Q: I do feel unhappy, yes, although it shouldn’t be unexpected. Q: Maybe the darker mornings. And television, maybe. Q: Hell, and it’s not even over yet, there’s next week. Tis the season. Q: Well they’re setting us back years. The general polemic across all of them just appals me. I don’t know what’s toContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Dialogue Q [Contemporary]’”
Category Archives: MW Bewick
100-Word Fiction: ‘Song of the Mountain’
When he came down from his mountain and ended his isolation he sang us a song so deep that the hill itself shuddered. In the high altitude he had escaped his history and greeted us with a smile that was sweet with innocence. But we had not forgotten the pasts we shared and, while hisContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Song of the Mountain’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘How He’s Talked Lately’
I try to shut the thoughts away but the words he says prise open my every defence. I can’t not hear it. He talks about his life, his friends, the plans we’ve made, the things we’ve achieved, places we’ve been. He talks about his grandmother, about my own family history. He claims he’s talked toContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘How He’s Talked Lately’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Higher Ground’
Breathing heavily but gaining elevation, the tramp up the rocks that have been laid to raise you, the village church and shops shrinking away into miniature, the gentle hum of traffic and chatting tourists silenced, your face burning with the effort, your feet in your socks in a sweat, the faces smiling that have alreadyContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Higher Ground’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Moments of Doom’
Dark thoughts could creep in like a virus. Like if he got Ebola, if someone gave him it, or if he went and made contact with someone and got it. You couldn’t check all the people and the places they went, and the sanitary conditions of places. People buried such awful fears. On the newsContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Moments of Doom’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘August’s End’
On the quay in a cagoule, with a north wind blowing in rain and echoing through the halyards of the Essex smacks. A cormorant headed up the estuary; the Roman River was full and the silent black-headed gulls bobbed on the choppy water. There was no one there, no one at the pub or inContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘August’s End’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Here It Comes’
Here it comes: the football back on telly, the root around the wardrobe for a jacket, the predictions for the bank holiday weekend weather, the TV trailers for autumn’s best viewing. It feels like a final sign-off. You will hear no more from us until Christmas. What you haven’t got done won’t get done. AndContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Here It Comes’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘What She Gave’
Do you remember that she’d laugh but in that sharp manic way and then cover her mouth with her hand as if to apologise? She could tell you all about everything except herself; be your best friend and not ask for anything in return. Sometimes she gave so much it amounted to a barrier youContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘What She Gave’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘And If I Do Not Speak’
I can’t get into it, said Alex, shaking his head, turning his palms upward. The conversation is one that is built around a vocabulary linked inextricably to a standardised and, yes, populist argument put forward by the ruling classes. It doesn’t matter which side you take in the argument, the fact that you’re using theirContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘And If I Do Not Speak’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘If At Times There Is Not Enough Time’
Please please just stop it with this talk of tunnels and fences and walls and rubble and rockets and us and them and who is stronger and who said what first and what might happen only if and all about the media and bias and how you keep interrupting and making accusations and that everyoneContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘If At Times There Is Not Enough Time’”
MW Bewick 