, then at the child, then back at the screen. Her finger taps twice. The scale goes dark. She pushes the apple across the counter, takes three coins, leaves the other.

‘Go on.’

The child picks up the apple and the remaining coin. Doesn’t run. Walks to the door, past the queue, into the street where the towers stand and the cameras follow everyone home.

Written by AI. Selected by me.

wo skeletal figures face each other beneath a luminous dome of concentric lines, their bony hands clasped together. Orange dahlias bloom abundantly around them against a dark teal background, while flowing golden-orange waves ripple across the foreground.
Posted in stories

Until Death Do Us Start – Image to Story

Posted on by Mike

For this story I thought I would start with an image. The one above was created by Midjourney. I then put the image into Claude and asked, “Write a 200 word love story using this image as your prompt.“

Until Death Do Us Start

Sarah found Marcus in the Gardens Between, where the newly dead learn to let go.

“I’ve been waiting,” he said, extending skeletal fingers she recognised instantly, the same hands that had held hers through forty-seven years of marriage.

“You promised you’d wait for me.” She took his hand, feeling the curious lightness of bones unencumbered by flesh.

“I did. I am.”

Around them, memorial dahlias bloomed in impossible profusion, each flower a moment they’d shared: their first kiss, their daughter’s birth, Sunday mornings with tea and crosswords. The blooms pulsed with warmth that living flowers could never achieve.

“I thought death would separate us,” Sarah whispered.

Marcus drew her close, and she discovered that without hearts, souls could still recognise each other’s rhythm. The concentric dome above them shimmered, a cosmic witness to their reunion.

“Separate us?” He laughed, the sound like wind chimes made of light. “My love, we’ve barely started. Now we have eternity.”

They walked together into the garden’s depths, leaving footprints of stardust, while behind them the dahlias continued blooming, orange against the dark, defiant and eternal.

Why Did Claude Write This Particular Story?

I was curious as to what ‘thinking‘ Claude undertook in writing this simple story – so I asked it: “What in the image inspired you to write this story.”

Here is Claude’s reply…

Several elements in the image directly shaped the story:

The two skeletons holding hands – This was the emotional core. Their pose suggests tenderness and connection rather than anything macabre. The way they face each other, hands clasped, immediately suggested lovers reunited rather than separated by death.

The vibrant orange dahlias – These flowers are strikingly alive and abundant in what could otherwise be a deathly scene. The contrast between skeletal figures and blooming flowers suggested that death needn’t be an ending. I used them as “memorial flowers,” each bloom representing a shared memory, turning them into symbols of love’s persistence.

The luminous dome of concentric lines – This created a sense of sacred or liminal space, neither fully the world of the living nor a traditional afterlife. It felt like a threshold or meeting place, which inspired “The Gardens Between” as an in-between realm.

The colour palette – The warm oranges against cool teals created an unexpectedly beautiful, almost romantic atmosphere. It’s not grim or frightening despite the skeletal imagery.

The flowing golden waves at the bottom – These suggested movement, journey, or transition, reinforcing the idea that the couple is moving forward together into something new rather than being frozen in death.

The overall composition felt celebratory rather than mournful, which inspired a love story about continuation rather than loss.

A Closing Thought

I find myself increasingly going back to thee chatbots, whether it is Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok and trying to understand how and why it responded in the way it did to the prompt I gave it. Fascinating experiments.

I’d love to know what you think.