A clear blue sky and two planes crossing it, one after the other, perhaps too close, turning southerly. As is often, here, at this time, there is talk of politics. Governments this, ministers that, history and security, links to conspiracies. An older man and a younger man are looking skyward, standing, waiting. One holds aContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Trajectories’”
Category Archives: Fiction
100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Pathways’
Kirsty was very tiny and those paths were wide and sometimes she would feel scared but then she would have her dinner and feel full and forget. And soon she was growing and the paths were all thick with flowers and weeds and then some of the paths she couldn’t see so well. And thenContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Those Pathways’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Driftwood’
The boy’s thoughts were taken with a small piece of driftwood lying on the pebbles. A line of seaweed marked where the tide had reached earlier that morning. He stepped across it and picked up the piece of wood. It looked like an antler, but bone white, smoothed and polished by the sea and sandContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Driftwood’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘A Week In the Sun’
Sunshine. I could cry when I think about it. In January, when the rain teems down and those mornings are so dark, I want sunshine, no less. Have you got any holidays planned? asks a colleague. To know that you deserve a break, a week or two in the sun. How long to go? MaybeContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘A Week In the Sun’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘He Walked Away’
As he walked away from the football fields he heard a cheer. One of the kids must have scored. He looked at the time on his phone: it was fine, he’d be in the pub in twenty. Sometimes he wondered whether his own boy liked playing football. How old would he be now? Nine, maybeContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘He Walked Away’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘6 May 2010’
A light aircraft just dropped out of the sky, enmeshed, literally, in its own trail of propaganda. Over our own heads are helicopters and, down in the square below, hundreds of office workers have congregated for a fire drill. We are booking my birthday meal and discussing people’s relationships: how friends are feeling; what mightContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘6 May 2010’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘There Is a Moment’
Maybe there is a moment when you shudder and feel a touch more dislocated from the world and even yourself. As if the axis of everything had just been tilted to a slightly more precarious degree. Waves of repressed memory. Cracks found in the waking day. Roads broken. A moment when you are shaken intoContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘There Is a Moment’”
100-Word Fiction: New Term
Outside the school leaves were on the ground, all green and orange and yellow. A group of adults were talking on the corner by the bench that you could jump from. They had deep, grown-up voices and were saying things about stuff – countries in the world and money and things. Oh, the world isContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: New Term”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Enduring Freedom’
The date: October 7, 2001. The place: a landlocked country. The aims: to locate a man; to bring men to trial; to remove a regime. Aerial bombardments followed. Then came the tanks and troops. The date: July 13 , 2009. The website stated: ‘Estimates of the number of civilians killed vary widely and must beContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Enduring Freedom’”
100-word fiction: ‘He Rides Bicycles’
He was a machine, that’s what people said. So powerful – and everything tested, tuned, synchronised. They said he was in perfect shape. He said it was all about the timing: it was in the mind, not the legs. You looked at him and wondered what thoughts went through his head as he crossed theContinue reading “100-word fiction: ‘He Rides Bicycles’”
MW Bewick 