MW Bewick

100-Word Fiction: ‘Sludge’

The little man at the side of the road where the hearses do their U-turns is pointing at passing pedestrians and shouting ‘You’ll never get out! And you’ll never get out! But you’ll get out! But you’ll never get out!’

I fall into the ‘Never get out’ category.

My coffee has gone cold and I am hungry, having skipped eating again. A caffeine/calorie trade-off. I should know.

Later, as I leave for home, water gushes from a pipe, soaking the reinforced concrete embankments by the train station where I spot a new piece of graffiti. It says, ‘City of sludge’.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Lanterns’

You remember when it was New Year’s Eve and we all stood in the park and it started to snow and all across the grass people were lighting those paper lanterns that we watched float off into the deep clear night and the brand-new year? And we wondered where they’d travel, these flickering starry specks of warm orange, growing distant by the second, out across the city towers and the cranes illuminated with fairy lights. And the lanterns were lifted with sleepy-eyed dreams as we clasped each other against the cold.

We don’t see lanterns anymore, though dreams float on.

100-Word Fiction: ‘The Bear’

The bear had arrived in the story again, big and brown and powerful. It followed us to the dilapidated house that was meant to be a home and tore apart some rabbits in the pasture out front where it was always spring. It pawed open the front door and licked at the living room as we sneaked up stairs and exited by the rusting fire escape, fleeing up the hill to avoid the bear’s attack. We had heard no real news for days. The world had disappeared. I thought the bear signified the past; she thought it represented the future.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Savoy Shuffle’

That ol’ London thing, waiting at a crossing in rush hour between showers and a book falls out of the sky, lands at the side of the road, hardback, heavy, with a thud, the biography of a sports personality with late-career broadsides to discharge, and you look up, and there are only clouds. A day or two later and the same pavements are rammed with the supporters and opponents of President Kagame of Rwanda who is due to arrive at The Savoy. All morning the air vibrates to the sound of horns and singing. A limousine arrives, above it clouds.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Into the Grey’

The grey months are back. The river is a monochrome line through a commuter town. Shrieking magpies hop across the railway sleepers; five for silver. Wheel rims slash the gutter puddles of a wet street. City towers wear loose shrouds and leak osmotically into the concrete sky. Coats are zipped, umbrellas black dots streaming past the tarmac and taxis. Fallen leaves darken and roadside sludge deepens. A thin Biro line traces the schedules towards the end of a year. Daylight fades earlier and the dawn unfixes itself from waking hours. I see my eyelids’ insides. The cloud billows over Kobani.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Drop-stones”

Out he went again, tearing down the road with his mother shouting for him to stop and stay. He ran to the wooden bridge over the stream, gathering pebbles and gravel along the way and filling his pockets with them. Leaning over the wooden handrail, he gazed into the water, which was made murky by recent floods. Then he dropped the stones in, one by one, hearing them plop as they hit the surface, watching the splash, and seeing them disappear in the blink of an eye, never once asking himself why he had ever begun to play this game.

100-Word Fiction: ‘Dialogue Q [Contemporary]’

I do feel unhappy, yes, although it shouldn’t be unexpected.

Maybe the darker mornings. And television, maybe.

Hell, and it’s not even over yet, there’s next week. Tis the season.

Well they’re setting us back years. The general polemic across all of them just appals me. I don’t know what’s to be done.

Don’t start me. It’s not opting out. I’m a full participating citizen. I couldn’t escape them if I wanted to. And I do want to.

I haven’t done for years. Is it any wonder? You’ve seen them. They’re all the same.

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 his tune was generous and warm, we also remembered the lilting melodies of old and could not share his creation as equals as once we had done. He did not see that while he had turned away, we had learned our own tunes and were happy.

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 to the bank manager. He shows me photographs of us in the pub, laughing with his mates. One of me in a dress – says I look fit. But he never once asks me how I feel: never imagines that I could be the one in charge.

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 already found the summit, the hope of fair weather, a view, the worries of whether you are fit or unfit, your general health, whether it was really something to embark on, and thoughts of never achieving it, never, climbing up, never seeing, doing it for yourself…