Welcome to Friday Fictioneers, hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and a chance for bloggers to share flash fiction tales. This picture conjured up some closer to home memories.

Ted Strutz

My dad keeps a toilet on the patio. Mum groaned the day it arrived.

She encouraged other plants to grow up around it, hoping they might crush the porcelain into shrapnel.

Years later, the flower pots took over the backyard, lined up like the terracotta army. During the heat of the summer, he’d spend hours watering the withered plants. It was a battle he’d frequently lost.

Unperturbed by the loss of territory, he hung baskets outside the kitchen window and fired water cannons at them. They dripped incessantly, splattering his old army beret whenever he walked under the maimed foliage.